Bourdais: F1 parameters are insane

[Ciro Pabón]

I was curious about Bourdais opinion, after running ChampCars. Here it is, courtesy of my friend Gugs. His translation from german:

F1 is a very particular case with an absolute imbalance of low mechanical grip and monstrous aero grip. The imbalance of the two parameters is completely insane, totally mad infact. Hence the cars are unpredictable and have practically no grip when the air flow is disrupted. Behind some cars we loose grip on the front end but behind others the rear end gets away. The 2009 rule changes are on the right way. Slicks are necessary and a downforce cut to reduce the sensitivity to aero grip and improve stability in fast corners. To succeed with this we need slicks and less wings. I think the 2009 rules are not perfect but at least an improvement.

http://www.motorsport-total.com/f1/news ... 40307.html

[mep]

I write a few more facts from the article for you:

-He has still problems to made the change to the high developed F1 cars.
-The cars are very sensitive to back wind or vorties from other cars in front of
your car.
-It's different if you drive behind a McLaren or Honda for example.
-If you drive behind a special engine you loose grip at the front or at the
back. This is like a miracle for him.
-The cars are unpredictable and difficult to drive in the race event.

[Jersey Tom]

That is very interesting!

[Conceptual]

I don't look at this as him whining as much as just reaffirming what most people have been saying since the 2002 season. I'm sure that it is rediculous to not only learn to drive your car, but adjust your style depending on what chassis is in front of you. Lets not even explore what happens while following one car while passing a backmarker.

I think a hard number split of aero 70% ground effect, 30% body (inherently maxes out quickly) as well as slicks and active suspension, combined with an AWD KERS system powered by the "frozen" 2.4 V8 that only allows a performance advantage to be gained from developing the recovery system efficiency to the maximum, year over year, makes for the best racing in the near forseeable future.

You are always going to have team to team inbalance in performance, but that is exactly where the technical challenge lies. And on top of that, the drivers get better handling cars that could once again reach 1000bhp and are not nearly as aero sensitive, thus allowing the true cream to rise to the top and be honored.

/daydream off

Chris

[Ogami musashi]

Behind some cars we loose grip on the front end but behind others the rear end gets away.

It is because what makes the loose is the vortices. The vortices direction depends on the rear wing and diffuser geometry.

Some of them create upwash, some of them are more downwash.

depending on the scale the vortices may affect more the front wing, or the appendices.
When it does so, it stall the appendices and thus the rear wing suffers the most.


It shows that those loss are geometry dependent.

[freedom_honda]

well this seems to be a huge problem with modern F1 cars.
the aero grip is so great that once you are behind another car, all that aero grip is lost which makes it impossible to overtake.
we definitely need more mechanical grip and less aero grip.
so im expecting a lot more overtaking next season

[AeroGT3]

70% of all downforce from the underbody isn't safe.

[Ciro Pabón]

... This is like a miracle for him.

That's not a miracle. Internet is a miracle.

[Conceptual]

70% of all downforce from the underbody isn't safe.

Care to extrapolate and possibly state what you feel would be the max safe % of underbody to overbody split?

I guess that from my understanding, there is only SO MUCH downforce that can be created from the underside. If it is possible to force the underside by regulation to at least have 50%, you can thus limit overbody downforce.

Does that make sense? If the underbody maxes at 700lbs (or whatever) in the 70/30 split, then the over body could only create 300lbs. Thus removing the overbody aero development since I'm sure that ALL teams would have to reduce what they currently have in order to meet the 30%.

But then again, all the money would go into developing the underbody, and the vortex side-skirting.

Chris