Obviously, the majority of aero components are designed primarily with the car they are attached to in mind. However, I was wondering whether there are other aero devices that teams use, or could use, which are specifically conceived for their effect on cars following them, making it harder to overtake. Is this taken into consideration when designing the aero package? Surely maximising the effect of your wake on other cars would be a competitive advantage.
I have thought about this too, but the quick answer from my own personal experience is...no, im certain teams dont design components with a following car in mind. as you already know, the wake as well as the upwash produced by aero devices have the effect of reducing d/f on a following car naturally and this in itself is a sort of 'defensive' mechanism, unless the following car is able to stay close until a straight where the wake reduces the drag on the following car and the 'defensive' effect instead becomes an 'offensive' one.
I could be wrong (and probably am), but I always suspected that the tuning fork-shaped device at the rear of last year's McLaren was for just that purpose.
Most of the area behind the rear wheels is designed to make use of vortices and airflows to make not the wings more efficent but also the diffuser. Also to direct turbulent air from the tires, engine compartment and suspension opening away from any of the aero parts.
As result of the design work, the rear ward air flow can cause problems for the following car. One the largest, is the second tier of the diffuser which, IMHO, is a huge vortex generator(s) designed to replace the airflow of the higher placed wing. The Brawn for instance had the largest volume vortex generation early in the year, and was "claimed" to be difficult to follow closely.
The recent designs of the Mclaren diffuser have larger volume vortices than the Brawn, and cars following it closely seem to have difficultly drafting the car without stability problems.
"Driving a car as fast as possible (in a race) is all about maintaining the highest possible acceleration level in the appropriate direction." Peter Wright,Techical Director, Team Lotus
The only time that I have heard of this being implemented in the design of an F1 car was back in 1993, when I read an interview in Motoring News that stated that Ferrari had deliberately designed their car to mess up the airflow behind the car as much as possible in order to make it harder to pass (I also have a vague recollection of a BBC commentator making similar comments about that car) but it contained no information as to how they had done this ... it's a shame that they didn't put as much thought into the rest of the car, as it wasn't a very successful season by any stretch of the imagination!
"Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine ..."
