How to make the next round of reg changes genuinely the fastest cars ever

[strad]

did they not set lap records?

[Wass85]

did they not set lap records? http://www.stradsplace.com/public_html/ ... istle2.gif

Like I said, the lap record was way off although Vettel beat the race record.

[Juzh]

although Vettel beat the race record.

He didn't.

[Wass85]

although Vettel beat the race record.

He didn't.

Yes I read after that he didn't, why the hell they brought that pointless stat up I'll never know.

[rscsr]

although Vettel beat the race record.

He didn't.

Yes I read after that he didn't, why the hell they brought that pointless stat up I'll never know.

I just checked the races from 1996 onwards and I haven't found a single one that was faster than this years.
This year was 1:24:11.67 and the closest I found was 2004 1:24:15 and 2005 1:24:17.

[Nickel]

ugh. Race was faster because one less lap, as stated like 4 posts earlier...


Back on topic, I think the cars are easily fast enough. To my mind, the only thing in need of changing is the WAY the downforce is generated. Reintroduce ground effect and skirts so teams stop with the ultra complicated flow structures coming off the front wing. If need be, mandate a front wing shape. we need to go back to the front wing being a trim device as opposed to a flow structure generator and massive downforce device.

The flow structures are just way too complicated and susceptible to disruption the way they are currently arranged.

[Wass85]

What does it feel like for a driver? Is the car more snappy or is there more understeer when following another car, no driver has really gone into detail about it.

[everythingisawesome]

Fastest lap in 2005 at the Spain GP was 1:15.641. But that was when the V10's had already some years of development. The actual formula needs time to achive that level of performance. And i think it should stay like they are for some years.
And aren't they the fastest cars already? Wich one is faster?

Cars were lighter, they had refueling then.

[guffe]

Too much is never enough. Until F1 cars brake the speed of light, F1-fans are not satisfied.

[BosF1]

Well I for one am quite satisfied with these cutting edge technology PU's and that's coming from a McLaren-Honda fan. They don't sound as great as the old N/A engines, but to think they have now reached 50% efficiency is just great! And they get so much HP out of these PU's as well (not considering Honda ).

[SiLo]

Personally I think the weight of the cars needs to come down a lot, and the size of them too, they are absolutely massive!

The cars keep getting longer because there are aerodynamic benefits, yet we keep mandating a higher and higher minimum weight too.

[gdogg371]

A limited amount of ground effect with a simplified front wing seems like an obvious way of improving close quarters racing. Was the skirts element of it something that came along right away with the Lotus 77 or something that appeared as the concept evolved?

I know there was that farcical attempt to ban them that ended up resulting in people running Dick Dastardly esque suspension systems to get around the restrictions the FIA imposed, but I can't remember all the details. I also don't recall the old ground effect indy cars having skirts when i used to watch that a lot.

Isn't their ground effect restricted to a limited area of the cars floor surface? Probably more likely to see that than a return to the full on flying wings of early 80's F1...

[Ogami musashi]

A limited amount of ground effect with a simplified front wing seems like an obvious way of improving close quarters racing.

It is not obvious at all. Several studies using both cfd and wind tunnel all point towards the same direction:
- There's a reaward motion of the COP leading to understeer, however this one is due to the collective effects of the wake on front, rear wing and diffuser

- The front wing mostly suffers from the wake structure and as such experience very different effects depending on both longitudinal and side position relative to the leading car. those effects range from a severe decrease of downforce/drag ratio due to a vast increase in drag while downforce is unafected to downforce loss to downforce increase (sic!).

- The rear wing and underfloor suffer from the loss of velocity potential, i.e the draft. Their downforce/drag ratio stays about the same (that is they lose both downforce and drag). The peak suction from the diffuser is severely decreased because ground effects are very sensitive to the veloticity potential.

- Tyres impact a lot the wake structure

- the upwash of the wake by the rear wing (of the leader car)is fundamental to clean the air behind the leader car. As such an full ground effect car creates a wake with less draft but the wake stays close to the ground along along a very long distance resulting in similar losses than a full wing+diffuser car


All of those characteristic are worsened by wings and diffuser operating near their stall angle.

Now, let's just look at F1:

- The aero parts are definitely running near their max angle of attack
- Despite the uniformisation of the rules, subtle differences in wake structures make other cars suffer even more.

Simplifying the front wing imho will do nothing but to have a less efficient wing with even less flow conditioning at the back and more flow spoilage. Do not believe one bit that a simplier wing is more tolerant to wake!
Going for full ground effects is neither the answer in itself.

So why it does work for some series? Simple, all those series have something in common: they are single make. You still suffer, but everybody has the same wake structure. In addition they do produce less downforce than F1, operate farther from their limits and the speeds at which the car go are lower so loss of grip is less detrimental to competition.

Imho the solution is via active aero. For front wing that would mean moveable flaps or shape morphing to accomodate for the wake structure. For rear wing and diffuser, that would mean using fans to recover the velocity potential lost.


Of course, all of that with the hypothesis that we want F1 to be as fast as it is..which is impossible with tyres alone.

Ref:
Newbon J et al, CFD Investigation of the Effect of the Salient Flow Features in the Wake of a Generic Open-Wheel Race Car, 2016

Zhang X et al, Turbulent Wake behind a Single Element Wing in Ground Effect, 2008

FondTech, OWG study, 2007 (not published)

BMW Sauber, CFD development of the BMW-Sauber 2009 aerodynamic proposal for the OWG, 2007

Goodwind A, AERODYNAMIC LOADS UPON A LOW ASPECT RATIO WING WITHIN A WHEEL WAKE, 2007, Msc Thesis

Soso MD et al, Aerodynamics of a wing in ground effect in generic racing car wake flows, 2005

[Stradivarius]

Simplifying the front wing imho will do nothing but to have a less efficient wing with even less flow conditioning at the back and more flow spoilage. Do not believe one bit that a simplier wing is more tolerant to wake!
Going for full ground effects is neither the answer in itself.

Couldn't it work out to demand everyone to use a standard front wing which generates some turbulence? That way, the cars would need to be designed to work under such sub-optimal conditions and then the consequences of driving in the wake of another car would be smaller.

The problem with overtaking in modern f1 is that the cars are so advanced and so optimized for running in free air, that just a slight disturbance from the car in front i enough to reduce the performance drastically. If all the cars carried a front wing that messed up the flow anyway, this problem would be eliminated/reduced, wouldn't it? The best car would then be the car which performed best with this turbulence present.

[Ogami musashi]

Couldn't it work out to demand everyone to use a standard front wing which generates some turbulence? That way, the cars would need to be designed to work under such sub-optimal conditions and then the consequences of driving in the wake of another car would be smaller.

The problem with overtaking in modern f1 is that the cars are so advanced and so optimized for running in free air, that just a slight disturbance from the car in front i enough to reduce the performance drastically. If all the cars carried a front wing that messed up the flow anyway, this problem would be eliminated/reduced, wouldn't it? The best car would then be the car which performed best with this turbulence present.

Turbulence physics are very hard to describe mathematically and so far accurate physical based modeling of a flow field is almost impossible. There're many complex processes within turbulence that make the prediction of the evolution of a vortex as the distance/time increases very uncertain. What i want to tell you is that creating a device that creates turbulence is the best way to have a complete mess at the back of the car because you will have complex interactions with the rest of the car that will give very different structures behind it. So i don't think this is a good idea (i'm not an aerodynamicist so i may be wrong).

As for the "designed to work in free air", this is the "max AOA" bit. The wake effects on the front wing are essentially changes in the AOA due to vorticity and upwash. As the incoming air have very different directions depending on where you are in the wake, the effect are very different (hence why you can see an increase in downforce at certain postions). However in general it seems that components of the wake increase the AOA of the wing thus stalling it.
So if you want something that works better in dirty air, least thing is to have a simplified wing because that wing will have even smaller max AOA than a complex, optimized, one. However mandating that the wing be operated far below its max AOA could be a solution but completely impossible to enforce because that would mean the teams would spent millions optmizing their wing to finally not using them at the maximum of their performance!


To me the two biggest hurdles come from the very nature of F1: it is, historically first and foremost, a constructor championship and teams will always design their parts to work at maximum and everyone will have different solutions so the wake structures will always be differents and car always sensitive. That is why i think an active aerodynamic solution is maybe a good one.
Kind of correlation to what i said. pre 2009, when arguably a big standardization accured, it was not uncommon to hear pilot from team X saying that cars for team K and L were harder to follow than others while pilots from team Y would name cars from team I and J.