scarlet wrote:It's a question of balancing gains at the front with the rear. Ramping up the rake will almost always give gains in downforce at the front (lower front wing and splitter = better ground effects for these components). But this will only be beneficial if the downforce gained at the front can be balanced with gains at the rear. Raising the rear does increase diffuser volume, good in theory, but as explained beforehand the higher sides of the diffuser become much harder to seal, and if a team cannot do this the loss of diffuser performance, and rear downforce, will be massive.
If it was as simple as more rake = more downforce, with sealing an added extra, all teams would run the max allowed, and they don't.
Your point makes sense, it's that I once read from a sportscar aero guy that rake would increase downforce of the car he was talking about and it had not sealing at all on it.
Obviously, when there is rake, the whole floor starts to work as a diffuser, and the diffuser, itself, also gets bigger(more volume as you perfectly said). Equally obvious is that the vertical gap(or ground clearance) between the ground and the rear bodywork will increase which, in turns, take away some downforce and it makes easier to the high pressure air surrounding to get in to the underbody and increase the pressure there.
Based on what that engineer said(don't remember where I read that, unfortunately), I have been thinking ever since that the benefit of rake outweights it's negative side
Obviously, with a good seal, the rake will work even better, regardless of anything else.
Unfortunately we don't have measuring devices(wind tunnels and etc) and a F1 car to investigate this
I just wonder, if for the rake to work properly, a good seal is absolutely necessary, then why Mclaren and Sauber(who probably had better seal than Red Bull, at least at the begining of last year) never ran as much rake as RBR have been doing for such a long time?
Maybe I missed ocasions in which these 2 team's cars ran big rake but right now I can't remember
Nando wrote:
Almost. Let´s say you have no exhaust blowing anywhere near the diffuser, then you have a window where you have the optimal rake.
Below it and you are not utilizing all the potential, above it and you lose downforce.
Yeah, probably there is an ideal rake setup for a car's characteristics(seal capacity)
