Red Bull RB19

[AR3-GP]

Pierre Wache has spilled the beans:

This has been translated from a member of another forum:

From L'Equipe:

FRONT WING
Already last year, when technical director Pierre Waché presented his RB18, he did not dwell on this part of the car, merely pointing out Red Bull's specific design: "The nose is attached to the second flap," he slipped. "We are the only ones to do so." This year, the French engineer is no more talkative. "The front wing is not a place where you gain a lot directly, but above all it allows you to control the flow of air to the floor. In addition, the regulations limit us enormously. There is not much to do. Teams like Aston Martin or Mercedes play on deflection but the gain is marginal: we are talking about a tenth, no more!"

FLOOR
Since 2022, regulations require teams to build a ground effect car with a floor in which a tunnel is dug to create this effect. "It's a philosophy that will condition the design of the car," explains Waché. "Everything that will be done on the single-seater will be for this floor. To help it run smoothly. Unfortunately, yes, everyone saw it [in Monaco], and even if our opponents already had an idea of what we were doing, seeing all the channels that are next to the tunnel allows them to better understand our philosophy now, which is to increase the Venturi effect. The flow that arrives from the front of the car goes into the tunnel but it tends to want to escape, to go up alongside the car. Our desire is to define a concept of flow over the whole car which reduces the losses on the side of the floor. The concept of the sidepods and all these rough edges that you see on the sides of the floor are used for this: to symbolically recreate the skirts."



SUSPENSION
Last year, Red Bull changed its suspension system from push to pull. This year, the RB19 retains this principle for cleaner airflow, although the suspension has evolved. "Our aim this year was to increase the car's braking efficiency. We also reinforced the rigidity of our suspensions. It's a key factor in ground effect. So we worked on the anchoring points of the arms and also on the stiffness of the springs, which must respond when the car brakes. And all this must be done in connection with the aerodynamic concept: this suspension must not disturb the flow, but on the contrary help it to work better. A suspension is only effective because it's part of a concept."



DRS
After experiencing a lot of problems at the start of 2022, Red Bull has found the solution for its DRS, which is said to be much more efficient than the competition. Is it because it is more flexible when opening? "Our DRS is not magic. It doesn't even open any more than the other teams. If it is more efficient, it is because it was worked with the concept of the car. When the flap is closed, we don't have too much drag, and when the driver opens it, he ends up with a big boost of speed. Although our problems last year were mechanical (a problem with the arm that controls opening), our strength is purely aerodynamic. DRS helps make our floor work better. The idea is not to put a big wing to have a greater DRS effect, the optimization is done with the floor operation to generate downforce in corners but very little when the DRS opens to the full scale of the car. In any case, for our car, having a DRS that opens more is useless, as it reduces its effect and increases drag."



SIDEPODS
"For us, this concept allows us to glue the car better to the ground by pressing with the air that passes along the single-seater. We have reduced the air intake in order to reduce drag. The air that now flows under the sidepods will make our floor more efficient."

Extremely interesting comments.

1) The car philosophy seems to be about replicating sideskirts.
2) Smaller sidepod inlet is for drag reduction
3) DRS works with the floor (he's quite cagey here, but to me it reads like he's implying the floor stalls when the DRS is open). I guess this effect is just not as effective with the high downforce rear.

[Zynerji]

Pierre Wache has spilled the beans:

This has been translated from a member of another forum:

From L'Equipe:

FRONT WING
Already last year, when technical director Pierre Waché presented his RB18, he did not dwell on this part of the car, merely pointing out Red Bull's specific design: "The nose is attached to the second flap," he slipped. "We are the only ones to do so." This year, the French engineer is no more talkative. "The front wing is not a place where you gain a lot directly, but above all it allows you to control the flow of air to the floor. In addition, the regulations limit us enormously. There is not much to do. Teams like Aston Martin or Mercedes play on deflection but the gain is marginal: we are talking about a tenth, no more!"

FLOOR
Since 2022, regulations require teams to build a ground effect car with a floor in which a tunnel is dug to create this effect. "It's a philosophy that will condition the design of the car," explains Waché. "Everything that will be done on the single-seater will be for this floor. To help it run smoothly. Unfortunately, yes, everyone saw it [in Monaco], and even if our opponents already had an idea of what we were doing, seeing all the channels that are next to the tunnel allows them to better understand our philosophy now, which is to increase the Venturi effect. The flow that arrives from the front of the car goes into the tunnel but it tends to want to escape, to go up alongside the car. Our desire is to define a concept of flow over the whole car which reduces the losses on the side of the floor. The concept of the sidepods and all these rough edges that you see on the sides of the floor are used for this: to symbolically recreate the skirts."



SUSPENSION
Last year, Red Bull changed its suspension system from push to pull. This year, the RB19 retains this principle for cleaner airflow, although the suspension has evolved. "Our aim this year was to increase the car's braking efficiency. We also reinforced the rigidity of our suspensions. It's a key factor in ground effect. So we worked on the anchoring points of the arms and also on the stiffness of the springs, which must respond when the car brakes. And all this must be done in connection with the aerodynamic concept: this suspension must not disturb the flow, but on the contrary help it to work better. A suspension is only effective because it's part of a concept."



DRS
After experiencing a lot of problems at the start of 2022, Red Bull has found the solution for its DRS, which is said to be much more efficient than the competition. Is it because it is more flexible when opening? "Our DRS is not magic. It doesn't even open any more than the other teams. If it is more efficient, it is because it was worked with the concept of the car. When the flap is closed, we don't have too much drag, and when the driver opens it, he ends up with a big boost of speed. Although our problems last year were mechanical (a problem with the arm that controls opening), our strength is purely aerodynamic. DRS helps make our floor work better. The idea is not to put a big wing to have a greater DRS effect, the optimization is done with the floor operation to generate downforce in corners but very little when the DRS opens to the full scale of the car. In any case, for our car, having a DRS that opens more is useless, as it reduces its effect and increases drag."



SIDEPODS
"For us, this concept allows us to glue the car better to the ground by pressing with the air that passes along the single-seater. We have reduced the air intake in order to reduce drag. The air that now flows under the sidepods will make our floor more efficient."

Extremely interesting comments.

1) The car philosophy seems to be about replicating sideskirts.
2) Smaller sidepod inlet is for drag reduction
3) DRS works with the floor (he's quite cagey here, but to me it reads like he's implying the floor stalls when the DRS is open). I guess this effect is just not as effective with the high downforce rear.

It's like an f-duct for the floor!

[AR3-GP]

It's like an f-duct for the floor!

Wait until this headline hits youtube

[AR3-GP]

The idea is not to put a big wing to have a greater DRS effect, the optimization is done with the floor operation to generate downforce in corners but very little when the DRS opens to the full scale of the car.

There's nothing cagey about this when I read it a second time. Is this confirmation of floor stalling?

[Hoffman900]

The idea is not to put a big wing to have a greater DRS effect, the optimization is done with the floor operation to generate downforce in corners but very little when the DRS opens to the full scale of the car.

There's nothing cagey about this when I read it a second time. Is this confirmation of floor stalling?

If you have read Dr. Joseph Katz’s work who was involved with Indy Car ground effects cars, the concept of the floor really only works because of the low pressure the wing creates at the rear of the diffuser. The DRS open will increase the pressure behind the rear wing which will reduce the delta p from the floor intake / choke point to the exit at the diffuser. This was all published in several SAE papers 20 years ago by him. Same with the strakes we see on the cars now, they’re vortex generators and look nearly the same as they did 25 years ago on Reynard Champ Car chassis’s.

Honda published in 2009 how the under cut sidepod provides a sealing effect on the floor edge from the mid span to the rear.

A lot of this is confirming good race car aerodynamic design that’s been published and easily available for 20 years now. I don’t see any smoking guns in any of those statements and its stuff all the teams know. So either design leads just forgot a lot of this stuff or RB just has the overall better refined package.

[AR3-GP]

The idea is not to put a big wing to have a greater DRS effect, the optimization is done with the floor operation to generate downforce in corners but very little when the DRS opens to the full scale of the car.

There's nothing cagey about this when I read it a second time. Is this confirmation of floor stalling?

If you have read Dr. Joseph Katz’s work who was involved with Indy Car ground effects cars, the concept of the floor really only works because of the low pressure the wing creates at the rear of the diffuser. The DRS open will increase the pressure behind the rear wing which will reduce the delta p from the floor intake / choke point to the exit at the diffuser. This was all published in several SAE papers 20 years ago by him. Same with the strakes we see on the cars now, they’re vortex generators and look nearly the same as they did 25 years ago on Reynard Champ Car chassis’s.

I know this but what's the connection to the super effectiveness of RB's DRS, compared to other ground effect cars that also have rear wings? The RB is low drag, but they are regularly extracting +20-25km/h from opening their wing. Last year, other manufacturers much less. It's a bit closer this year.

[Hoffman900]

There's nothing cagey about this when I read it a second time. Is this confirmation of floor stalling?

If you have read Dr. Joseph Katz’s work who was involved with Indy Car ground effects cars, the concept of the floor really only works because of the low pressure the wing creates at the rear of the diffuser. The DRS open will increase the pressure behind the rear wing which will reduce the delta p from the floor intake / choke point to the exit at the diffuser. This was all published in several SAE papers 20 years ago by him. Same with the strakes we see on the cars now, they’re vortex generators and look nearly the same as they did 25 years ago on Reynard Champ Car chassis’s.

I know this but what's the connection to the super effectiveness of RB's DRS, compared to other ground effect cars that also have rear wings? The RB is low drag, but they are regularly extracting +20-25km/h from opening their wing. Last year, other manufacturers much less. It's a bit closer this year.

It’s simply they’re just reducing drag, both on top of the car and underneath. It’s not any one thing, they're just able to reduce drag everywhere, and when it opens they are reducing flow under the car as well as detaching it from drag inducing features over the top. The only way we could see it would be if they raced in foggy air and you got a snapshot of the wake of the car with the DRS open and the DRS closed.


Choke flow is a misnomer.

[Hoffman900]

For reference:

From Dr Katz’s book:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jo ... ion_detail

Honda’s 2009 Technical Review on their Third Generation Activities:

https://www.f1-forecast.com/pdf/F1-File ... 2e_all.pdf

Starting on Page 157 they discuss the effects of the sidepod undercut on floor sealing.

Also great discussion on yaw and tire squirt (and difference between brands) earlier, and their attempts to measure it.

Screenshots in this thread:
viewtopic.php?t=31078

You can see how much downforce the VG’s (strakes) add but also how much drag they add. If you can open the DRS in such a way to detach flow so it doesn’t enter and / or due to higher pressure at the diffuser exit, you’ve reduced drag (and subsequently downforce). All teams know this, but RB is just doing it better, and a lot of that comes down to overall concept, a PU that mat be able to run hotter, and good correlation between the real world - wind tunnel - simulation.


Chew on this some:

Figure 6 (from Katz & Dykstra 1992) demonstrates the rear-wing interaction for two different race cars. The data in the upper diagram is for a sedan-based race car whereas the data at the bottom is for a prototype race car with large underbody diffusers (a “rear diffuser” is the upward slant of the vehicle’s aft-lower surface; see Figures 11–13). In both cases the wing height is varied up to a condition where the interaction is minimum. The combined downforce increases as the wing approaches the vehicle’s rear deck. At a very close proximity the flow separates between the rear deck and the wing and the downforce is reduced. The horizontal positioning (e.g., fore/aft) of the wing also has a strong effect on the vehicle aerodynamics (usually downforce increases as the wing is shifted backward), but racing regulation stated that the wing trailing edge cannot extend behind the vehicle body (in top view). The very large change in the downforce of the prototype car (at the bottom of Figure 6) is due to the increased underbody diffuser flow, but the effect remains clear with the sedan-based vehicle (with the much smaller wing) as well. Note that these results are based on fixed-floor wind tunnel testing. Later tests with rolling ground apparatus showed that the effect remains, although its magnitude will increase.

The Youtube and reddit threads based on this are going to be nauseating though as if what he said is ground breaking stuff, when these designs largely are just a refinement of 25 year old ideas that any FSAE student can find with some good search discipline.

[AR3-GP]

The Youtube and reddit threads based on this are going to be nauseating though as if what he said is ground breaking stuff, when these designs largely are just a refinement of 25 year old ideas that any FSAE student can find with some good search discipline.

Why are engineering teams of 800-900 baffled by something an FSAE student can find?

Mike Elliot

As summarised by Mercedes’ chief technical officer Mike Elliott: “It’s incredible how much lap time Red Bull gains as soon as the rear wing is open. When we put the speed curves on top of each other, we can hardly believe it ourselves.”

Fred Vasseur

Although the Frenchman reckons Red Bull’s DRS effect was even more potent last season, this year its impact continues to be greater than anyone else’s.

“A mega big DRS effect,” he said of Red Bull’s straight-line speed with the DRS open.

“Bigger than everyone else and we have to understand how they are able to do something like this.

“I think it was probably even more huge last year, but we have room for improvement in this area.

All cars are having an interaction with the rear wing and the floor, but only some of them are shedding drag so effectively with the wing open.

[Hoffman900]

The Youtube and reddit threads based on this are going to be nauseating though as if what he said is ground breaking stuff, when these designs largely are just a refinement of 25 year old ideas that any FSAE student can find with some good search discipline.

Why are engineering teams of 800-900 baffled by something an FSAE student can find? Maybe it's not actually trivial?

Mike Elliot

As summarised by Mercedes’ chief technical officer Mike Elliott: “It’s incredible how much lap time Red Bull gains as soon as the rear wing is open. When we put the speed curves on top of each other, we can hardly believe it ourselves.”

Fred Vasseur

Although the Frenchman reckons Red Bull’s DRS effect was even more potent last season, this year its impact continues to be greater than anyone else’s.

“A mega big DRS effect,” he said of Red Bull’s straight-line speed with the DRS open.

“Bigger than everyone else and we have to understand how they are able to do something like this.

“I think it was probably even more huge last year, but we have room for improvement in this area.

They’re all governed by the same physics and very tightly controlled surface boxes. There is nothing magic. There is only one way to make the DRS work that well and it’s to reduce drag, it’s just that simple. If the other teams can’t do it, it’s because their concept won’t let them or they don’t have the tools / correlation to properly model it. The only thing they’re missing is their car just isn’t shaped like RedBulls.

That’s really it. When their DRS opens it causes less air to flow under the floor, thus reducing drag, and causes air flow to change in such a way over the surface / near surface of the car to also reduce drag.

All the teams know this and know everything I linked the hard part is taking a blank piece of paper (with rules dictated surface boxes) and coming up with something better than your competition. If the other cars didn’t exist, every team’s example would be a bad fast race car, it just so happens in a competition, some teams are just a better sum of the parts and do a better job.

There is some politicking in their statements as well. All these guys rope a dope the media and fans, constantly.

Race cars are the sum of their parts, not any unique single element. The teams all know what they need to do, but their tools and imagination dictate what they do, and some teams are just better at this, from their PhD’s doing the backend on correlation work, making sure the designers can see what is actually happening, to the designers sketching this stuff out. Newey and all these designers are useless if their correlation and what their numbers are telling them are wrong. The correlation engineers and scientists are the real geniuses and most valuable,
Imo.

[AR3-GP]

They’re all governed by the same physics and very tightly controlled surface boxes. There is nothing magic. There is only one way to make the DRS work that well and it’s to reduce drag, it’s just that simple.

Buxton...

I'm not surprised that opening a rear wing would have an interaction with the floor. This should happen with all cars. What's surprising to me is that the RB can be low drag with the wing closed, then shed even more drag when they already had the least to begin with. Meanwhile, other teams seem to carry more drag, and not be able to shed as much of it.

They are all governed by the same physics and tightly controlled surface boxes yet 1 car is 1 second a lap faster in the race...and achieves 340km/h while having more downforce than anyone. That just shows that even within the same physics and tightly controlled boxes, you can observe a difference worth over a second a lap.

I'm not saying there's magic because magic is not physical. I think there's a physical, tangible effect that is more powerful on the RB than other cars. A more comprehensive stalling of the floor than others when wing opens. We've gone back and forth on this months ago and the original believe was that the DRS power was related to the size of the DRS flap itself. This was a natural and intuitive solution but then Wache seems to imply the interaction with the floor is more important and that there's nothing special about the rear wing itself (which weakens the flap theory...)

[Hoffman900]

They’re all governed by the same physics and very tightly controlled surface boxes. There is nothing magic. There is only one way to make the DRS work that well and it’s to reduce drag, it’s just that simple.

Buxton...

I'm not surprised that opening a rear wing would have an interaction with the floor. This should happen with all cars. What's surprising to me is that the RB can be low drag with the wing closed, then shed even more drag when they already had the least to begin with. Meanwhile, other teams seem to carry more drag, and not be able to shed as much of it.

They are all governed by the same physics and tightly controlled surface boxes yet 1 car is 1 second a lap faster in the race...and achieves 340km/h while having more downforce than anyone. That just shows that even within the same physics and tightly controlled boxes, you can observe a difference worth over a second a lap.

I'm not saying there's magic because magic is not physical. I think there's a physical, tangible effect that is more powerful on the RB than other cars. A more comprehensive stalling of the floor than others when wing opens. We've gone back and forth on this months ago and the original believe was that the DRS power was related to the size of the DRS flap itself. A natural and intuitive solution but then Wache seems to imply the interaction with the floor is more important.

Look at Dr Katz’s chart. With the way these floors work and the vortices generated, there is a big drag penalty. I have no doubt the modern F1 floors are producing more downforce but also more drag than a Reynard Champ Car floor from 1998, so subsequently, reducing flow to it will have an outsized effect. Somehow, the RB rear wing is allowing the floor to ingest less air, either by detaching it over the top of the body before it can be downwash into the floor or by raising the pressure at the rear of the car. From a 20,000’ viewpoint, that is the only way they can do it.

[AR3-GP]

They’re all governed by the same physics and very tightly controlled surface boxes. There is nothing magic. There is only one way to make the DRS work that well and it’s to reduce drag, it’s just that simple.

Buxton...

I'm not surprised that opening a rear wing would have an interaction with the floor. This should happen with all cars. What's surprising to me is that the RB can be low drag with the wing closed, then shed even more drag when they already had the least to begin with. Meanwhile, other teams seem to carry more drag, and not be able to shed as much of it.

They are all governed by the same physics and tightly controlled surface boxes yet 1 car is 1 second a lap faster in the race...and achieves 340km/h while having more downforce than anyone. That just shows that even within the same physics and tightly controlled boxes, you can observe a difference worth over a second a lap.

I'm not saying there's magic because magic is not physical. I think there's a physical, tangible effect that is more powerful on the RB than other cars. A more comprehensive stalling of the floor than others when wing opens. We've gone back and forth on this months ago and the original believe was that the DRS power was related to the size of the DRS flap itself. A natural and intuitive solution but then Wache seems to imply the interaction with the floor is more important.

Look at Dr Katz’s chart. With the way these floors work and the vortices generated, there is a big drag penalty. I have no doubt the modern F1 floors are producing more downforce but also more drag than a Reynard Champ Car floor from 1998, so subsequently, reducing flow to it will have an outsized effect. Somehow, the RB rear wing is allowing the floor to ingest less air, either by detaching it over the top of the body before it can be downwash into the floor or by raising the pressure at the rear of the car. From a 20,000’ viewpoint, that is the only way they can do it

That's what I find to be interesting. The "somehow".

[Hoffman900]

Buxton...

I'm not surprised that opening a rear wing would have an interaction with the floor. This should happen with all cars. What's surprising to me is that the RB can be low drag with the wing closed, then shed even more drag when they already had the least to begin with. Meanwhile, other teams seem to carry more drag, and not be able to shed as much of it.

They are all governed by the same physics and tightly controlled surface boxes yet 1 car is 1 second a lap faster in the race...and achieves 340km/h while having more downforce than anyone. That just shows that even within the same physics and tightly controlled boxes, you can observe a difference worth over a second a lap.

I'm not saying there's magic because magic is not physical. I think there's a physical, tangible effect that is more powerful on the RB than other cars. A more comprehensive stalling of the floor than others when wing opens. We've gone back and forth on this months ago and the original believe was that the DRS power was related to the size of the DRS flap itself. A natural and intuitive solution but then Wache seems to imply the interaction with the floor is more important.

Look at Dr Katz’s chart. With the way these floors work and the vortices generated, there is a big drag penalty. I have no doubt the modern F1 floors are producing more downforce but also more drag than a Reynard Champ Car floor from 1998, so subsequently, reducing flow to it will have an outsized effect. Somehow, the RB rear wing is allowing the floor to ingest less air, either by detaching it over the top of the body before it can be downwash into the floor or by raising the pressure at the rear of the car. From a 20,000’ viewpoint, that is the only way they can do it

That's what I find to be interesting. The "somehow".

Well, if Mercedes’ public statements are to be believed, they are having correlation issues. The fact that they thought that had a killer of a car on their computer screens and a dud on a track says as much.

You can’t know what you can’t measure or “see”, and it comes back to correlation.

[Stu]

Buxton...

I'm not surprised that opening a rear wing would have an interaction with the floor. This should happen with all cars. What's surprising to me is that the RB can be low drag with the wing closed, then shed even more drag when they already had the least to begin with. Meanwhile, other teams seem to carry more drag, and not be able to shed as much of it.

They are all governed by the same physics and tightly controlled surface boxes yet 1 car is 1 second a lap faster in the race...and achieves 340km/h while having more downforce than anyone. That just shows that even within the same physics and tightly controlled boxes, you can observe a difference worth over a second a lap.

I'm not saying there's magic because magic is not physical. I think there's a physical, tangible effect that is more powerful on the RB than other cars. A more comprehensive stalling of the floor than others when wing opens. We've gone back and forth on this months ago and the original believe was that the DRS power was related to the size of the DRS flap itself. A natural and intuitive solution but then Wache seems to imply the interaction with the floor is more important.

Look at Dr Katz’s chart. With the way these floors work and the vortices generated, there is a big drag penalty. I have no doubt the modern F1 floors are producing more downforce but also more drag than a Reynard Champ Car floor from 1998, so subsequently, reducing flow to it will have an outsized effect. Somehow, the RB rear wing is allowing the floor to ingest less air, either by detaching it over the top of the body before it can be downwash into the floor or by raising the pressure at the rear of the car. From a 20,000’ viewpoint, that is the only way they can do it

That's what I find to be interesting. The "somehow".

This “somehow” seems to be much like the Brawn car from ‘09, where Ross Brawn said during an interview “I’m really pleased that the other teams are focusing on the double diffuser, because it means that they are ignoring everything else (specifically the front wing and side-pods)”.

This car is no different, they run a significantly different rear wing concept to the other teams (the rear flap must be on the edge of separation at higher speeds - but works exceptionally well at lower speeds), the floor entrance seems to be shaped to allow air to ‘choose’ whether to flow under or over - we have seen flow-vis patterns that indicate air moving from under to over earlier this season; the lack of any knife-edge to this part will enable that - it also promotes stability at different yaw/attitude angles.
The latest incarnation of the radiator duct inlet exploits the Coanda effect along the top surface (into the duct) and on the lower surface - creating a small expansion zone at the beginning of the undercut.
The front wing looks incredibly benign, but this ‘just enough’ approach most likely ‘helps everything else’ downstream be more effective & efficient.

Everything on the car (mechanical & aero) seems to be ‘shaking hands’ with everything else, to the point where it becomes difficult to see where on the car the origin of the philosophy comes from.

And then they have a driver that is able to exploit it.

Sounds a lot like another team from the previous regulation set…