Yes, the vortex gearing create a kind of shielding flow condition. I maybe wrong, i'm not jesus christ (do you believe me?) but of course that's what we hear sometimes.
I can illustrate now :
http://oi59.tinypic.com/2v36g74.jpg
I have great difficulties to make the flow nicely sweep the back facing surface of the coke bottle shape. I often get recirculating swimming pool there. And i think at top speed it should be worse.( I know you can improve with the sidepod shape and we all know there are great variations from the teams in this area.)
And then all of a sudden as if the shielding offered a constrain highly needed i get this :
http://oi60.tinypic.com/2wd105i.jpg
Call this reenergize the swimming pool to stop the dirt or spread the sù$^$!
That's not perfect but far better, but again i make an easy correlation because that's what i was waiting for to be honest.
In general i still think that my 2d models were kind of relevant. You got 3 accelerating area which should work together at least at certain speed to maximise downforce or effiency or both. But because it's 3d now, the connection between subsystem is harder to get, air as more freedom, DOF as they say in multibody dynamic so it tends to relax to much and wander around.
Again but it's not from him i think this time, at least i learn from the lecture of flash gordon mccabe (he comes from area 51 => le pastaga) that vortices are the muscle and bones of aerodynamics, more fondamentals that pressure field and velocity field. It comes from the biot savard law (not joe it's a french
) but it doesn't mean that vortices create pressure more than the other way around rather that they are (vortices) bones that is solid structure on which you can withstand adversity
and muscles in that you can steer the whole body flow thanks to them. To sum up command and control.
But of course you knew all that... and that there are absolutly no vortices at the back
