Why are Midland not “horny” like the rest of them?

Just not horny !
By Huw Alban
February 13 2006

McLaren had them last season. Now Renault has them. Ferrari has them. Honda have them. Toyota have them. Williams have them. Heck, almost every team has them except Midland ! So we asked the team a horny question !

Earlier this month forum contributor zha asked a very good question:

“Can anyone tell me what was the reason for not putting those little wings on the airbox (just beneath the TV camera), like McLaren, Renault, Ferrari, Honda, Toyota, Williams, STR, and Red Bull have ?

Only Midland and BMW don't have them - I wonder why ?”

What a damn fine question I thought, and so I forwarded it to our sources where it was received very positively promising an answer.

Over the weekend the response arrived, straight from the keyboard pushing fingers of Technical Director James Key.

“We do have some wings being developed for this area,” he wrote, “so by Bahrain we will have something similar to the other teams.”

“The wings can act either as downforce generating devices in their own right or as rear wing flow deflection devices, so it is not just a simple case of putting them on and going faster; it really depends on how you want to use them and whether they work effectively with the rest of the car.”

Other knowledgeable sources on our forum have also chipped into the discussion. “The airbox wings are for guiding the airflow over the rear wing, and add very little downforce themselves. (Also) there is loads of room for different rear wings… (One F1 team) has 16 different rear wing configurations, based off of 4 different baselines (i.e. endplates, flap and mainplane). Some of these baselines require different roll hoop wings (different lengths and profiles). With Midlands car being so new, perhaps they aren't running their optimum setup as they haven't physically got it yet due to manufacturing constraints.”