Under the microscope: Nordsjoen NR004

Ben Williamson

January 07, 2011

Published on tags: Superleague

Some may have hopefully expected more from the team that has come to dominate the rFactor era of our sport, however, those intelligent enough to look beneath the skin will find that the NR004 has all the potential to continue Nordsjoen's dominance into the new decade.

Again, like all cars built by teams who competed last season, this season's car has a noteably longer wheelbase. Unlike other teams, Nordsjoen has extended only the length of the car and avoided adding too much in width terms, this suggests something internally has been altered and then team believe that this will compensate and keep the car adequately balanced. While not as outwardly aggressive and individual as the offering we have seen from Synergetic, as mentioned in the Synergetic review, the NR004 represents the other pointed end of the developmental fork. Clearly, the aero wars have begun just as the tyre wars have truly reached their end.

Interestingly, Nordsjoen are also of the school of the shark fin, which is the clear physical manifestation of the requirement to keep the airflow clean and workable over the newly extended length of the chassis. Also common to other cars is the newly specified narrower front wheel spec, the reduced contact area of the front tyres means there is real hit to front end mecanical grip and the oversized front wing cannot really compensate for this effectively, resulting in the Nordsjoen designers to switch to a different suspension set up from the car that dominated last season, the new layout of independent pushrod-activated torsion springs is a clear effort to keep all four wheels as best planted as possible. The downside of this new spec is that the mountings required do not give as much room for maneouvre as other configurations, and the components are not as easy to alter for Aero purposes, howeverwe do not predict to resultant prformance drop off will be noticeable to any except Nordsjoen insiders when the green lights come on.

Like the progessively designed WDF1.11, the NR004 also has a honeycomb monocoque structure in an effort to balance the weight of the car as best as possible. The NR004 has a major drawback in that it is outwardly a car tha requires lot of expensive and time consumng developmental work throughout the season compared with other cars, we can almost certianly expect that if the team wish to stay ahead this season a radically different looking NR004 will end the season, with this design clearly in need of a distinctive and far reaching re-develoment in terms of the clearly needed low downforce package some tracks will doubtless require. Failure to do this will see the NR004 drop off the pace significantly on faster, low downforce tracks.

However, one should not think this a poorly thought out design. The engine is now mounted at an angle of 3.5?to optimise the external shape of the cover and keep the powertrain in as neat and powerfl package as possible. The exhaust outlets on the NR004 are easily the most elegant solution to the big exhaust questions faced by all designers and a new gearbox design combined with a repositioning and resizing of the car's radiator when teamed with the new low exhaust design are a superb soultion to optimising the NR004s body aero by maximising the performance of the blown sides of the diffuser's lateral canal.

Expect to see the NR004 at the front end of the field for sure, although it remains to be seen if it can be as dominant as it's predecessor since the design is so hugely altered over Nordsjoen's previous design experience.