Will F1 have another unwanted finger in 2014?

Last night’s teaser image from Force India has given us hope that the days of ugly Formula 1 cars are behind us. However, seen only in profile form, even with that pic we still need to be prepared for the worst. Late last year Craig Scarborough warned us of “the finger nose”, shown in his illustration above.

The finger solution is due to the new 2014 regulations which prescribe a high chassis and low nose. The regs specify a relatively narrow width for the nose tip which teams will want to adopt in order to achieve the maximum possible airflow under the car.

More recently, Caterham F1 boss Cyril Abiteboul, has been more direct, drawing inspiration for his description from Hollywood.

“It is going to be ugly,” Abiteboul warned. “I think F1 is still show business and it should still be attractive to people.

“Kids should be dreaming when they see an F1 car—I don’t know about the dream or nightmare you will be having when you look at those cars.

“It does remind me of the ‘Alien’ film with it coming out the mouth.”

[Source: Autosport | Pic: Craig Scarborough]

UPDATE: Scarbs has posted a sketch of the VJM07 nose to twitter (see below).

A quick sharpie sketch of the #VJM07 nose pic.twitter.com/1A6U2zOPdO

— Craig Scarborough (@ScarbsF1) January 22, 2014