2014 Rake Angles

[theWPTformula]

Apologies if this has already come up many times, I haven't been on the forum enough lately.

A lot of teams, notably Red Bull (again), have been running really high rake angles in Bahrain. I'm just wondering how they are still managing to do this despite the lack of EBD.

They have the vortex producing devices ahead of the gap between the rear tyre and the floor and they may have further developed the Y250 vortex, both partially seal off the floor to an extent. But the angle at which some cars are set at is pretty staggering...

Any ideas?

[ACJJ619]

From the images I've seen, the Mercedes appears to be running the highest rake angle. I'd assume they've just concentrated a lot of their efforts on sealing the diffuser as they've known the EBD would be banned for a decent amount of time now.

[turbof1]

Some claim brake heat to be redirected to seal off the diffuser. While that does look far fetched, it's worth looking into.

[mrluke]

I think sealing at the back of the car is the small issue, the whole floor is a diffuser and it needs to be sealed from the start of the sidepods all the way back.

[SiLo]

I'm guessing Mercedes put a lot of effort into sealing the entire floor somehow. I do wonder whether there comes a point where the amount of air sucked from underneath the car is the same if you run less rake with a good diffuser or lots of rake with a crummy one.

[PlatinumZealot]

Apologies if this has already come up many times, I haven't been on the forum enough lately.

A lot of teams, notably Red Bull (again), have been running really high rake angles in Bahrain. I'm just wondering how they are still managing to do this despite the lack of EBD.

They have the vortex producing devices ahead of the gap between the rear tyre and the floor and they may have further developed the Y250 vortex, both partially seal off the floor to an extent. But the angle at which some cars are set at is pretty staggering...

Any ideas?

I thinks it is just some corners under braking that makes it seem that way. I think the rake is less than in the EBD days where we had the floor scraping the rear tyres at some points.

[theWPTformula]

I thinks it is just some corners under braking that makes it seem that way. I think the rake is less than in the EBD days where we had the floor scraping the rear tyres at some points.

There's a screenshot from testing on my Twitter (can't get the image up on here now but I'll do it tomorrow at some stage) of the RB10 just cruising round (not under braking) and the rake is quite severe.

But, yes, not quite on the same level as 2011.

[OO7]

Some claim brake heat to be redirected to seal off the diffuser. While that does look far fetched, it's worth looking into.

I don't see how that would work as high velocity (not high temperature) fluid/gas/air is required and would need to be injected ahead of the region of interest.

[LogicPro]

I was trying to understand how rake angles improve downforce and reading something on this forum...
and I understood that downforce is enhanced by the higher expansion ratio of the diffuser that can be obtained with a positive rake.

But I remember (if I'm not mistaken) that Lotus last year was running a "negative" rake angle, especially in the second half of the season; provided that I remeber correctly, how can a negative rake angle be useful in a Formula1 car?

(with "negative" I mean the opposite of this: )

[olefud]

Some claim brake heat to be redirected to seal off the diffuser. While that does look far fetched, it's worth looking into.

I don't see how that would work as high velocity (not high temperature) fluid/gas/air is required and would need to be injected ahead of the region of interest.

Temp is important because air gets to be rather viscose at high temps.

[SectorOne]

Is it just me or did anyone else react on the rake of the STR?
It looked just as if not bigger then the RB´s rake angle.
Just happened to notice it during the German GP but they could have had it for a long time.

[Juzh]

I thinks it is just some corners under braking that makes it seem that way. I think the rake is less than in the EBD days where we had the floor scraping the rear tyres at some points.

There's a screenshot from testing on my Twitter (can't get the image up on here now but I'll do it tomorrow at some stage) of the RB10 just cruising round (not under braking) and the rake is quite severe.

But, yes, not quite on the same level as 2011.

RB9 had (visually) by far the most rake of all post 2009 RB cars imo.