Freebeard - What do you mean by raising the sides of the cockpit so it bleeds turbulence? Unfortunately, I can't have any bodywork above the eye level except the front wheel fairings and mirrors, its one of the rules. So at the moment I'm only peeking over. I have also included a picture of my previous car with the 1st body and the 2nd body I made for it and as you can see, I can only just see over the top.
Aerohead - Unfortunately, it wouldn't be legal, it has to be a permanent cockpit opening. Would have a fully enclosed driver if I had my choice.
I made two different style bodies for my previous car, one with 30mm of ground clearance, 16" wheels with full fairings around them. That one also had a long nose and a chopped off backend.
I wanted to improve the performance, so I decided to modify the chassis so the ground clearance is 85mm, as well as using smaller 14" wheels. I also reduced the nose to the minimum 200mm and made the back end tapered. Both of the bodies came to the same ballpark of performance and therefore I don't have a real idea of which approach to make for the new bodywork. Your opinions?
I also did more testing of having the channel vs no channel, and it showed a significant difference, about 25% increase in the drag when there's no channel (although it would be less than this in reality) because when the airflow trips over, it has a effect on the size of the wake behind the car. It also reduces the pressure in front of the helmet as you can't see the green area in front of helmet. So will definitely be having this feature.
Yeah, I have been using Solidworks for a long time and am used to it. Also been using a Solidworks built-in flow software for the recent tests, and has been giving much more useful and consistent results.