2017-2020 Aerodynamic Regulations Thread

[godlameroso]

Does grip have a relationship to rolling resistance?

[Vyssion]

Does grip have a relationship to rolling resistance?

As per what I wrote on the previous page, yes it does. Grip can very "loosely" be defined as the amount of frictional force you have resisting motion in a given direction. When we think about grip in the sense of going round a corner faster, your tyres are resisting the radially increasing motion of the car which would prevent you from turning. In a straight line, you can imagine that as the tyre rotates and new rubber comes into contact with the road, there are some frictional losses slowing the rotation down which are due to your "grip". It wont be as severe as when you are cornering, and it is a little weird to think of grip in a straight line, but if you imagine driving on ice, you have much less grip and so you are more prone to slide along when you touch the brakes.

[Fulcrum]

Posting here as it is, in effect, a result of the car aerodynamics. Please refer me to the correct thread if there is a more appropriate place to post.

Surely the racing would be better if following cars (within X seconds/meters) were allowed to use DRS all the time, UNTIL they are within Y seconds/meters of another car?

E.g. if you're within 2 seconds of the car in front, you have unlimited DRS usage, until you are within 0.3 seconds.

This would give following cars more scope to draw close and stay close, but would also make the actual passing manoeuvre more difficult, which is the dual complaint of the existing system.

I've suggested meters instead of time as it might be easier to apply. Obviously the concertina effect in braking zones would potentially allow cars a bite of DRS, then lose it under acceleration, but this would simply aid the following driver to get in range.

[mkable1370]

Posting here as it is, in effect, a result of the car aerodynamics. Please refer me to the correct thread if there is a more appropriate place to post.

Surely the racing would be better if following cars (within X seconds/meters) were allowed to use DRS all the time, UNTIL they are within Y seconds/meters of another car?

E.g. if you're within 2 seconds of the car in front, you have unlimited DRS usage, until you are within 0.3 seconds.

This would give following cars more scope to draw close and stay close, but would also make the actual passing manoeuvre more difficult, which is the dual complaint of the existing system.

I've suggested meters instead of time as it might be easier to apply. Obviously the concertina effect in braking zones would potentially allow cars a bite of DRS, then lose it under acceleration, but this would simply aid the following driver to get in range.

Can't help but feel your suggestion would only serve to REDUCE passing further.
F1 needs more mechanical grip and less reliance on aero.

[VARIANT | one]

Suspension/Tyres: Make the front tyres 300mm wide and the rear tyres 400mm wide, also make the rims 15 inches in diameter. This should be the best mid way to increase mechanical grip and speeds. As for suspension, Id consider allowing the teams to interlink again, but not front to rear, only left to right side for better roll control, however if they wish to do so, they must do it with a no more than 5bar pressure.

Speaking of, whatever happened to increasing the wheel diameters in F1? Actually, I think they were considering 18".

The tiny wheels are one of the regs that drives me the MOST nuts about F1. And it's not that they limit brake size, force sidewall heights that they probably wouldn't actually employ, or even the fact that they look stupid. It's that the wheel clearances force engineers to have nonsense suspension geometries / roll centers on the fronts of cars because of them.

[Tauri_J]

wheel diameter is same with 15'' and 18''

[strad]

I'm dead set against these regulations and I'll tell you why.
I was watching an interview between Robin Miller and A.J. Foyt about the changes to the Phoenix oval.
The took out a kink and Miller was recalling A.J. going thru, rear hanging out and how great it was to see the drivers driving the cars,
The subject came up because at Phoenix this week they were lapping in qualifying at 132mph without lifting. Just flat footing it all the way around.
Now from a technical point of view, using aero tricks and super sticky rubber makes for some fantastic handling and cornering ability. They were pulling 5.5 Gs and that is really great. From that technological point of view. As an exercise in the application of aero and mechanical grip.
However for the spectator other than a few minutes of appreciation of those achievements it's very boring. Unless of course you are one that watches for the big wreck.
For the average spectator what makes racing interesting is seeing a man wrestle with car and danger to do what he never would or could do. These are the things that made the legends, from Nuvolari, to Gilles to Ayrton Senna .
Whether true or not it, looks easy and like anyone with balls can step up and do it.
What we need is not perfect handling cars but ones that are still a little untamed.

[bhall II]

What we need is not perfect handling cars but ones that are still a little untamed.

You're unlikely to see that until the cars are quicker.

Think of it this way (though maybe not literally): for cars that operate in the performance window that exists between zero and roughly 215-220 mph, designers have accumulated hundreds of solutions over the years, and they can't forget them. If you want untamed, you have to force them to learn something new.

While current cars aren't as quick as F1's historic bests, they're certainly not slow. Nonetheless, they're said to be "very undemanding" for drivers. Why? Because they're not breaking new ground.

[strad]

No, I know we'll never go backwards, but that doesn't change the root of the problem.
Somebody mentioned something a while back that I believe true: I's become too perfect.
Stick and ball sports are a good comparison.
U.S. football... Each team has a book on the others offense and defense.
They see a certain lineup and formation and they can be 90% sure they will run play X.
Baseball for me is the worst.
Each team has a book on every other player and when player X steps up to the plate, unless he really fluffs it somehow, the defense knows within three feet where he's most likely going to hit the ball.
As you reach the pinnacle of perfection, as you remove the variables, the whole thing gets boring.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

FIA responds to 2017 overtaking concerns

"We've had countless meetings with technical directors of every team," Whiting said. "We've had a whole range of proposals from what appears to be a huge amount of downforce to a very low level of downforce but it's all based on the premise that we will have a significant increase in mechanical grip. So what we've ended up with is inevitably somewhere in the middle and I think it's incorrect to say that the anticipated lap time improvement will all come from downforce because it simply shouldn't be.

"The whole idea is that at least half of that will come from mechanical grip and the other half from aerodynamic downforce. One of the things that we've been talking about all along is about the fact that we mustn't make it more difficult to follow another car. That's always been one of the underlying principles.

"So we've done, I believe, the best we can given that we have to take everybody's views in to account. It's not easy sometimes to keep everybody happy, especially when you've got huge teams with massive resources. We have to rely on their simulations and that's what we've actually come up with. I believe we've trod the middle ground and we've come up with a solution which gained the most support among the teams."

"We've discussed it at length with Pirelli and we had a meeting in Milan with Pirelli in the beginning of February. We were asked to provide them with the targets that we think Pirelli should achieve during the course of the new contract. We are on the verge now, we've discussed it with the teams, we are literally ready to provide Pirelli with a set of targets that we feel they need to achieve during the course of their renewed contract.

"So it's all ongoing stuff, but we've taken input from all the drivers - drivers were actually present at the meeting we had at Pirelli in Milan in February - seven drivers present at that meeting. So the targets that we're trying to set Pirelli are degradation, if you've got five different types of tyre for example we need to have different degradation for different types of tyre and we need the degradation to overlap so there's more than one strategy that will be quick during a race. Ideally we would like two or three strategies to end up with the same race time. That's the sort of thing that we're trying to achieve."

[Henk]

They should have just done bigger tires and some changes to make the cars still look decent and be done with it. The proposals we have seen include an amount of downforce that will definitely be too much. The complaints about the current cars are 2 years old and we have seen the laptimes get 3 seconds better since. There is no reason to think the proposed changes only give you 3 or 4 seconds.

I just don't get why the FIA is dead set on making huge changes instead of just starting with bigger tires for next year and take it from there. If the cars are still too slow add some downforce. There is no policy at the FIA and that's why they keep messing up. Set a goal and make incremental changes towards that goal.

[godlameroso]

From 2014 to 2015 qualifying times improved by roughly a second, from 2015 to 2016 qualifying times improved by 2.6 seconds. But the biggest improvement has been race pace, 1:34 in the Bahrain race, which is ~3.5 seconds faster than they managed in 2015. If Pirelli made a good tire for f1 we could have cars 5 seconds faster than 2015, we're already getting there. I think the tires and a bigger diffuser is all we need to meet and exceed FIA targets.

[Fulcrum]

The 2016 Bahrain event was 91 seconds faster than last year, 1.6 seconds per lap. Some of that is tyres, but a similar improvement year-on-year would make this formula reasonably quick relative to the V10/V8 era, considering some of the other limitations.

[mclaren111]

godlameroso:
I think the tires and a bigger diffuser is all we need to meet and exceed FIA targets.

I agree on tyres but only increase diffuser if it allows cars to follow one another closer and increase the chance of overtaking.

100 kg fuel limit must also be dropped

[Sevach]

AMUS reporting that 8 out of 11 teams are against new cars in 2017. Red Bull, McLaren and Toro Rosso are for these changes

Vyssion great post +1

I was led to believe that much like elimination qualifying, the 2017 rules are now approved and unanimity is needed to postpone it/dismiss them.