Ground Effect - Bring It Back

[ChrisM40]

Lots of people moan about safety and the desire to keep speeds down to prevent another tragedy. When was the last cornering speed related tragedy?? It wasn't Biachi, or De Villota, or Senna or Ratzenberger...

[Tim.Wright]

Cornering speed is not the cause - but it has a large influence on the impact energy which must be dissipated.

E = 0.5 x mass x speed^2

[Moose]

Lots of people moan about safety and the desire to keep speeds down to prevent another tragedy. When was the last cornering speed related tragedy?? It wasn't Biachi, or De Villota, or Senna or Ratzenberger...

Bianchi, Senna and Ratzenberger's deaths were all caused by speed in a corner.

[mrluke]

I cant watch this from work but im pretty sure its the right video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAo0mbCFDAw

Should be a demonstration from the delta wing where part of their design process was to create cars that could follow each other ad avoid the dirty air problem. This goes back to when the delta wing was a concept for indy car.

I think its pretty relevant to the discussion and one of their solutions to the dirty air was to focus on underbody aero rather than wings.

Bhall you have made some interesting points re just moving the problem from the front wing, ill try and come up with something intelligible once I have thought it through a bit more

Lots of people moan about safety and the desire to keep speeds down to prevent another tragedy. When was the last cornering speed related tragedy?? It wasn't Biachi, or De Villota, or Senna or Ratzenberger...

Bianchi, Senna and Ratzenberger's deaths were all caused by speed in a corner.

Im pretty sure the deaths were caused by coming to a stop very quickly.

[Sevach]

Bianchi, Senna and Ratzenberger's deaths were all caused by speed in a corner.

Bianchi was caused by bad car removal procedure.

Senna and Ratzenberger were caused by car failures at high speed points, what could've saved them (besides better quality control, crash tests and cannopies) was less power, a lot less power, downforce was a lesser factor.

[ChrisM40]

Lots of people moan about safety and the desire to keep speeds down to prevent another tragedy. When was the last cornering speed related tragedy?? It wasn't Biachi, or De Villota, or Senna or Ratzenberger...

Bianchi, Senna and Ratzenberger's deaths were all caused by speed in a corner.

No they werent. Bianchi aquaplaned off at relatively low speed, Sennas (still contested I believe) was either a breakage, or the car bottoming out possibly due to rules changes (ironically), Ratzenburgers car never even started to turn.

Stop slowing down the cars for a theoretical problem that hasn't happened, and instead improve the track safety.

[Andres125sx]

No they werent. Bianchi aquaplaned off at relatively low speed, Sennas (still contested I believe) was either a breakage, or the car bottoming out possibly due to rules changes (ironically), Ratzenburgers car never even started to turn.

If you want to think it that way ok, speed itself don´t kill anyone, but speed combined with some sort of problem (car failure, aquaplanning, etc.) is a problem when tracks are not designed for 4-5G cornering.

So yes, cornering speed IS a problem.

Stop slowing down the cars for a theoretical problem that hasn't happened, and instead improve the track safety.

That´s what they´re doing for some years. Do you know Tilkedroms? They´re criticized all around, but they´re designed to allow safe and fast cornering speeds. The only problem is there are tracks like Suzuka (hate to say this because Suzuka is my favourite track), Monaco, Montreal or Singapore in the calendar so cornering speeds must be controlled

If the calendar would only include Tilkedroms, then they will allow more downforce because those tracks are prepared for faster cornering speeds, but not before tracks like the mentioned above are still on the calendar

[ChrisM40]

I understand that, but there are other ways to improve things, plus the drivers are adults, they have a choice. You can tell F1 is a European sport, its full of nannying.

Oh and whoever down voted my post as 'incorrect' might want to undo it since its not incorrect. Check on youtube if it helps.

[bhall II]

Should be a demonstration from the delta wing where part of their design process was to create cars that could follow each other ad avoid the dirty air problem. This goes back to when the delta wing was a concept for indy car.

I think its pretty relevant to the discussion and one of their solutions to the dirty air was to focus on underbody aero rather than wings.

In the case of the DeltaWing, the strategy makes sense. If one car among many others is far less sensitive to "dirty air," then it can benefit from the resulting performance differentiation. But, if all cars are more or less the same by design, any moves to combat "dirty air" will just shift the problem to a different area.

That's the aspect of overtaking the sport consistently fails to recognize. Uniform changes cannot affect performance differentiation.

DRS works, because it only affects the trailing car. Pirellis worked, because a widespread lack of understanding about their characteristics made it rare that any two cars would ever have tires in the same condition. But, as strategies for both have converged upon the optimum, as they always do, the effects have been blunted, as evidenced by the precipitous decline in overtaking since 2011...

This is what has led me to believe that track modification is the only solution. NASCAR works because oval tracks can have as many as four different racing lines, and NASCAR fans complain when there aren't hundreds of instances of overtaking throughout a race.

[Andres125sx]

In the case of the DeltaWing, the strategy makes sense. If one car among many others is far less sensitive to "dirty air," then it can benefit from the resulting performance differentiation. But, if all cars are more or less the same by design, any moves to combat "dirty air" will just shift the problem to a different area.

[...]

DRS works, because it only affects the trailing car.

Sorry but this does not make sense to me. Dirty air only affects the trailing car, same as DRS

[Andres125sx]

BTW, IMHO DRS is the invention wich managed to ruin the most exciting part of racing, battles between cars. Now there are many overtakes, but they´re so easy/boring due to the top speed difference I did prefer a quarter of the overtakes if they´re real than current situation with a lot of boring overtakes.

Also, now drivers don´t assume any risk because they don´t need to. Just wait to the straight. Obviously there are some exceptions wich provide some excitement, but they´re not thanks to DRS, but despite DRS.


Minimizing dirty air problem would provide real battles, even if overtakes per GP are a small fraction, but at least we´d see some battles instead of the fastest car with the fastest driver saying it´s imposible to even try because of dirty air

[bhall II]

Minimizing dirty air problem would provide real battles, even if overtakes per GP are a small fraction, but at least we´d see some battles instead of the fastest car with the fastest driver saying it´s imposible to even try because of dirty air

Forget "dirty air" as a problem, because it's one that cannot be solved until someone discovers how to enable an object to pass through the atmosphere without displacing any air whatsoever, a feat that will be worthy of several Nobel Prizes. Absent that, you have to look elsewhere for solutions to facilitate easier overtaking.

DRS works because it makes the trailing car artificially faster than the leading car. If it was applied to both cars, it wouldn't work, because performance differentiation requires something to be different. That underscores the reality that any uniform change made to all cars will ultimately have no effect on overtaking.

So, if we can't address "dirty air," and we can't make wholesale changes to every car, what's left to do?

If the normal line keep level, but you provide a little banking in the outside of the corner, there would be more than one line, the usual and the outer one taking advantage of the little banking, so drivers will have more than one line to choose and overtaking will be easier.

And I don't think you'd have to do that for every corner, just the ones that lead onto, or come after, longer straights. But, I know very little about track design. So, I'm not exactly sure.

[mrluke]

The delta wing video was from the proposal to provide a Delta wing chassis is the new spec chassis for indy car.

The video I linked to shows cfd of two delta wings following one another because that was one their unique selling points, that their cars were much less affected by following one another

[bhall II]

The delta wing video was from the proposal to provide a Delta wing chassis is the new spec chassis for indy car.

I thought it was just a bizarre way to demonstrate flow patterns around the DeltaWing Le Mans car...





Follow this thread in which one of the more knowledgeable members of the forum explains how the DeltaWing concept was fatally flawed from the start. (I mean genuinely knowledgeable, not my bullshit "knowledgeable.")

[Pingguest]

If you are happy with F1 lapping circa 20 sec slower then that would be one possible solution.

With the powerful engines Formula One is used the have, a certain amount of downforce is simply necessity. Without it the cars would simply be uncontrollable. From a normative point of view downforce is also desirable or even a necessity. Without downforce lap times improve when a car is in the wake of another. Consequently, cars naturally close up and a slower car could thus easily pass a faster one.

Having said that, I fail to see why the current or even faster lap times are some sort of holy grail.