http://www.autosport.com/gallery/photo.php/id/87019

I have a few ideas, but what are yours!?

ballast?

The box with the yellow label, has a lazer warning, and may, or may not be attached to said "hanging thing" as there is a wire coming out of the top.

I'd guess it's laser-based ride height measurement, from this lot: http://www.optimess.de/

They've had the laser ride height measuring device for a while, and it never needed that pontoon thing before.

I thought the question was about the yellow device. The pontoon looks to have a metal front section; is it some kind of electro-resistive way of measuring airflow? No idea.

I have to say that I was of the opinion it is a ride height measuring device, which seems linked to the dampers and therefore the suspension. If this is being used to say, maintain the cars attitude above the track, does that not fall under the banned "active suspension" label, assuming of course, that's what it is!

I'd guess the aerodynamic thingo with the copper plates on was measuring air temperature or possibly yaw.

Just a guess.

Ballast is also a strong possibility, if it is on the ground clearance line.

That is an optical slip angle sensor re-installed in a chic little streamline case. The yellow box contains the transducer/buffer.

If McLaren is allowed to race next year, Ferrari in its usual Modus-oporundi, bribed Bill Gates and got a jump on some of the features in its new ECM. Something to do with European anti-trust laws.
With an adaptation of the HARM targeting system found on fighter planes in conjunction with Microsoft's ECM, Ferrari can intercept and interrogate signals from McLaren's telemetry and alter profiles to ruin their performance at will. Raikenen can actually reduce the engine output or even cause a catastrophic failure to the Mercedes engine simply by pushing a mysterious button on the steering wheel with the international radio-active symbol on it. Mosely and Todt were caught attempting to install hard points under the wing for AIM 9 Sidewinders and AIM 7 Sparrows at Friday's practice but Bernie said it would ruin his business.
The AIM 9 can hit Dennis' moror home. It is simply dreadful our beloved sport has come to this.
A neat detail is the IR and Radar tones heard in the driver's helmut depending which ordinance is selected that intensify depending on proximity to the target. Raw raw raw raw raw.
A developing story.

Not quite. The yellow box is fitted to the car full time and contains a laser ride-height measuring device as well as presumably other functions which is why it appears to be connected to the special torpedo shaped unit. It's yellow because of the sticker on the front which contains the international warning sign for laser radiation. The lower unit is a slip-angle sensor as you say, Scarbs already posted about this to an identical thread in Race Comments.

This slip angle sensor is an optical (laser) device, just like a ride height sensor. Here is an optical slip sensor in its standard box:





For an idea of some of the uses for slip sensors, follow this link:

http://www.mscsoftware.com/alpha/view_arti...=9&articleId=76

You can also measure slip angle with two GPS engines mounted some distance apart on the vehicle, keying their location vs. the longitudinal CL of the vehicle, and then tracking the displacement. This is a handy way to do it with GPS-based data acquisition systems.

Yes, I can see that. It's just that you said in your original post that the yellow box (on the bulkhead) was just an electronics box, which I disagree with. AFAIK it is a laser ride-height measurement system which is used permanently (you will see it in all photos of the Ferrari with the nose-cone removed regardless of whether or not the unit that is the subject of this thread is fitted or not.

I don't think you are following me. Yes, the yellow box is a front ride height sensor.

Slip angle sensors have trimmed down since the Corravit days...

Is the drop tank looking thing the housing for the lense? Is the wire coming from it actually going to the yellow box? If there is a lense underneath it, it would also require a yellow laser warning label. Ive seen the yellow label box before, but the beam is generated from the bottom of the box. The beam measures ride height and yaw.
The drop tank thingy is made of composite materials and wouldnt be balast especially with a wire coming out of it. The front section looks like it could be copper although there are resins that are that color. What other sensor could it be? Could it be a transmitter? Something that doesnt require a label.

It is fraught with grammatical errors. Greg, Desmo and RDV could really do a number on it with there unusual linguistic skills.

Don't let them touch it; it's perfect.

My dear Master gbaker,

One would scarcely inflict a thousand deaths, large or otherwise, upon one's faithful readers, and therefore one makes reply to your inquiry through the public forum, rather than a face-to-face meeting. One cherishes one's readers. One thinks fondly of them. Likewise the postings of our dear phantomII bringing up novel and entertaining ideas about the caddish machinations for the downfall McLaren of that ilk by the red menace (methinks our dear correspondent has confused it with another late lamented Red Menace, situated around Muscovy, but nonetheless one has remarked that anything of a crimson hue brings up this response..)

However, so that you might not spend your evenings vainly wondering about the etymology of the aforementioned epistle, one has found it eminently readable and comprehensible, and it should be not changed by one iota, lest its gist be lost in clotted verbiage.... One applauds his innovation and distinctive, yet pungent phrases.

Always culturally erudite, one remains,
RDV

Oh you think you are so clever, don't you? You probably can say that in 25 different languages including Swazi. You probably have pit lane babes swooning all over you with your suave prevarications embellished by your 200 IQ. Well, let me tell you something, wise guy, the flatterer feeds with an empty spoon. You think your white wash job will make us ignore the fact that you don't know what that gizmo thingy is under the car. Ha ha ha. Gotcha.
Did you all see how I socked it to RDV? I bet he is worried now. He's not so smart. He knows nothing about the sliding velocities between sealing faces. Why, he doesn't even know the difference between torque and HP. You, you, you twin beam propster prankster nincom poopoo you.

Man, you would have won with that entry hands down if you hadn't had someone proof-read it for you before submitting!

Damn. You forgot "AXLE" (in caps) after BEAM.

Never forget. Never never never.....

I miss Franklin. His theories energized the dialectic. By standing in such clear opposition to logic, he was the best argument for it.

Take a normal car and add a large fan....

Probably wouldn't go as fast as this...

Cataline Park - Yes, that's a slightly neater job than our favourite fan installation.

http://jalopnik.com/cars/custom-cars%5Chot...ames-146820.php

Note the thrust vectoring. The engine turns with the front wheels.

Whilst attempting to maintain iambic pentameter, some syllables had to be omitted in the name of poetic license. My prose met the 14 lines required for a sonnet and the alliteration would have continued on the last line if it weren't for the fact that my vocabulary is near bankrupt.

Oh you think you are so clever, don't you?
You probably can say that in 25 different languages including Swazi.
You probably have pit lane babes swooning all over you
charming them with your suave prevarications embellished by your 200 IQ.
Well, let me tell you something, wise guy,
the flatterer feeds with an empty spoon.
You think your white wash job will make us ignore the fact
that you don't know what that gizmo thingy is under the car.
Ha ha ha. Gotcha.
Did you all see how I socked it to RDV?
I bet he is worried now. He's not so smart.
He knows nothing about the sliding velocities between sealing faces.
Why, he doesn't even know the difference between torque and HP.
You, you, you twin beam propster prankster nincom poopoo you.

Ah, one sees precious little of such learned discussion in enginering to-day.





And as for this one...


...that intake must generate quite a bit of thrust...




The new beetle is a misconceived vehicle though, for how could an internally mounted intake generate any thrust at all?

I don't think his motivations were entirely technically motivated. I think he came up with this idea to undress his dates in a hurry.

Uh, perchance, but one would think that even undressed, the dates would look less agreable with earmuffs on, no?

And then one would have to travel with the windows open, to allow a consistent airflux to the propulsion device. One is almost tempted to say that the open windows would generate a lot of thrust...

Yeah, take that Mr. Poopypants!

Hit him again, PII.

phantomII=
...mmm, will have to answer in haikus now...have been outgunned on the iambic pentameter, and will faff a bit more to cover my ignorance of the doo-dad under car...

Did we stop to consider just how the driver will breathe?

It would keep the interior of the car dust free.

Omygawd! PhantomII was right!

Hamilton in BrazilGP-
McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh also ruled out driver error and said the likely reason is hydraulic valve failure.

"It was a gearbox problem, and it went into forced-neutral and changing down seemed to rectify it - it might be mechanical, but we doubt it," he told Autosport magazine.

"If it was something mechanical, they usually don't fix themselves. It could be electronics software - but there's no evidence in the analysis to support that. Could be a sensor - but again, there's no evidence in the data recordings.

"So it would appear that the barrels that change gear went out of control - and out of control of the driver - and that's probably hydraulic.

"That could be either a very small Moog servo control valves that were interfered with by a tiny piece of debris or they are sensitive to magnetic interference - something generated a magnetic field which caused the valve to misbehave."

Unshielded Moog valves: Jammable. Check.

How many Moog valves on a a typical F1 nowadays? Twenty? More?

Maybe 6:
Throttle, clutch, gearbox x2, fuel flap, differential.

Regards, Ian

Thanks. Less electrohydraulic stuff going on than I would've guessed.

Getting back to the torpedo thingy, it looks an awful lot like a weight on the end of a skinny beam, which could function as a passive resonance tuning device (albeit without much damping).

That thing is quite obviously there to keep the car upright for when they drive across the English Channel to get to the euro races.

Sailboats have them too.

And you people call yourselves experts.

If it has wings put on it in the future we Aussies will claim credit as we did it in the America's cup ages ago...