Help F1 in Schools front wing!

[V8Series]

Hi guys, probably i'm going to participate in f1 in schools next year and i've been doing some research, and i found a lot of cars with the front wing positioned in a odd place.
By the number of teams that use this layout it must be very effective, could anyone explain me how it works?
I'll leave photos here of some cars that use this wings.

[N12ck]

they essentially work as stabilizers rather than 'wings' sort of speak, so in the same way a rear tail fin on an aircraft works, it just stabilizes the car down the track and avoids it flipping or coming off the track

[MadMatt]

Is that a competition where you have to go in a straight line?

Yea they don't really look like they will act as wings. And if having to travel the furthest distance, then what you want is actually lift or to reduce the weight of the car by having wings to produce lift.

[V8Series]

Thanks for your help, but actually in this competition you have to race a 20 or 25 m (if i'm not mistaken) in the least time possible.
So should I have wings to produce lift or just to work as stabilizers?

[flynfrog]

Is that a competition where you have to go in a straight line?

Yea they don't really look like they will act as wings. And if having to travel the furthest distance, then what you want is actually lift or to reduce the weight of the car by having wings to produce lift.

NO!

The drag from trying to produce lift is much greater than reduced rolling friction from slightly less pressure on the wheels. The wings are there to satisfy a rule requirement. You don't want them doing anything downforce or lift is drag.

[Lightspeedrt]

Your idea of "most teams use it so it must be good" isnt a good theory. The cars you posted are all from different years and therefore very different rule sets. These teams decided that covering the wheels with body that is too large to be considered wing is worth the need to place the wing above. This years rules are very different, and flyn is very correct. In F1iS your aim is not to manipulate air to create lift or downforce, you simply want to do to it as little as you have to. If you look at some of the 2013-2014 cars you will see a closer rule set to what you would be using.

[aaronTAR]

It's more than likely to do with the rules. They say that you have to have a front wing ahead of the axle, so these teams are putting more effective ways of diverting the air around the wheel in front of the wheels, and leaving the wing up out of the way. That's my take at least!

[TasV]

I am not familiar with the Aeroflux car, but the Pentaglider's car was made by a team (the Pentagliders), mentored by a friend and colleague of mine in Tasmania Australia. This car won the 2011 World F1 in Schools finals in Malaysia and was engineered by Tristan McCarthy. It was the fastest car with a lap time of 1.084s The rules have since changed and now the front view of the wheels can only be obscured to a height of 15mm from the track's surface with the obligatory 3.5mm clear space around the wheel and 1mm separation of the side projection of the wheel from the front wing and 15mm of clear air-space behind the wheel. The Pentagliders car is no longer 'legal'.

As an F1 in Schools Mentor myself, I would recommend you investigate the stabilising effect of both the front and back wings in terms of their effect on the centre of pressure and its interaction with the centre of gravity and the thrust vector. It's always going to be a trade-off (big-time) due to the mass of the gas canister used to propel the car. We don't want to generate lift or down force, but instead remain in a 'neutral position' for straight line speed. An added challenge is to devise a method to deflect air flow around the wheels to reduce the drag caused by the wheels, which can be up to to 30% of the total drag acting on the car, with a front wing that has a low ride-height (~2mm) whilst not obscuring more than 15mm of the wheel's frontal projection measured from the track's surface.

We are currently thinking of our cars more like rockets than cars.