F1: Lotus Sticking With New Exhaust Package

Formula 1

F1: Lotus Sticking With New Exhaust Package

A new design on the Lotus cars makes better use of air flow to direct exhaust gases into the diffuser, creating downforce...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted October 12, 2012 Yeongam (KOR)

Lotus has brought new, significant updates to Korea. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Lotus debuted an update package in Korea Friday, featuring ‘coanda’ exhausts that have been already been used by several other top teams.

Kimi Raikkonen tried the update kit and will now definitely stick with it for the remainder of the weekend – and, in theory, it should give his title chances a boost.

The design makes better use of air flow to direct exhaust gases into the diffuser, creating downforce.

“We’re reasonably happy with the way they’re working,” said technical director James Allison. “I think we’re at the beginning of a relatively long road with them – they’re not straightforward to make work perfectly first go out. But the numbers we’re getting from them are good, so yeah, quite pleased.”

Allison said the team had looked at the concept earlier in the year but had delayed pursuing it.

“Well, at the point when we were committing to what we were going to start the season with, we had two paths: a coanda path and what we chose, which was a very simple exhaust which was there to optimize power.

“At the time, the coanda solution was worth a little bit more theoretically than the power-maximizing solution, but you had to be confident that it was going to deliver all the downforce that it promised, because you could be fairly certain that it was going to deliver all the horsepower loss that the more convoluted exhaust pipe requires.

“So if the downforce didn't materialize, you knew you were down on the deal, so where we were when we launched our car, that was a relatively finely balanced decision. We launched with the simple thing and then we got under way and have had a reasonably bright season and have been pretty competitive deep into the year.

“We kept working on the other solution because it was fairly clear that that was where the center of gravity of opinion in the pit lane was, and also because it was a reasonably productive avenue back in the wind tunnel. It got to a point where the gain of the coanda system was sufficiently far ahead of our previous race system that it was quite clearly something that we ought to look at both for this year, and also to make sure we're doing the right thing for next year.

“That's pretty much the history of it; probably could have committed a bit earlier but then things were going quite well for us on the track, as well.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.