Heat Plumes

[Radley]

Watching the races this year on tv, it looks to me like a lot heat coming from the back of the cars. I can see for fraction of a second the air looks "wavey" like looking at a distance in a desert.

Sorry, I don't know how to describe it. You could definitely see the effect at the end of the back straight in China.

It must be driving the engineers crazy. First they had to deal with turbulence coming from the car in front and now heat.

[BanMeToo]

Of course it is undesirable, and occasionally you will hear an engineer ask their driver to pull out of the leading car's slipstream to bring in some cool air, but maybe it's not as bad as you think - the diffuser and rear wing draw some of the exhaust and other hot air updward:

(Credit Matt Somers)