F1 is a funny business. Coandă-effect exhausts have been in use by much of the pitlane for the bulk of the season, yet they have had a relatively small impact on the headlines.
But now that Lotus have elected to run a Coandă exhaust for the first time, miles of newsprint (piles of megabytes?) have been spilled on the subject.
For the uninitiated, a Coandă-effect exhaust goes some way towards replicating the off-throttle blown diffuser effect so popular last year, but in a safer fashion thanks to the slightly cooler gases used, which do not run the risk of cooking a car’s rear bodywork.
I took the opportunity of James Allison's presence in the Friday press conference to ask the Lotus technical director why his team was so late to change their focus when it came to their exhaust system. His reply, which I have copied below in full, provides an interesting insight into a team's decision-making process when it comes to new - or revised - components.
"At the point when we were committing to what we were going to start the season with, we had two paths: a Coandă path and what we chose which was a very simple exhaust, which was there to optimise power," explained Allison.
"At the time, the Coandă solution was worth a little bit more theoretically than the power maximising 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 materialise, 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 underway 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 centre 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 Coandă 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," Allison concluded.
But now that Lotus have elected to run a Coandă exhaust for the first time, miles of newsprint (piles of megabytes?) have been spilled on the subject.
For the uninitiated, a Coandă-effect exhaust goes some way towards replicating the off-throttle blown diffuser effect so popular last year, but in a safer fashion thanks to the slightly cooler gases used, which do not run the risk of cooking a car’s rear bodywork.
I took the opportunity of James Allison's presence in the Friday press conference to ask the Lotus technical director why his team was so late to change their focus when it came to their exhaust system. His reply, which I have copied below in full, provides an interesting insight into a team's decision-making process when it comes to new - or revised - components.
"At the point when we were committing to what we were going to start the season with, we had two paths: a Coandă path and what we chose which was a very simple exhaust, which was there to optimise power," explained Allison.
"At the time, the Coandă solution was worth a little bit more theoretically than the power maximising 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 materialise, 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 underway 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 centre 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 Coandă 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," Allison concluded.
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