VOL. 55 ISSUE 9 MARCH 6, 2018 P35
AERO DECISIONS
T
ests on aero bodywork
reached a crescendo at
Qatar's final tests, with teams
needing to reach a final deci-
sion on what fairings to use for
the coming season before the
start of practice at Qatar in two
weeks.
With fairing design frozen for
the season and the amount of
down-force having a radical ef-
fect on chassis requirements, the
decision is important—although
one update is allowed during the
season, the same as last year.
All but KTM has essayed new
aerodynamic ideas at pre-season
tests, with the consensus moving
toward looped or boxed exten-
sions to the upper fairing flanks,
or in some cases higher and
further forward.
As last year, Ducati was lead-
ing development, with three dif-
ferent (although similar) designs,
drawing on the box-kite add-
ons used last year. As in 2017,
Dovizioso preferred the feel of
the bike without the add-ons.
Yamaha had looped wings on
each side, while Aprilia favored a
more boxy design.
Honda produced yet another
fairing design for testing on day
three in Qatar, for Marquez only,
with larger boxes on the sides of
the nose, in yet another tribute to
Ducati.
Apart from the trout-pout Su-
zukis, the fashion is for bolted (or
riveted) add-on sections rather
than the styled-in ducting seen
in several cases last year. Under
the year-two design-freeze rules,
items (including half of, or the
entire boxes) can be removed
from homologated fairings as
required.
Teams are allowed one update
during the season, and the
bodywork is homologated rider
by rider, so that similar bikes can
have different aero bodywork.
Michael Scott
Yamaha is going
for a looped-in
design with their
2018 fairings.
