Well, what have we here?

Ferrari have been rumored to be working on a radical new nose for their F1 car, and a few days ago, they let it out of the R & D dept. and onto the track at Spain.

To me, it seems pretty obvious what Ferrari is trying to accomplish with this new nose.

Essentially, if you have the duct in the nose situated just aft of the trailing edge of the front wing, it will perform two tasks:

1 - it will relieve air pressure from the top surface of the wing, where the trailing edge of the wing and the underside of the nose start to meet, and

2 - by passing air streaming off the wing itself out the vent, it will create a low pressure area just aft of the effective surface of the wing.

This low pressure area will act like a cliff at a waterfall, it will draw more and more into it, and exhaust it through the vent on the top of the nose.

The more lower pressure generated just aft of the front wing will help pull more air under the wing.

The more air that flows under the front wing, the more down force it will produce.

The nose vent, working in conjunction with the way air is drawn through, and expelled out the front brake fairings (the disc on the outside of each front wheel) as a whole serve to generate a low pressure area just aft of the trailing edge of the front wing.

Air flows from high pressure towards low, like water flowing down a hill.

What Ferrari have done is effectively increase the slope of that hill.

Very clever.

Congratulations are in order for Graham Rahal when he won the St. Petersburg Indy car race this past Sunday.

It was a race that fell into “outright crazy” category, especially at the start. The first street race of the newly combined series started under a torrential tropical downpour.

Rain always make for tricky conditions in a race, and in this case, only made things VERY tricky.

For starters, all of the former Champcar drivers had dozens of street races under their belts, while the IRL regulars had 6 or 8 total. The same can also be said concerning the rain, since the last time the Champ guys ran in ran was a few months ago, whereas the last time for the IRL guys was … years? never? Hell, it’s been so long even I can’t remember.

And so, things started off under a safety car for 8 or 10 laps, and THEN they threw the green flag … spins, slides, near misses with other cars, near misses with large concrete barriers, near misses with large concrete barriers AND other cars … hectic hectic crazy hectic.

And, by the time the checker flew, who was on top?

Young Graham Rahal, that’s who.

Son of Indy 500 winner and three-time CART champion Bobby Rahal, Graham has the genetic makeup, and he had shown great promise last year as Sebastian Bourdais’ teammate, and just two races into this year’s season (the first season of the combined open wheel series) Graham made good on those promises.

Craziness, passing, high speed wheel to wheel action, The Indy 500 on the horizon and young American talent on the rise?

This is going to be good.

Racing fans seem to fracture at one level or another. For example, if yo ask us about our favorite race, some will say Daytona, some will say Indy, and for a lot of F1 fans, Monaco is their most favored.

My brother LOVES the Monaco Grand Prix … collects tapes and artifacts and old magazine articles, he just can’t get enough of it.

There’s a lot of odd things about Monaco though. One thing that I’ve noticed is that you hear a lot of people saying, “Modern cars are just too fast and too sophisticated to race at Monaco anymore.” Maybe that’s true, I’m not sure … and years ago, I remember Nelson Piquet saying “it’s like flying a helicopter around your living room,” and THAT seems pretty accurate.

But I also remember reading reports from the race in the 30s where people were saying more or less the same thing … Grand Prix of the 30s were too fast, and Grand Prix cars of 2008 are STILL too fast.

That’s what makes it so interesting.

Look at that painting at the top of the post … coming that close to crashing seems to be the common denominator, regardless of era.

That is of course Tazio Nuvolari, one of the best, if not the best racing driver of all time. You can learn about his efforts at Monaco (there’s a real good story about him splitting a fuel rail coming out of the tunnel and STILL making it across the finish line, hanging out the side of the car to see around and avoid the flames roaring back at him) by checking out this really well done site called The Monaco Grand Prix Library.

OK, first there were rumors that Jean Todt, he of Ferrari team & upper company management, was going to get the boot (it’s really long and convoluted, but it has to do with the retiring of Schumacher, and a long running battle with Luca di Montezemolo). And then it turned out that those rumors are true.

And now things get even … man, I don’t even know what the word is … imperial I guess.

Because the folks at GrandPrix.com have just put it out there that Jean Todt might end up running The FIA, because Max Mosley thinks he’d make a dandy president of the organization.

Of course, not everyone agrees with Max. As GrandPrix.com put it “There is likely to be much opposition to Todt in FIA circles although the move may not be greeted with much enthusiasm in the F1 world.”

Which is a very understated way of saying: “The British teams will have full blown conniption fits”

Popcorn please!

Oh, and in case any of you uncultured Saracens are wondering what the picture is, it’s Napoléon Bonaparte in the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire by François Bouchot.

What? Is AutoblogGreen Serious? Is Acura Serious?

Is Acura really going to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Audi & Peugeot in the high-stakes game of international prototype racing?

Beats me, but if they do, this could get real interesting.

First off it fits in with a framework of what Honda has done in the past: use its racing endeavors in the pursuit of technological solutions to production car problems. Honda’s VTEC valve-train was first seen on their turbocharged F1 engines back in 88 and when first making into into a street car, VTEC was first deployed in their most fuel efficient Civic available, and was marketed as a a device that would improve mileage.

And if these rumors are true, Acura is not fooling around. At the Detroit show this past January, American Honda EVP John Mendel said that the company was evaluating a diesel for the race program. Acura also announced that they would launch a clean diesel in the U.S. market in 2009. Also in January Gil De Ferran (2-time IndyCar champion) said that he would launch a new ALMS team this year, fielding the Acura ARX-01B starting with the Long Beach Grand Prix in April.

There’s even bigger possibilities here than no one has mentioned, but you’d think that Acura (and parent Honda) sure as hell would be considering them. If you race in any of the classes here for the ALMS, then you’re also spec’d to race at Le Mans itself. To me, it’s not outside the realm of possibilities that running a diesel in the ALMS would be a great proving ground before heading onto the world stage that is the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Here’s something I didn’t expect to see on a stand at this years Geneva Motor Show, not one but TWO Honda F1 cars, and even cooler, one of them is from 1967!

Bitchin’!

The folks at AutoBlog had the shots and info.

Personally, I remember it being a big deal when John Surtees of all people decided to go race for the Honda team back then. It would be like Fernando Alonso going to Toyota this year. Sure, back then, Honda was pumping a lot of money into its F1 efforts, and they were really innovative in a lot of ways, but for a racer with the talent and accomplishments of Big John to go over, that was a risky move and could just end up making everyone look bad.

But first time out with the new car, at Monza no less, Surtees won!

I remember people being really impressed by that, but sadly, it wasn’t indicative of things to come. Honda was up and down for the next bunch of seasons, but never was a real threat to the big boys (Lotus, Tyrell, Ferrari and Brabham). It would take until the 1980s and a whole lot of effort for Honda to become, first, a threat, and ultimately THE standard for race engines.

Honda dominated the late 80s and into the early 90s, then left, then sort of came back, then REALLY came back, building it’s own chassis and dumping in hundreds of millions of dollars into its F1 efforts. Sadly, the have come to naught … but they seems to be getting more and more serious, hiring no less of a talent than Ross Brawn to run the team this year.

Time will tell …

More pictures after the jump.

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