Sorry for a late reply, it was a hectic weekend and not in a good way to be honest. As far as CFD results go, this article is a gold mine for anyone interested in learning more about the level of CFD preparation for F1 aero development
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/simulati ... vid-penner
The best visualisation of vortices is this one (this is bottom view, so floor and lower barge board vortices are visible)
What strikes first is how clean the front wing area is, apart from Y250 vortices. With 2018 wings like bellow, front wing was equally ridden with vortices etc, so this is why FOM and FIA introduced 2019 front wing simplification, to try to reduce the losses to front wing of the following car at least
These vortices have a direct downforce benefit when they are spinning near the surface, as their core is very low pressure due to high rotation velocity, and this is visible bellow. The floor itself has a lot of leading edge vortex generators and overall at least 3 big vortices are formed along each side of the floor in this case
Also note how many small vortices there are outboard in this area, clearly visible with skin friction visualisation
Vorticity depends on pressure difference, so when there's smaller delta you have lower vorticity, which can be reduced so much the vortex breaks up before it can even "do" anything. Smaller pressure delta on the following car comes from two thing mainly and both get worse as you get closer:
- different airflow angle due to upwash caused by the car ahead
- lower total energy in this same turbulent upwash wake, further reducing both pressure and suction on every surface of the following car
This is an article on this topic from a few years ago --> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/formula- ... rn-larsson
So everything about those cars that relied heavily on strong vorticity to generate downforce was always going to be very bad for racing. I'd go as far as saying DRS flap gap should have been bigger to allow bigger top speed delta with those cars.
Ultimately, this is interesting for aerodynamicist and performance engineers, but it's a big problem for drivers when they don't have 3+s of clear air ahead. This is why keeping the idea of clean surfaces is good for 2026 cars and having already decided to abandon tunnels, I hope the FIA will at least allow a big leading edge height for the floor to allow teams to do what they want with it and make it possible to gain some performance with time.
