Yes, they do have the same shape, but I'm not sure it's just about the same effect. Upper floor surface ahead of the sidepods is curved (convex shape) on all cars, some more, some less. RB has a really pronounced curve. This speeds the air up, lowers the pressure and sets the scene for a floor sealing vortex. The floor underside here is high pressure zone influenced by converging geometry with the help of turning vanes (image link).SiLo wrote: ↑25 Mar 2022, 20:17So the lower front portion of the sidepods on the Ferrari, along with the turning vanes at the entrance of the tunnel?
I guess if you look top down, the undercut on the sidepod follows almost the same shape as the vanes that run below the tunnel, so I guess they are using all of that to create a huge outwash effect.
Having a convex curvature speeds up the airflow, concave slows it down. Floor surface is convex, sidepod-floor joint is concave. This concave line increases pressure, which also increases the pressure difference and speed at which the air is going over F1-75 floor curve. I'm not gonna have the time to do a decent floor model for CFD any time soon sadly (lots of stuff changed this week for me), so I made a rough pressure illustration of the top of the floor, to the best of my abilities.
Floor vortex might be initialized at the transition between outboard vane and floor top surface, Ferrari has a really small radius here, while RB has a big double curvature surface. All of this is setting a scene for a stable and strong vortex going all the way to the rear tyre.
Yes, all of those things happen still. In my view, sidepods are simply too far away from front tyres to have as big of an influence as bargeboards used to have. That being said, I think F1-75 sidepod design is about floor sealing as well, as described above. If we look at RB18 sidepods, their shape is the least aggressive of all, yet their aero looks slightly more efficient than Ferrari and seems like they generate almost the same amount of downforce.Andi76 wrote: ↑25 Mar 2022, 23:11Correct me if i am wrong, but doesn't the pressurisation Ferrari is doing under the sidepod inlets help in relation to the front tyre wake? I even thougt about this area to be one of the key elements. Wouldn't this pressurisation propagate forwards and give additional downwash on the floor leading edge and improve the performance of the underfloor? I could be wrong here, as i have not analysed all the cars in this particular area in such detail, but from memory i would say that all the teams that got better are doing this, while all the teams not doing this or to a much lesser extent, got worse or have problems. And i think its fair to say Ferrari is the most extreme in that area followed by Red Bull. And they seem to be the two best cars. Haas has taken a similar approach and is also doing well...thats also something that Gary probably has not recognized. But maybe i am overstimating it. Probably, as i am far from having Garys knowledge.
Aero rules were very different last year and, overall, sidepod aero philosophy was slowly evolving since 2009-2010 already. There were many other bits and bobs allowed, which have had a big influence on overall aero design and where the sidepods were in all of that. Y250 vortex is the biggest thing missing and this changed many things. All of this easily explains why this kind of design might not have been the way to go earlier.PlatinumZealot wrote: ↑26 Mar 2022, 01:08I don't think it's that simple because this would have applied to last years cars too and no one chose big side pods to get less drag last year! So I don't buy the lower drag on rear tyre theory. But I do consider that other things are being achieved in that area of course.
