ams Red Bull with a new S-slot trick
18.03.2016
D he S-slot is an old one Invention. Air is sucked in below the nose and fed through a channel to the top of the chassis. The main purpose of this air flow is to get the turbulence created on the inner front wing edges out of the way. Behind the entry holes, there should be a clean flow below the nose.
A small side effect is that the flow around the cockpit is accelerated behind the outlet. However, this effect doesn't seem to be that important. In Australia, an S-slot version could be seen on the Red Bull that does not have an outlet on the top of the chassis.
No air outlet on the Red Bull
The S-slot is easy to recognize optically. The easiest way is at the outlet shaft. The entry holes are harder to find in some cases. Mercedes put them far forward. The gap looks like the open mouth of a shark.
Force India also has it under its nose, but further back. Toro Rosso installed two air locks on the side of the nose. McLaren uses openings directly on the chassis edges of the A-A section, nicely integrated into the baffles.
So now we have also discovered two entry holes at Red Bull. They are reminiscent of the McLaren solution. But where on the Red Bull does the air come out again? Nowhere on the top of the chassis is a slot to be seen.
Engineers of the competition suspect that Red Bull is blowing off the 'bad air' in the cockpit. Further back makes no sense because the flow would slow down too much on the long way back to do something positive in the rear.
In our gallery we show you the mysterious air inlets on the Red Bull- Nose.
