Images
copyright and courtesy Chris
Abele, Greg Cooper,
Lorens
Lin,
Patrick Michl,
Marc
Urbano,
and
Michael
J. Fuller
Text
copyright Michael
J. Fuller
The
Lola B2K is a development of last season's (1999) somewhat lack luster
B98/10.
One of the major flaws of the B98 was its cooling architecture. The
B98 relied on receiving all of its cooling air from the underbody
diffuser which deposited the air into the car's sidepods to feed coolers
downstream. The draw back was that when the track temperatures where
high, the air the coolers were getting was essentially pre-heated.
This led to having to run the front at higher ride heights in order to
get improved airflow. But that resulted in reduced downforce and
balance. In essence the car's ride height, downforce generation,
and subsequent aerodynamic balance was dependent on low ambient temperatures.
Not an ideal situation.
The B2K has been designed to rectify this. |