this image you can see they have had to lower the top of the nose ahead of the bulkhead, while the bulkhead is pretty much the same.
here you can see both the 26 and 27 have a lower bulk head than Redbull and haven't needed the bump as they have a lower front nose. Now to all those people claiming McLaren have it wrong then why were they competitive last year? the flow underneath the nose is what all the fuss is about and its relatively the same as last year for all teams.
Good pics, clear to see the 27 nose is just an evolution of the 26...... not some radical departure in concept from other cars.
The duct on the RB 8 is for driver and electronics cooling. Adrian Newey said with the narrow nose tip, is was just easier to mount the duct further aft, and use the step for something useful. Makes sense to use a small high pressure region there to place it after alll.
And would wholeheartedly believe him, that it's that simple. People are over analysing these bumps waaaaay too much........
The big thing this year is how best to optimise the diffuser now that the EBD ban has stopped the teams forming a fluidic skirt under the sides of the diffuser, that "sealed" them from lateral leakage of air. The optimisation of the concept is what allowed the RB 7 (which was specifically designed around it) to run so much rear ride height, while not losing efficiency. More rear ride height means more chassis rake, lowering and increasing efficiency of the front wing, and having the rear wing in a higher position relative to others.
Referencing off rear-end pictures of the RB 7, and new RB 8, showed a static height in the 100-120 mm region, measuring relative to rim height. That is huge, as when we ran flat bottom F3000 cars we only ran 40-50mm rear ride height, with 20-25mm rake. Just shows how softly sprung F1 cars are nowadays....
