Removing drag from F1

[trinidefender]

Ok so the FIA is presented with multiple challenges for the future when it comes to F1 cars.
1. Reduce fuel consumption to make the sport more environmentally friendly in the eyes of the public.
2. Keep downforce levels at an appropriate level to stop cars becoming to fast.
3. Increase the abysmal rate of overtaking in current F1.

I have an idea that can help all three with one simple rule change. The FIA should increase the span of the rear wing to say the width of the widest part of the rear of the car (or a little less to stop the rear wings hitting each other like the front wings did before). Then to keep downforce levels to current levels reduce the chord of the rear wing to match the required downforce levels. This will reduce the induced drag massively because of the huge increase in aspect ratio. Current F1 rear wings have horrible aspect ratio's. This results in massive wingtip vortices and induced drag. By increasing the span and reducing the chord you reduce the size of the wingtip vortices reducing drag and reducing the disturbance of the air for cars behind. With a reduction in chord, the camber will also have to be reduced to stop the wings from stalling. That means for a given surface area of the wing the airflow will have less "work" done to it further reducing the turbulent air for following cars.

Therefore with this simple change downforce levels can be kept to required levels, drag is reduced and the air behind is less turbulent for following cars making overtaking easier.

[Lycoming]

3. Increase the abysmal rate of overtaking in current F1.

If youthink the current rate of overtaking is abysmal, I suspect you will only be satisfied with multi-class racing or some form of oval racing.

The FIA should increase the span of the rear wing to say the width of the widest part of the rear of the car (or a little less to stop the rear wings hitting each other like the front wings did before). Then to keep downforce levels to current levels reduce the chord of the rear wing to match the required downforce levels.

So... like an le mans prototype? Ooh, I have another idea, why don't we get rid of the front wing as well since it's so sensitive to wake turbulence. Let's replace it with a splitter and a diffuser that exits just behind the front wheels.

With a reduction in chord, the camber will also have to be reduced to stop the wings from stalling.

Why would that be? When you reduce the chord, you scale down the airfoil profile along with it. Camber does not change unless they choose to use different profiles. It's just that now, your reynolds number is lower... so I would think that you could actually get away with more camber.

[Paul]

Wasn't one of the reasons for introduction of narrow rear wings that their wake affected outer parts of following car's front wing less, thus making close racing more likely? Same reason we have neutral middle part of front wing now.

[trinidefender]

3. Increase the abysmal rate of overtaking in current F1.

If youthink the current rate of overtaking is abysmal, I suspect you will only be satisfied with multi-class racing or some form of oval racing.

The FIA should increase the span of the rear wing to say the width of the widest part of the rear of the car (or a little less to stop the rear wings hitting each other like the front wings did before). Then to keep downforce levels to current levels reduce the chord of the rear wing to match the required downforce levels.

So... like an le mans prototype? Ooh, I have another idea, why don't we get rid of the front wing as well since it's so sensitive to wake turbulence. Let's replace it with a splitter and a diffuser that exits just behind the front wheels.

With a reduction in chord, the camber will also have to be reduced to stop the wings from stalling.

Why would that be? When you reduce the chord, you scale down the airfoil profile along with it. Camber does not change unless they choose to use different profiles. It's just that now, your reynolds number is lower... so I would think that you could actually get away with more camber.

Proportionately to the chord of the wing the camber does not change however the actual camber value does thus meaning that less downforce is created by any one section of the span of the wing.

I don't know if you were trying to be sarcastic but personally the idea you have about removing the front wing and replacing it with a splitter/diffuser concept that exits just behind the front wheels seems to be a perfectly valid idea. It removes the old problem that flat bottom cars had of flipping at unusual attitudes as a result of the flat floor by splitting the floor into different sections.

Paul you may have a point with the wing span being reduced so it doesn't interfere with the following cars front wing as much. However the difference is that at no point within the last few large evolutions of F1 cars did we have rear wings as wide as the rear tyres. Maybe by increasing the increase in span and reduction in chord the wake vortex can be reduced so that it has much less effect on a following car.

My personal idea would be to incorporate the idea about the increase in span. Then make the rear wing single element to limit downforce production and hence the effect that the car will have on following cars. To keep downforce levels up to spec, allow more freedom with ground effect.

[___]

Exactly how best to reduce rear wing drag is an interesting question but the main challenge this would have to overcome is that crudely speaking, for a given circuit, chassis, engine and tyre package, there is an optimum L/D that achieves the best laptime through a combination of corner speed and straightline speed. The teams design a package of aero setups (mostly rear wing angles) that give them the most downforce they can get without the extra drag making L/D too small for each circuit.

If you redesign the rear wing so that it generates the same level of downforce for less drag, there will be laptime to be saved by increasing the downforce level of the wing. If you regulate so that the rear wing can't possibly generate any more downforce, but still generates less drag, any other device that generates downforce, no matter how inefficiently, will be a bonus performance gain, at the very least until the drag is back to old levels and then a little bit beyond.

I think the only ways to reduce the drag the teams put on the car are to also reduce the downforce, use higher-speed circuit layouts, increase mechanical grip or reduce engine power - and only the latter is likely to reduce fuel consumption.

[thepowerofnone]

I feel like you have just approached a really significant, important issue in F1 that would genuinely benefit from a solution, then shied away from a really significant change by proposing something which really could be implemented as soon as next year with few design changes. If we are going to have this debate, let's do it right and look at the paradigm shifting options - treat all of these as independent changes implemented individually. I am also aware that not all of these are as effective as one another, and I will also come out saying I like the aero details of F1, a lot, but also accept that some of the best racing in the world is in cars with zero aero:

1) extremely unconventional, likely to be horrendously opposed by everyone on this forum, but end F1's obsession with open wheel racing, and allow shrouding around the front and rear wheels. This change would bring significant drag reductions and would also bring F1 aero research closer to road cars, where modelling a rotating, exposed bluff body like a tyre is completely unnecessary. Yeah, sure, F1 has had open wheel for forever, but times change and open wheel is no longer the fastest solution.

2) equally unconventional, go closed cockpit. From a safety aspect modern F1 cars are exceptional, except in the cockpit where people can still get hurt i.e. Rubens. Closed cockpit would reduce the complex interaction in that area. Granted this one is more about safety than drag but its would allow for a much neater package in that area which could reap drag benefits.

3) also unconventional but perhaps to a lesser degree, take a leaf out of the extremely successful Nissan DeltaWing's book and do away with front and rear wings altogether. Ok so with F1 not having front diffusers/splitters maybe the front wing would have to stay for handling, but remove the rear wing and force F1 teams to setup using the front wing. The cars become harder to tune because the diffuser is pretty much fixed but this imposes a real limit on your rear downforce and so by extension it also poses a limit on you front downforce if you want your car to be remotely drivable. Additionally with more downforce from a more drag-efficient floor (which could be developed further to account for the lost rear wing loads) we could get better racing as the floor generates downforce without as great an impact on the trailing flow.

4) more believable, do away with all the fiddly little bits of aero development that aren't the front/rear wings or the floor - none of these turning vanes on the top of side pods, none of these complex suspension profiles or wheel rims. Ought to drive cost down whilst allowing for significant aero development all the same.

Discuss.

EDIT: I am absurdly tired right now and don't think I made it quite clear when I posted this, as has been mentioned all tracks have an optimal L/D ratio, many of these changes won't alter that, but they do allow the disturbances that are produced to be less damaging to the following car or for the downforce generating components to be less sensitive to dirty air. It doesn't improve efficiency but it does make for better racing.

[Lycoming]

1) extremely unconventional, likely to be horrendously opposed by everyone on this forum, but end F1's obsession with open wheel racing, and allow shrouding around the front and rear wheels. This change would bring significant drag reductions and would also bring F1 aero research closer to road cars, where modelling a rotating, exposed bluff body like a tyre is completely unnecessary. Yeah, sure, F1 has had open wheel for forever, but times change and open wheel is no longer the fastest solution.

Unfortunately, the DeltaWing doesn't really seem to have caught on....

2) equally unconventional, go closed cockpit. From a safety aspect modern F1 cars are exceptional, except in the cockpit where people can still get hurt i.e. Rubens. Closed cockpit would reduce the complex interaction in that area. Granted this one is more about safety than drag but its would allow for a much neater package in that area which could reap drag benefits.

Not hard to implement, and probably ought to be done given the much slower LMP1s now have this by mandate.

3) also unconventional but perhaps to a lesser degree, take a leaf out of the extremely successful Nissan DeltaWing's book and do away with front and rear wings altogether. Ok so with F1 not having front diffusers/splitters maybe the front wing would have to stay for handling, but remove the rear wing and force F1 teams to setup using the front wing. The cars become harder to tune because the diffuser is pretty much fixed but this imposes a real limit on your rear downforce and so by extension it also poses a limit on you front downforce if you want your car to be remotely drivable. Additionally with more downforce from a more drag-efficient floor (which could be developed further to account for the lost rear wing loads) we could get better racing as the floor generates downforce without as great an impact on the trailing flow.

I would prefer to retain the rear wing for easy balance adjustment. It helps drive the diffuser and is less sensitive to wake than a front wing.

4) more believable, do away with all the fiddly little bits of aero development that aren't the front/rear wings or the floor - none of these turning vanes on the top of side pods, none of these complex suspension profiles or wheel rims. Ought to drive cost down whilst allowing for significant aero development all the same.

It won't drive costs down because it doesn't reduce the amount of money they have available. They'll spend the same amount, just on other things. And I don't get how the turning vanes and sidepod bits are any different from vanes on the diffuser or winglets on the front wing. It's all fiddly, small-gains stuff.

[machin]

I feel like you have just approached a really significant, important issue in F1 that would genuinely benefit from a solution, then shied away from a really significant change by proposing something which really could be implemented as soon as next year with few design changes. If we are going to have this debate, let's do it right and look at the paradigm shifting options - treat all of these as independent changes implemented individually. I am also aware that not all of these are as effective as one another, and I will also come out saying I like the aero details of F1, a lot, but also accept that some of the best racing in the world is in cars with zero aero:

1) extremely unconventional, likely to be horrendously opposed by everyone on this forum, but end F1's obsession with open wheel racing, and allow shrouding around the front and rear wheels. This change would bring significant drag reductions and would also bring F1 aero research closer to road cars, where modelling a rotating, exposed bluff body like a tyre is completely unnecessary. Yeah, sure, F1 has had open wheel for forever, but times change and open wheel is no longer the fastest solution.

2) equally unconventional, go closed cockpit. From a safety aspect modern F1 cars are exceptional, except in the cockpit where people can still get hurt i.e. Rubens. Closed cockpit would reduce the complex interaction in that area. Granted this one is more about safety than drag but its would allow for a much neater package in that area which could reap drag benefits.

3) also unconventional but perhaps to a lesser degree, take a leaf out of the extremely successful Nissan DeltaWing's book and do away with front and rear wings altogether. Ok so with F1 not having front diffusers/splitters maybe the front wing would have to stay for handling, but remove the rear wing and force F1 teams to setup using the front wing. The cars become harder to tune because the diffuser is pretty much fixed but this imposes a real limit on your rear downforce and so by extension it also poses a limit on you front downforce if you want your car to be remotely drivable. Additionally with more downforce from a more drag-efficient floor (which could be developed further to account for the lost rear wing loads) we could get better racing as the floor generates downforce without as great an impact on the trailing flow.

4) more believable, do away with all the fiddly little bits of aero development that aren't the front/rear wings or the floor - none of these turning vanes on the top of side pods, none of these complex suspension profiles or wheel rims. Ought to drive cost down whilst allowing for significant aero development all the same.

Discuss.

EDIT: I am absurdly tired right now and don't think I made it quite clear when I posted this, as has been mentioned all tracks have an optimal L/D ratio, many of these changes won't alter that, but they do allow the disturbances that are produced to be less damaging to the following car or for the downforce generating components to be less sensitive to dirty air. It doesn't improve efficiency but it does make for better racing.

So, basically, this:- .....?



Gets my vote!

[PlatinumZealot]

Ooh that car has head lamps!

Night races without flood lights?

Hells yeah!!

[skgoa]

IMO: Just unify the technical regulations of LMP1 and F1. F1 can continue doing sprint races, while WEC continues doing long distance races.

[Sombrero]

IMO: Just unify the technical regulations of LMP1 and F1. F1 can continue doing sprint races, while WEC continues doing long distance races.

I don't know. Last time they did something similar (3500 ccm atmo) the equivalent of WEC was cancelled...

The new generation of WSC racing engines, with the stated intent of cost reduction and improved competition, quickly proved highly suspect. Costs rose massively as works teams developed cars capable of qualifying around half way up a Formula 1 grid, despite weighing some 200 kg more. Manufacturers again abandoned the sportscar series, realising they now had an engine suitable for F1. In particular, Mercedes and Peugeot elected to either concentrate on or move solely to F1. The more exotic engines were unaffordable for teams like Spice and ADA, thus after the manufacturers left the top class of sportscar racing, the series essentially collapsed. A lack of entries meant the 1993 season was cancelled before the first race.

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Spor ... ampionship

[skgoa]

I should have clarified that I was talking about the aero regulations. I really like the way the engine rules are right now. But a full grid of ~30 LMP1 cars running in both F1 and WEC would be pretty awesome. Having the same drivers compete in the same cars in both Monaco and Le Mans...