Flexible wings 2011

[marekk]

I see your point of view, but there is a difference between rhetorical interpretations of a rule and outright breaking the rule (2 rules actually) by making a mockery regarding how the rule is enforced which is what RB is up to.

Let me put this out there: if you can't have any bodywork below the reference plane, but you run enough rake on your car that the reference plane touches the ground during decent compression in front of the front wheels... how is your wing being close (even touching) to the ground illegal? It's not breaking the reference plane.


What part is is outright breaking?
.

Actually reference plane is 10 mm above the plank, so if at the same time wing and plank touch the ground, wing has to be below reference plane. By 10 mm to be precisely.

And:

3.7.1 All bodywork situated forward of a point lying 330mm behind the front wheel centre line, and more than 250mm from the car centre line, must be no less than 75mm and no more than 275mm above the reference plane.

So it will be 75 + 10 = 85 mm.
You don't need high res photos to distinguish between 0mm and 75mm

And i don't buy this arguing about to much stiffness will break the wing. There are at this very moment some airliners up in the sky, with 500,000 kg of load on the wings, flying at serious speed in turbulent air, barely bending that much as RB7.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Lindz

Its a rule breaking development. It evidently moves more than the mandated FIA requirement.

Is anyone going to disagree? No? Well then Darren Heath and his co horts can take more pictures of it flexing, and then lets see what the FIA say.
Its kinda like a thief moving through a wall to steal somthing. You know its happening because you can see it, you just cant prove it using the tools available.

The DDD was within letter of law, dimensionaly. It didnt change its properties while the car was on the go.

I think F1 should be more than the ingenuity of one team exploring the limits of flexing technology, and gain a stupendous amount from it.

[Ferraripilot]

As clever as it is, if it goes uncharged it's like the season is over before it really started. Everyone else will catch on, but by the time that happens the damage is already more than done to the season.

[Danny_W]

How is this any different from the michelin tyres before the indy GP. They passed all the static tests but photos clearly showed the tyres flexing. So the FIA acted.

Why can't they just put a rub strip on the bottom of the wings that maintain a legal limit and if they wear too much chuck them out of the race?

What is the legal requirement for them to maintain from the floor?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Why can't they just put a rub strip on the bottom of the wings that maintain a legal limit and if they wear too much chuck them out of the race?

I agree. Simple cheap and solves the problem.

[Lindz]

I know that the reference plane is 10mm above the plank. But you can set up the car at whatever ride height and whatever positive or negative rake you want. If the inclination of the reference plane is such that it DOES touch the ground in front of the front wheels (at any point during normal operation, since the wing obviously doesn't touch the ground or come close while static) then there is no way the wing can be BELOW the reference plane even if it too is touching the ground. Thus, the car CAN be set up so that this rule is not breached.

I was hoping for someone to show me a good picture of this. And I would overlay some reference lines on it to prove it, or perhaps catch the car breaking the regulations.

The supposed 'clear' photo evidence being presented is some pretty low res screen grabs, one of which is the RB7 following a an F150th down the front straight with both cars heaving and bouncing all over the place. Hardly a direct comparison.

It appears very clear in pics that the wing IS flexing. No one ever doubted that. In fact, I buy into the theories of HOW it's flexing via construction and layup. Hell, I even think the nosecone 'shell' flexing could be viable as well.

But I still maintain that they are doing it within the letter of the law. They are designing a better car, simple as that.

[Lindz]

Why can't they just put a rub strip on the bottom of the wings that maintain a legal limit and if they wear too much chuck them out of the race?

I agree. Simple cheap and solves the problem.

It's not like they are running flexible sprung skirts that are creating ground effect. If you want 'rub strips' then they will run the wing such that it is a few mm higher. It won't stop it from flexing or being more efficient than the McLaren wing (assuming it is, which is the main argument).

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Not if the Rules are correctly worded. Meaning if the strips have to be within a specified range from the bottom of the wing, preventing further flexing attempts.

Or a mandatory height for the wing with the skid blocks attached. Stick that in your pipe and Shmoke it Mr Newey

[H.Lyoud]

RBR are passing every test with that wing so they are ok. Instead of crying all the time Ferrari and co should keep pushing in figuring how they can achive that.

[Lindz]

Here's a good comparison to the McLaren:


http://mclarenf-1.com/index.php?page=srs&s=6

It's clear how much more rake the RB7 has. It's tea tray is the same height, but as you scroll left, you can see how much lower the floor is of the MP4-26.


Here's a shot from the front. From the increased rake of the RB7 (and I'll even give you some nosecone flex), the leading edge of the wing is always a bit lower than the McL. The wings, however, appear to be flexing a very similar amount:




(credit to Horse)

[juicesharp]

They are passing every test with that wing so they are ok. Instead of crying all the time they should keep pushing in figuring how they can achive that.

From this point of view I partially agree with you. But in formal the rules clearly say about flexible parts. They are not allowed. So FIA must provides a new one test which will able to detect that. This is their stuff. This is my point.

[marekk]

It's up to the FIA anyway.

They can just wait till this car (or even worse - one of late concept followers):



goes a little wide into this:



and bet who wins: concrete kerbs at Monza or fibre channel. At +250 kmh.

[Italiano]

So the FIA must provide a new test which will able to detect that.

Eyes.

[forty-two]

The way I see it is like others have said before.

The speed limit is defined as a fixed speed, measured in miles travelled per hour.

If the police "test" for determining that a driver is exceeding this limit was to tail a vehicle for one hour maintaining a fixed distance behind target vehicle, anyone whose MEAN speed over the course of that hour was below the speed limit would escape penalty, even if at times they were travelling at double the speed limit!

Just because the TEST being employed by the FIA is inadequate, doesn't mean that the rules are not being broken, just that the car doesn't fail the test. For me that means that the test procedure needs to be rewritten.

If you cast your mind back to 2010, after a number of comments about the RB6's visibly flexible wing, the FIA changed the test in an "attempt" to prevent this sort of thing happening. Trouble is, the change to the test involved DOUBLING the load used, but halving the distance from the centreline of the car. Even with my shaky memory, I know that when discussing leverage, if you halve the distance from the centreline, you must double the load to maintain equilibrium, and the same would obviously be true in reverse.

As for using wear detection skid blocks, this could also be counter productive. I understand that if a vertical "plank" were to be fitted to the extremes of the wing, this would in fact act a little like the "sliding skirts" of old (albeit only on the FW), so some other mechanism would be needed to prevent this.

Equally, if a skidblock were fitted only at the leading edge of each end of the wing, the teams could in theory then contrive a means of keeping the skidblock high, but allowing the wing to droop elsewhere.

I actually think that a mandated bottom plane, which teams could then add second, third elements on to, and their own endplate design would not be such a bad idea, but I wouldn't like direction that this would be taking the sport (i.e. toward a mandated chassis design).

[aral]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmImSNBA ... r_embedded[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0NMi51B ... r_embedded[/youtube]

Only FIA which is complitelly blind does not see the difference between flexibility of front wings of those cars. For me personaly that is not the question anymore.

Why not include the McLaren as well, as posted on the McLaren thread. That also flexes! Charlie has officially stated that the Red Bull wing is fully legal.