The
increased driver protection is plainly obvious in this view. Ironically
Thorby originally designed the chassis fins to take a full roll hoop.
But for whatever reason the ACO nixed the idea. The chassis fins
served to provide lateral protection, rear impact protection, and served
to connect the footwell with the rest of the chassis structurally.
Thorby indicates, "The deep and fairly thick fins were the logical
way to get the necessary bending and torsional stiffness and they also
carried the rear wing supports".
The intakes either side of the nose are for brake cooling. The radiator intakes are situated on either side of the cockpit as well as additional ducts being located in the side pods.
Andrew
Thorby explains: "Our overall deck height is so low we couldn't grab enough
air. The height of the bottom of the duct is defined by the top wishbone,
and the top of the duct is defined by the deck height, which I wanted as
low as possible. But we couldn't grab enough air through the top surface
ducts, so we've got side inlets as well."
The cooling exhaust is split as well some air going out a duct in front of the rear wheel, the rest out the rear of the car.
Panoz
struggled with cooling related issues at the beginning of the season and
found itself back at the wind tunnel trying to find new solutions.
Andy Thorby admits that the initial wind tunnel development was insufficient
and that the cooling architecture had not been optimized, much less the
overall chassis aerodynamics. After Thorby's departure in February
2001, the remaining design group abandoned the split cooling settling for
a conventional intake either side of the cockpit. This is how the
car ran at Le Man.
