McLaren MCL36

[SmallSoldier]

That example actually does carry a danger of sudden downforce loss at high speed over a Chicane and next to a concrete wall! So I get your point but that's not a great example lol

It is a great example. These men are supposed to be competing for "the world driving championship". Just don't hit the kerb or push track limits. No more than at Monaco where the walls are everywhere. "World champion caliber drivers" should be able to do that. Instead I expect to hear them crying like little girls.... via their surrogates [team principles] of course.

It would be highly dangerous if the cars do lose grip suddenly. That's not an accident I want to watch if the cars behave that way.

It’s a very valid point, I would hate for an avoidable accident to happen… If (because we don’t know how the cars will handle kerbs yet) the cars are too sensitive to an abrupt separation between the floors and the track surface, the kerbs will be have to be revised… The situations could happen not only because a driver is trying to extract the best lap time and therefore using the kerbs or exceeding track limits, it’s a situation that could simply happen in the course of racing due to a battle between 2 cars placing one in a bad position or simply because of unintentional human error and hitting those kerbs because someone overshot a braking point.

[gcdugas]

That example actually does carry a danger of sudden downforce loss at high speed over a Chicane and next to a concrete wall! So I get your point but that's not a great example lol

It is a great example. These men are supposed to be competing for "the world driving championship". Just don't hit the kerb or push track limits. No more than at Monaco where the walls are everywhere. "World champion caliber drivers" should be able to do that. Instead I expect to hear them crying like little girls.... via their surrogates [team principles] of course.

It would be highly dangerous if the cars do lose grip suddenly. That's not an accident I want to watch if the cars behave that way.

"Suddenly" is not their normal behavior but if they are bouncing up over the kerb, loss of downforce and grip will be "provoked". I'm not talking about snap behavior in ordinary racing. Even 2021 cars gained as much or more DF from the diffuser as from the wing so a high enough "bounce" will lose only 50% DF. If the 2021 cars had 50% DF from the diffuser and 50% from the wing, then only 50% could be lost from a hard hit on the kerb. If the 2022 cars gain 75% from the tunnels and diffuser and 25% from the wing, then 75% can go away on a hard kerb hit. You get the idea. It's never going to be the sudden unexpected loss like the 70s skirt cars that could lose 80% DF over a big but ordinary bump. Moreover, they are "sealing" the sides of the car with vortices, not skirts. A 2022 floor has far more damage durability from clashes with other cars and from smaller kerbs than the skirt cars.

[Tombola37]

Hi there new to this board. No aero expertise but an F1 fan for years.

That area of the nose which looks sculpted into the wing I believe is another carbon cover no? There is an edge on the right which isn’t bonded properly to the wing. I think MC are hiding the true wing/nose structure.

It's definitely not as pretty as the Aston Martin solution, but I don't think anything is being hidden behind this, just a little bit of carbon for a smoother transition in the wing

Yeah they were my initial thoughts. However looking at it again comparing the carbon lay up to the Aston, the mcl nose just doesn’t look right. There is a shadow along the edge of the carbon sheet. I don’t believe it to be truly connected to the car. You can also see where the sheet ends as it extends up the nose. I think something is being hidden at the front of the nose. Are they allowed floating noses this year with struts? Or perhaps the have found a loop hole allowing a structure with an aperture in it.

[Motörhead]

I expect the siffer tyres to make up for the suspension stiffness. Actually I think last years cars needed finer rider height contriol than this years. Yes. I am sticking my neck out. These tunnels cannot bottom out becuase of their design. And they actually have a slight skirting on their edge. The wheels are bigger so I see curb riding will be less bouncy too. Sticking my neck out and saying the guys will be riding curbs just as hard as before!

As far as riding curbs go, perhaps.
But…..
As soon as a driver puts his wheel over the edge of a sausage curb, then it’s goodnight Vienna. All the FWD floor fences will be wiped out as they run just above plank legality. That’s a whole lot of downforce lost. The tunnels will be fine, the fences not!

I disagree. GP2 cars (the early variants) had tunnels and used kerbs in a similar fashion to any other single seated of the time.

Any fences or strakes in those GP2 cars?
I can guarantee that all 2022 F1 cars this season will be running fences or strakes in those tunnels for optimum downforce. It's the major gain for Aero this year. Yes, they will still be able to run but at a huge loss.

[djos]

The strakes on F1 cars aren’t going to impact curb riding, 90’s Champ cars had them too they were great on rough street circuits!

[mwillems]

It is a great example. These men are supposed to be competing for "the world driving championship". Just don't hit the kerb or push track limits. No more than at Monaco where the walls are everywhere. "World champion caliber drivers" should be able to do that. Instead I expect to hear them crying like little girls.... via their surrogates [team principles] of course.

It would be highly dangerous if the cars do lose grip suddenly. That's not an accident I want to watch if the cars behave that way.

It’s not very likely! Venturi tunnels are very well understood now.

I'm not saying you're wrong but in F1 everything is taken to the limit and might still be prone to a type of damage that creates a sudden loss of downforce from damage here or extreme leaps off the kerb. I guess when we see the floors in action we will see.

[djos]

Drawing conclusions from early 80’s F1 cars is just not valid. Many series kept using and developing Venturi tunnels after F1 banned them and they simply stopped having those issues once the technology was better understood.

[mwillems]

The strakes on F1 cars aren’t going to impact curb riding, 90’s Champ cars had them too they were great on rough street circuits!

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/LolaUnderbody.jpg

That may end up being correct, but this is F1 where even now its less prescriptive and the teams may be pushing ideas to their fragile limits. You're likely more technically proficient than I, but I don't think you can rule out floor damage and downforce loss mid corner given damage we know kerbs can do all over the car.

If last year 50% of the DF came from the floor then this year it is 70 perhaps? That's a lot of DF to come from just one place and I'll be surprised if we don't see accidents as a result. Let's see what happens I guess.

[gcdugas]

That may end up being correct, but this is F1 where even now its less prescriptive and the teams may be pushing ideas to their fragile limits. You're likely more technically proficient than I, but I don't think you can rule out floor damage and downforce loss mid corner given damage we know kerbs can do all over the car.

If last year 50% of the DF came from the floor then this year it is 70 perhaps? That's a lot of DF to come from just one place and I'll be surprised if we don't see accidents as a result. Let's see what happens I guess.

Also consider that a large goal of the new front and rear wings, the wheel covers, along with the "wake conditioners" atop the front wheel, is to make the overall dirty air wake far less and to lower the loss of front end grip when following closely. Ground effects are less affected by dirty air than a pure wing. Thus getting the bottom plane of the front wing low will limit the DF loss when racing close together. Your 70% number [from the floor] is also DF that is almost totally unaffected by following closely in dirty air. That and having less dirty air should tighten up the racing and promote more overtaking. So goes the theory anyway.

[mclaren111]

Giorgio Piola:

In the rear, however, there was an inversion of the schemes with the introduction of the push rod: in Woking they wanted to prevent the tie rod in the gearbox attachment from interfering with the Venturi channels and they moved the shock absorbers and springs up, freeing the area below to zoom in on the eye-catching Coca Cola area.

In the rear suspension, however, there is another interesting aspect: there is no upper triangle, replaced by two multilink arms, with the front one pivoting under the rear one. McLaren at the Mercedes “supermarket” would not have bought the rear-end kinematics, nor the gearbox, but the gearbox gear. Staggered arms allow air passages useful for aerodynamics and the generation of vortexes.

[AeroDynamic]

[jjn9128]

https://cdn-4.motorsport.com/images/mgl ... tin--1.jpg

This is the one bit of info Scarbs and Somers are spreading I disagree with. The cockpit location no longer has any bearing over the position of the floor leading edge - it used to be that this was set relative to the C-C plane (rear face of the cockpit entry) but it is now set relative to the front axle. Likewise the front wing always has been. They're conflating some parallax to a difference in distance.

[101FlyingDutchman]

The design philosophy difference is greater than I’d ever expected. Just hope that we’ve got it “right”. I expect to see a lot of change in the T tray area and to the side of it. Probably also different front/rear wing and a much more complex rear floor solution. Cautiously optimistic. I hope the suspension kinematics that’s been worked hard on really pays off. If we can keep our medium/high speed aero performance relative to competition but really improve in slow long radius turns then it’s going to be an amazing season

[djos]

I came across this awesome video from Donut Media on Daniels struggles with the 21 car from a race engineering point of view and how things could be changed for this year:

[mwillems]

That may end up being correct, but this is F1 where even now its less prescriptive and the teams may be pushing ideas to their fragile limits. You're likely more technically proficient than I, but I don't think you can rule out floor damage and downforce loss mid corner given damage we know kerbs can do all over the car.

If last year 50% of the DF came from the floor then this year it is 70 perhaps? That's a lot of DF to come from just one place and I'll be surprised if we don't see accidents as a result. Let's see what happens I guess.

Also consider that a large goal of the new front and rear wings, the wheel covers, along with the "wake conditioners" atop the front wheel, is to make the overall dirty air wake far less and to lower the loss of front end grip when following closely. Ground effects are less affected by dirty air than a pure wing. Thus getting the bottom plane of the front wing low will limit the DF loss when racing close together. Your 70% number [from the floor] is also DF that is almost totally unaffected by following closely in dirty air. That and having less dirty air should tighten up the racing and promote more overtaking. So goes the theory anyway.

I'm not talking about following, just situations in which the venturi effect can be drastically reduced during g cornering situations.

But anyway I'm open to any scenario I'm just nor ring out potential risks associated with the more extreme situations.

I've nothing more to add though so I'll see what happens on the track now.