I’ve never really had the chance to look at an F1 car up close. Here at the Autosport show in the UK, I did get to see multiple F1 cars up close. They are probably just show cars, but they are faithful representations of the current 2008 cars. Boy, I have to say that F1 has definitely gone ricer. Allow me to show you what I mean.
So here is your standard ricer wing compliments of the Erebuni website. Yes, this one is a bit old school now considering APC now owns the market for extruded aluminum element rear wings that you can find at Pep Boy’s now. Just cruise through East LA, Montebello, or South LA and you’ll see the Mexicans rocking this style and the newer style aluinum wings on everything from Accords to Sentras. For this exercise we will use the wing in the picture. In all the examples below, the white arrows denote an aerodynamic aid. There are more aids per picture than the arrows show, but the arrows show the obvious ones.
Example 1: Petronas BMW front view
Example 2: Petronas BMW front quarter view
Example 3: Petronas BMW side view
Example 4: Vodafone Mercedes
You can see how rediculous aerodynamic aids have become. And you can see the two wings that stick out the sides of the engine air intake that looks like the ricer wing you see above. All of these protrusions on the body work have been tested in a wind tunnel and are functional in adding downforce. But seriously: THEY ARE FUCKING UGLY AS HELL!!!
I mean no disrespect to the F1 community. Some of the brightest people in the world work in the F1 arena, but these protrusions are just fucking down right ugly. If I were a bodywork designer I would point a Dessert Eagle .45 magnum (loaded with a hollow point) at the side of my head and pull the trigger if I were forced to design this kind of bullshit body work. Lucky for me I don’t work in Formula 1.
I don’t give a shit how much faster these aerodynamic aids make the car. They should removed and made more subtle. The FIA should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this bullshit. F1 is almost boring to watch these days anyhow with so much downforce. Have you ever watched an F1 race from the late 70’s to the mid 90’s? Now that is real racing where the cars are on the edge of control. I’m not saying it doesn’t take any driving skill to be taking turns at Sepang at 220mph, but old school F1 racing was so much more exciting to watch with less downforce and driver aids.