 Concerns
over rear brake cooling at Sebring 2003 led Bentley to install ad-hoc strakes
on the rear bodywork in order to grab more air for the brake ducts.
Note the additional tail light in the trailing edge of the cockpit bobble. |
 Added
in the field, the strakes are simply bent aluminum pieces riveted onto
the bodywork. The NACA brake cooling duct also had an additional
scoop added. |
 At
Sebring 2003, the Bentley had a technical infraction and was forced to
start from the back of the field. The infraction was caused by irregularities
in the surface of the flat bottom caused by heating of the engine exhaust
distorting the flat floor. The floor is the reference plane for all
height dimensions and the distortions caused the floor to be lower by as
much as 4 mm in some areas. This in turn effected the height dimension
of the rear diffuser when measured off the floor. The result was
that the rear diffuser measured 154 mm from the flat floor not the legal
150 mm. To solve this problem, Bentley inserted a plywood filler
piece in the diffuser to reduce the overall height at the trailing edge
by the out-of-spec. 4 mm. |
 It
was only a matter of time before Bentley developed their own deep rear
wing endplates. At Le Mans 2003, the race winning #7 Bentley Speed
8 ran with the deep rear wing endplates whereas the sister #8 car went
without. Apparently the difference in aero. forces between the two
was minimal, the deep endplates generating slightly more downforce while
the standard endplates had less drag. |
