2014 pace vs. 2004 pace, where, how are they better?

[Juzh]

Spa had bus stop redesigned. monza had a bunch of kerbs installed. apples and oranges.

[Ogami musashi]

@hollus: I don't think doing a weight correction is valid.

Let me explain this: by weight correcting you are attempting to measure a relative but in your case you want to compare two values of one absolute variable: the speed.

Let me turn it with an example: you want to compare bench press athletes: one is 70kg the other is 120kg. Obiously, if they are of comparable level, the 120kg will press more weight but you may find the lighter one presses more relative to his weight. the weight pressed is the absolute value, the pressed weight/athlete weight is a relative value.

The way i see your comparison is that you compute pressed weight/athlete weight (lap time/car weight) to assess the weight lifted. It is not correct.

In other word: the weight of athlete, like the weight of the car, is an intrinsic characteristic of the athlete/car and you can't say "you're not lifting more weight than me! if i was of your weight i would lift more" because this is a wrong assertion.

Put in another way, the sense of speed is not a relative measure when the size of track stays the same.


Imho the 2004 are much faster than 2014 one, especially because in 2004 they had to qualify with one stint of fuel left (parc fermé rules prevented to refuel the car between qualifying and start of the race) while in 2014 you qualify on fumes...
They had more downforce, more power, better tires, traction control, launch starts etc...

[Miguel]

Imho the 2004 are much faster than 2014 one, especially because in 2004 they had to qualify with one stint of fuel left (parc fermé rules prevented to refuel the car between qualifying and start of the race) while in 2014 you qualify on fumes...
They had more downforce, more power, better tires, traction control, launch starts etc...

I agree in most of those accounts. However, I'm not quite sold on the first part. Did the 2004 cars have moreabsolute downforce than in 2014? Since this year's cars are 15% heavier, cornering at the same speed as in 2004 requires 15% more downforce, plus the tyre deficit, which may not be insignificant. Is there *any* track record from 2007/2008, done with control Bridgestones?

There was this thread that had people quoting Newey as saying the RB6 is the car with the most absolute downforce ever. The challenge there was actually the flexi-skirt cars before 1983.

[PlatinumZealot]

Engine for Engine the 2014 regs will be faster at lower rpms, and more than likely the tracks with slower corners or hill climbs will present more opportunities for the extra low rpm power of these hybrid engines to dominate.

Another thing too is the lower drag and grippy tyres. Your tyres can make up for lack of downforce and DRS accentuates it even more.

In my mind anyways all of these advantages still does not make the cars any nicer to watch because while they are faster down the straights the sensation of speed and dragon fly-like agility of those 2004 cars is totally lost.

[Ogami musashi]

I agree in most of those accounts. However, I'm not quite sold on the first part. Did the 2004 cars have moreabsolute downforce than in 2014? Since this year's cars are 15% heavier, cornering at the same speed as in 2004 requires 15% more downforce, plus the tyre deficit, which may not be insignificant. Is there *any* track record from 2007/2008, done with control Bridgestones?

I would be extremely surprised if 2014 cars corner as fast as 2004 one in most corners. The G-meter in 2004 read 6 in the fastest ones.
I know about the article you quote, this was for the double diffuser RB6. It is entirely possible, but the 2014 cars are far from it.

[Artur Craft]

I agree in most of those accounts. However, I'm not quite sold on the first part. Did the 2004 cars have moreabsolute downforce than in 2014? Since this year's cars are 15% heavier, cornering at the same speed as in 2004 requires 15% more downforce, plus the tyre deficit, which may not be insignificant. Is there *any* track record from 2007/2008, done with control Bridgestones?

There was this thread that had people quoting Newey as saying the RB6 is the car with the most absolute downforce ever. The challenge there was actually the flexi-skirt cars before 1983.

I think Newey did not expressed himself properly in that Red Bulletin article. He claimned RB6 had probably the most downforce ever because they measured 5.5G in cornering. But I think he meant grip. If you pay attention, is quite common for some people in the motorsport circles to use downforce as meaning grip. I know this would be totally not expected from a genius like Newey but I guess even he can use inappropriate terminology, once in a while.

For instance, Ogami himself already posted here informantion he had from "the horse's mouth" that, in 2006, Renault and Ferrari were achieving 5.5Gs on Turkey's T8. And this number is quite feasible to me going by Kimi's pole lap there, in 2005.



Flirts with 5G quite a lot and in 2006 the tyres were even better and the cars evolved aerodynamically.

Tbh, we already seen downforce evolution-over-year data and graphs posted here ranging from 79-2003, and the cars with most dowforce were from seasons: 81/82, 93/94. The cars from late 90s/early 2000 definitely had quite less downforce going by some 3 different sources.

Does anybody here believe the 2010-2013 cars could have had that much more downforce than early 2000's cars to beat even the 81/82, 93/94 I don't, at all

By the way, if you look this 2005 video above, you just see how poor the current cars are, relatively, doing in cornering. MP4-20 sustains 4,5Gs during the second apex of T8 while I have only seen 2014 cars sustain around 3,3G which is a bit more than what the ground effect cars could do but poor compared to last 2 decades of F1.

[bhall II]

[...]

Does anybody here believe the 2010-2013 cars could have had that much more downforce than early 2000's cars to beat even the 81/82, 93/94 I don't, at all

[...]

When it comes to the flexible-wing Red Bulls, I do. Newey could crank up as much downforce as he pleased, with very little regard to the deleterious effects of drag, because his front wings shed induced drag along straights as the tips drooped low enough to burst the vortices that form inside the end plates. Combined with the best EBD of its time, those cars made prodigious levels of downforce.

That's simply what CFD and wind tunnels allow for these days. (Can you imagine how much downforce those proper ground effects cars would have made had they been sculpted with modern tools? )

[mrluke]

So wait, Newey says that the RB6 probably had the most downforce of any f1 car ever made, yet rather than listen to one of the worlds most renowned aerodynamicists who knew intimately how well the RB6 performed and exactly how much downforce it did actually make, you think it is more likely that he got his words muddled up as you dont believe that the current cars look as fast in the corners?

[PlatinumZealot]

The RB6 definitely had tonne loads of downforce when you check out how many times it ran "monza wings" at medium down-force tracks. That car had an onion layered double diffuser that went down half the length of the floor, it had fire belching rifle nozzles sprouting from its butt, engine mapping that gives your pop-corn machine a run for it's money, and how can anyone forget those Flexi-wings that seemed to be doing the limbo in the braking zones. That car was awesome...

The 2008 cars might have had all the flip ups, the early 80's cars had the tunnels, side skirts and barn door wings... but the RB6 was the best balanced aero package F1 when you think of the modern engineering tools that were available to fine tune the flow structures around the car. If it had DRS Imagine how much more beastly it could have been?

[Ogami musashi]

So wait, Newey says that the RB6 probably had the most downforce of any f1 car ever made, yet rather than listen to one of the worlds most renowned aerodynamicists who knew intimately how well the RB6 performed and exactly how much downforce it did actually make, you think it is more likely that he got his words muddled up as you dont believe that the current cars look as fast in the corners?

The RB6 was the 2010 car with double diffuser. It is not the actual car so whether it is true or not this has no link with the topic.

And there's more than "looking" in the cornering..you simply watch G meter and speeds when they're available. Now to have a sound approach to this one would need the actual telemetry. Some exists for 2014 but for 2004 i don't think i've seen an actual one.

[Miguel]

I agree in most of those accounts. However, I'm not quite sold on the first part. Did the 2004 cars have moreabsolute downforce than in 2014? Since this year's cars are 15% heavier, cornering at the same speed as in 2004 requires 15% more downforce, plus the tyre deficit, which may not be insignificant. Is there *any* track record from 2007/2008, done with control Bridgestones?

I would be extremely surprised if 2014 cars corner as fast as 2004 one in most corners. The G-meter in 2004 read 6 in the fastest ones.
I know about the article you quote, this was for the double diffuser RB6. It is entirely possible, but the 2014 cars are far from it.

Oh, no, I don't doubt at all that a 2014 F1 will corner everything but the lowest speed stuff slower than a 2004 F1. What I doubt is whether the *actual* downforce, F, not normalised per mass, is actually higher now than it was in 2004. That'd translate to about 7-10% lower corner speed than in 2004.

[Harsha]

May be off topic but is it easy or hard to ride the Highest Downforce car ever with taking all G-forces over the race / Q trims ??

[SiLo]

Probably find that with a screaming 900hp V10, those cars back then didn't worry too much about drag.

[Moose]

Probably find that with a screaming 900hp V10, those cars back then didn't worry too much about drag.

Huh? Of course they worried about drag. Drag squares with speed, at the kind of speeds that F1 cars go at, 800, 900 or 1200hp doesn't make an enormous difference to top speed.

[SiLo]

I don't mean they didn't care, I mean they didn't worry as much as they do now, especially with fuel efficiency being so key to racing.