FIRST LOOK: Formula 1’s 2021 car in the wind tunnel

[Just_a_fan]

The sticking out flap along the side of the car was developed by Tony Southgate on the XJR-6. It might have been borrowed from someone else as ideas often are.

[astracrazy]

I do wonder if this is the end of f1 as we know.it though. How much allowance in the rules is there going to be for innovation and out of the box ideas.

[Andres125sx]

it is awesome isn't it. I can't help thinking the FIA are designing the car tho, an awful lot, instead of setting limits and letting the teams design them. I mean it's great they're trying so hard to get good racing with following and passing, but they do seem to be producing 'the car'.

I guess before stablishing the rules they first need to understand the concept they´re introducing. Then they can say what´s allowed and what´s banned, but for that they need to develop a real car to see how it´s working in the real world

[Andres125sx]

About the pecking order... while top teams invest 4x what the fastest midfielders invest, pecking order will be the same, independently of the rules

[izzy]

I guess before stablishing the rules they first need to understand the concept they´re introducing. Then they can say what´s allowed and what´s banned, but for that they need to develop a real car to see how it´s working in the real world

Yes thinking about it and reading the racefans article, they can do A car as you say, to prove the concept, and then do the regs with scope, with boxes and hopefully not a million sub-clauses.

[strad]

I cannot re-find the article but the teams are already looking for the loopholes they can exploit.
So is Pat Symonds and the F1 tech team so they can cut them off at the pass.

[roon]

I do wonder if this is the end of f1 as we know.it though. How much allowance in the rules is there going to be for innovation and out of the box ideas.

My thoughts as well. Some say the teams have a role in ratifying this FIA proposal. Perhaps it will pass, perhaps it will be voted down. Will there still be legality boxes? Where and what size?

[carisi2k]

I still see too many issues with the 2021. The rear wing is the most obvious issue. The lower element needs to go and the endplates need to be shortened.

[Maritimer]

What's wrong with the rear wing?

[jjn9128]

I still see too many issues with the 2021. The rear wing is the most obvious issue. The lower element needs to go and the endplates need to be shortened.

What is the issue the rear wing is causing?

[Smokes]

Why didn't they run two cars in the tunnel to get a better picture of the downforce loss....

[jjn9128]

Why didn't they run two cars in the tunnel to get a better picture of the downforce loss....

Space. A wind tunnel working section is only so long, and the rolling road section is even shorter, if you want to put 2 models in the tunnel you have to reduce scale to get any sort of meaningful separation. When you reduce the scale you reduce the Reynolds number - in other words the effective speed of the car (in a wind tunnel the "real world" speed is directly proportional to the scale, i.e. a 50% scale model at 100mi/hr in the tunnel is only simulating 50mi/hr at the track), which makes the test less representative of conditions at the track. They can run 2 car simulations in CFD (albeit requiring more computing time and resource) so the wind tunnel becomes a validation tool to check against the computations.

All teams now run their wind tunnel tests at 60% scale, this test was run at 50% which saves a bit of money but was mainly to allow wake profiles to be collected further from the rear of the car. For comparison the previous overtaking group had to run at 25% to get 2 models in the tunnel.

[Smokes]

I guess they couldn't afford to run the model in a longer tunnel...

My only concerns we can validate the the wake of a single car CFD in this test but we cannot validate the computation of a single car following another using a wind tunnel.

As using a tunnel may throw some surprises that the CFD didn't account for. if the tunnel is calibrated correctly...

[Maplesoup]

I guess they couldn't afford to run the model in a longer tunnel...

My only concerns we can validate the the wake of a single car CFD in this test but we cannot validate the computation of a single car following another using a wind tunnel.

As using a tunnel may throw some surprises that the CFD didn't account for. if the tunnel is calibrated correctly...

Are there any tunnels out there actually long enough? I'd imagine all tunnels are only built with the 1 car in mind more complex stuff can be done in CFD.

[jjn9128]

I guess they couldn't afford to run the model in a longer tunnel...

My only concerns we can validate the the wake of a single car CFD in this test but we cannot validate the computation of a single car following another using a wind tunnel.

As using a tunnel may throw some surprises that the CFD didn't account for. if the tunnel is calibrated correctly...

I don't believe there are any wind tunnels out there with a long enough working section and a rolling road to run 2 large-ish scale F1 models. None spring to mind anyway. Wind tunnels aren't perfect anyway so the combination of tunnel and CFD is always going to be the best approach. They're running much bigger CFD meshes than the teams (no limit on flops and cores) they'll also be running this test at a higher Reynolds number than teams (they can only do 60m/s at 60% scale whereas the Sauber tunnel can run up to 300km/hr or 83m/s)