2010 cars

[CMSMJ1]

Funny graph))) Reminds me of that marketing tricks to lure client into believing their product is sooooo much better. Draw full bars (from zero) and you'd see a really tiny difference.
The only thing that can be deduced from this graph is - aero (or engine maps?) rules.

I've used graphs just like this myself. Very sneaky indeed, but the data does bring up an interesting notion. If the full race fuel regulation applied to last years cars would result in something like a 6kg difference at the start between the Merc and the Brawn with full race fuel, imagine what you could do if you designed the aero with increased attention to drag reduction at the expense of downforce for 2010. If teams could reduce drag to the point where they start the race 25kg lighter than their competitors, that is a big difference, and they would be faster at the start and difficult to overtake until the fuel weights were equalized towards the end of the race.

I think the 2010 regs move the sweet spot between reducing drag and maximizing downforce more to the side of reducing downforce. At the very least, teams will have to make a choice about where the new sweet spot is.

It could also lead to some interesting races, with the teams who favored drag reduction strong at the start of races and the teams who favored downforce stronger at the end of races.

Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but tying fuel efficiency to potentially significant weight savings does move the goalposts.

Just a thought.

You would find that the teams with low d/f and drag would start at the back and so it would not matter at all whether they were hard to overtake.

Downforce is the key as they need low fuel quallifying and so whoever has the most d/f will start near the front.

[Pandamasque]

Are there any presentation dates for the 2010 cars?

[WhiteBlue]

Downforce is the key as they need low fuel quallifying and so whoever has the most d/f will start near the front.

I'm not totally convinced that downforce at any price is what you need. If you look at fuel consumption figures in 2009 the cars with the higher downforce had greater fuel consumption because they obviously also had greater drag. With the refueling ban drag is going to hurt more than it did before. There is also no option to reduce fuel consumption by KERS as McLaren did in 2009. So I reckon that designers will pay much closer attention to aerodynamic efficiency than they did in 2009. It could be second priority right behind downforce.

[xpensive]

Interesting theory that WB, I wonder which cars had the higher downforce in 2009?

[WhiteBlue]

Red Bull ran the same engine as Renault and its a fair guess they had more downforce. They also used considerably more fuel. Renault did not run a lot of KERS races that year. Also the same Mercedes engine took a lot more fuel in a Brawn compared to the Force India which was on low downforce comparably.

[Fil]

Interesting theory that WB, I wonder which cars had the higher downforce in 2009?

Red Bull ran the same engine as Renault and its a fair guess they had more downforce. They also used considerably more fuel. Renault did not run a lot of KERS races that year. Also the same Mercedes engine took a lot more fuel in a Brawn compared to the Force India which was on low downforce comparably.

Results/Performance in Spa & Monza are probably our best guesses as to which teams preferred efficiency over DF in their vehicle design.

Going by that, its interesting to note that Red Bull's chubbier nose was a move towards more DF over efficiency at the front end.

[xpensive]

Why I guess the Renault nose was not as...chubby?

[Fil]

Why I guess the Renault nose was not as...chubby?

well they painted the underside black to trick the oncoming air..

[machin]

I'm not totally convinced that downforce at any price is what you need.

I totally agree with what you say WhiteBlue; All the teams would aim for a certain level of downforce and then try and improve the efficiency to give less drag for that level of downforce... Proof of this is that none of the teams run Monaco levels of downforce (i.e. very high) at all the tracks... if they were simply trying to get as much downforce as possibly they'd run with Monaco-style aero kits all season. Even at Monaco I suspect all the teams could get more downforce if they wanted to...

Of course different teams would choose a different level of downforce to aim for based on other aspects of their design.... e.g. the Force India car was obviously optimised for a low downforce set-up.

[marcush.]

On the topic of engines/fuel economy for 2010 F1 cars, there is a great analysis over HERE by rubbergoat on the fuel usage by the various F1 engines etc showing Renault as the most fuel efficient.





This could make thinks really interesting in 2010 as some teams like Ferrari & Sauber will have to put bigger tanks in their cars than Merc/MacMerc/Renault/RedBull will.

did brawn use significantly more fuel than FI per lap ? I´m a bit confused if the graphs would allow you to make this statement...
also the delta between renault and Redbull seems barely worth to be mentioned @.02
kg perlap...
even the contrast between TR using old engines in their high downforce car compared to the KERS Ferrari is not really showing anything more than .03 kgs per lap in difference...
What is really significant is the fact that Macs had a advantage of .11 kgs per lap
compared to both of its customers ...and the works mercedes car matching the hero in consumption works renault..

[ISLAMATRON]

STR did not use old engines... please stop repeating the false claims.

The rear wing is the main drag creator on the chassis, Maybe the Mclaren got so much better fuel efficiency better their rear wing was not creating much DF for the first 8 races... their front wing wasnt doing much better either.

[Giblet]

STR did not use old engines... please stop repeating the false claims.

The rear wing is the main drag creator on the chassis, Maybe the Mclaren got so much better fuel efficiency better their rear wing was not creating much DF for the first 8 races... their front wing wasnt doing much better either.

The claim is true, but not for the race engines. The high mileage engines were used only in testing and practice, and since the charts were not made off off practice and testing data, the testing engines have no bearing.

[ISLAMATRON]

STR did not use old engines... please stop repeating the false claims.

The rear wing is the main drag creator on the chassis, Maybe the Mclaren got so much better fuel efficiency better their rear wing was not creating much DF for the first 8 races... their front wing wasnt doing much better either.

The claim is true, but not for the race engines. The high mileage engines were used only in testing and practice, and since the charts were not made off off practice and testing data, the testing engines have no bearing.

Does the 8 engine rule of last year escape everybody here? 8 engines per car, for the whole season including practice, qual & race... if they used a "high milage" engine in practice it would have had to come out of the 8.

Now if we are talking about straight line testing(which was the only kind allowed last year) then who the fruck really cares... plus that was limited to 50km.

[Giblet]

I really doesn't matter how you want to compartmentalize the information that STR was given high mileage test engines that were used for testing.

Parc Ferme is not in effect until the car has qualified. The team can use any one of their 8 engines during that time, and how do you know one of those engines was not a high mileage lump forced on a budget team?

Right.... we don't.

But we know the chance of Ferrari using one is zero.

[ISLAMATRON]

Parc Ferme is not in effect until the car has qualified. The team can use any one of their 8 engines during that time, and how do you know one of those engines was not a high mileage lump forced on a budget team?

I know because STR nveer recieved a grid penalty for running an engine other than their allocated 8 per car.... or are you claiming they were given 7 fresh engines and 1 "high milage" lump as their allocation. Or are you claiming that FErrari were up to their usual cheating ways and secretly slipped in a ninth engine (albeit high milage) withut STR being penalised.

Yes it is possible that Ferrari asked STR to run some of STR's 8 allocated engines longer than the recommended distance or duty cycles on track(practice), but it really wasnt that much different what what anyone else was doing, just earlier in the seaso then anyone else was doing it... to help Ferrari get a better grasp of how far they could push their 8 lumps as well. If you only get 8 you dont want to waste duty cycles on the dyno testing till failure.