I love it! Good or bad it’s kart manufacturers working to inovate. A lot of good can come from stuff like this. I’m on the band wagon of it won’t make enough difference on a Sprint track, but I’m ok with being wrong.
My question is… Are we saying this innovation in design\engineering, or marketing.
It helps slightly with aero if your eyes are just slightly higher than the wheel for the most part as the typical euro top tier drivers tend to be. If you are more than maybe 5’6” then your shoulders most likely eliminate any gains made by directing air flow over your head.
Essentially it was a product improvement design for the factory team but a product sales design for the vast majority of the world.
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That seems like a ‘silly innovation’ then 
I decided to revive this thread as it’s the best so far on Aero, I have seen on this forum.
I think a simple look at events like battle at the brickyard will show that Aerodynamics on karts even CIK is important. It’s just a matter of time before the small changes I have seen will become more and more dominate in karting. It’s the simple result of spec engines, bodywork and larger tracks.
Just my $.02
CRG have started using an updated fairing on their Mini karts, maybe we’ll see something similar on the Senior karts in the future.
Here it is next to the OTK M7:
Like the look. Like the Gopro mounting options as well.
That kids nose is made by KG called the MK20 Bodykit…
They actually show some CFD for that kit which looks really good for drag.
@Bimodal_Rocket why does everyone want to do this? If your buying an aero Nassau then why would you put a go pro on it?
The view is good. But as an aero guy I just can’t make myself put a GoPro in the airstream of anything that was actually developed for a reason.
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I personally wouldn’t buy one for that reason. My footage > My Aero. That being said, neither is gonna help me much!
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Agree 100% on the spec part. If you look at an X30 grid in the pro tour for example the times are incredibly tight, trading hundredths for places.
I think if you put a GoPro almost anywhere on the kart, you’re putting it in the air flow.
However, I even though a thousandth of a second can make the difference in qualifying, I don’t know how much these different front driver’s panels make. I’m just saying, look at the KA100 SuperNats race, Brandon Lemke made a comeback run through the field with his driver’s panel just flopping around.
But, they made it for a reason, and people run them for a reason, even if it’s a mental edge.
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I’m not a fan of the aesthetics. Even with this, a kart is still a brick pushing air. Just sayin’.
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I don’t see a reason you couldn’t clear lens a hole in the panel fill it and rear mount the camera into the panel to keep the airflow and camera.
Also, Spencer karts are absolutely bricks pushing air but the difference between a kart setup properly for Aero inside the rules and one that isn’t is most likely the difference of a few tenths on the track and more on tracks like Indy.
With money, anything is possible. It would be cool if the faring designers had the current gen gopro in mind when they design these things.
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For long courses or RR, the gains are definitely tangible. But it’s overrated for sprint racing unless, perhaps, we’re talking about top-tier drivers who can extract the last bit of performance advantage to find a fraction or 2 (Which ain’t me, BTW).
Yes, Track will play a significant role on how important to how much benefit you see from Aero. There is also significant difference when comparing driver sizes and this is especially true when it comes to gains seen by bodywork. A smaller driver will see significantly less gains then a larger one when it comes to driver panels/front bumpers. The gains will also change significantly based on a number of other optimizations but in the end all calculations point towards the larger front bumper heights and larger front panels being a benefit on drag coefficient. A common misconception is that drag is the result of frontal area but that isn’t really true. Drag is the result of shape of an object generally more then frontal area think sphere with a cd = .5 vs perfect Aerofoil with of cd = .045 you can take a 1" Sphere and it will have the same drag as a Aerofoil over 11" or 11x the frontal area and that is really the importance of bodywork along with a number of other factors.
I think this is one of the reasons the FIA/CIK has allowed this change to go forward as it evens the field a bit more on drivers body type. I think that Newcastle has made rules against the M7 panel in 206 but I would argue the opposite, if anything its better for parity between racers.
Added this photo of aerofoil vs cylinder. These two objects have the same drag.
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So we finally have some technical diagrams revealing the difference in pressure distribution between the M6 & M7 Nassau panels. TKART magazine has published these, but the only data mentioned in the copy is a 10 per cent gain in ”aerodynamic efficiency”.
I cannot find clarification on whether these are theoretically generated or tested diagrams. Either way, do we have any engineers who can explain what we’re looking at here and why? Other comments and observations are welcome.
Not sure I have much confidence in these images. Why is the front of nose blue in the top views yet red in the bottom view?
yeah I agree, colors change and parts that don’t seem in the open air are apparently red. I understand why the m7 is better, and it makes sense that its better, but those diagrams seem off. If anyone has a 3d model of the two karts I can attempt to run it through fluid dynamics simulators