Most cars to have ’ugly’ nose in 2012 - Gascoyne

Mike Gascoyne on Thursday said he thinks most F1 cars will feature an unseemly nose in 2012.

Caterham is bearing the brunt of the criticism so far, with the newly-unveiled CT01 slammed by fans who say the radically-stepped nose section is ugly.

But the solution is the result of new regulations to lower the extreme ’point’ of the nose for crash safety, while the monocoque height rules stay the same.

"As we’re the first car out it is obviously stirring up a lot of debate," team technical boss Gascoyne said on Caterham’s Facebook page.

"But because of the 2012 regulations I think you’ll probably be seeing this type of nose on most of the cars this year.

"Our challenge is that you always want to get the chassis as high as possible to allow clean air flow to the underside of the car, and what you see on the CT01 is our solution to that," he added.