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.