Aero Disturbance

[Carbon]

This is probably a dumb question, but something that has been on my mind.

Would a team design an aero piece to increase the amount of disturbance behind a car, decreasing the chances that the car would slipstream, hoping for a pass? Or would such a design increase the drag too much?

Conspiracy theory.

[marcush.]

I´d say this is reality nowadays.
all drivers complain of loosing front downforce when following a car too closely in corners.This way it is virtually impossible to be close enough to make use of any slipstream on the next straight.Some guys ar e better in it as others of course but many are just moaning instead of thinking.
As a Grandprix driver starting in the mid of a pack I would always crank lots of additional downforce onto the front to be able to follow opponents closely without havinmg massive understeer.Front downforce does not kill your straightline speed ,but of course you´d have oversteer in driving not in traffic.but this you could counter with a traction control setup eli minating loss off rear wheelspin...You just have to work with everything you have at your disposal...

[Laurent]

I don't have a photo of it, but I know that teams (Williams) is making something for hat

In Monza, they used a strange rear wing, with some "shark teeth" on it....

This has the result that others aren't able to have a max slipstream

the reason for it is not something that I know, but maybe someone can help to find the reason

[Guest]

As a Grandprix driver starting in the mid of a pack I would always crank lots of additional downforce onto the front to be able to follow opponents closely without havinmg massive understeer.

I would go the other way and set-up the car with less reliance on front wing downforce and have the suspesnsion balance the towards oversteer to conteract the understeer in downforce.

Because of downforce F1 sucks at the moment. All racing cars have slick tyres, there is no other way. As long as F1 continues with grooved tyres it will stink.

[dumrick]

I would always crank lots of additional downforce onto the front to be able to follow opponents closely without havinmg massive understeer.Front downforce does not kill your straightline speed ,but of course you´d have oversteer in driving not in traffic.but this you could counter with a traction control setup eli minating loss off rear wheelspin

1) Yeah, that way there would be no problem, you would have an unbalanced car in the turns so, with the time lost there, you'd never be affected by the slipstream of the car in front, just because you'd be too far away...

2) TC doesn't help to balance the car. As you say, it only eliminates wheelspin and traction induced oversteering. With a "tight" TC setup and lack of downforce (grip) in the rear, you'd loose also massively in acceleration.

3) That reasoning also assumes that, when the front wing airflow is "masked" by a car in front, that the remaining downforce is significantly different in a FW with more camber. I'm not sure that is correct.

[sknguy]

Isn't slipstreaming the benefit of riding in the vortex of the car ahead? I'm not sure, but with today's cars creating so much turbulence with their winglets, in order to reduce the vortex (drag), isn't this the reason slipstreaming has become less beneficial?

[red300zx99x]

dumrick i'd change your statement that TC can't balance a car. to it can't balance a car at the apex of the turn. Coming out it can, and if you had some damn good thinkers I bet you could use 'TC like' function to balance a car. Some believe these 'TC like' functions are being used today in F1

[Guest]

red300zx99x, what I meant, answering to marcush, by "balancing a car" is having the tyre actuating forces well distributed (in this case, in a turn).

TC can only selectively subtract power from one or other reat tyre, in order to keep them within their repective grip circle. This is clearly helpful for the driver, but doesn't add to the ability of the car to brake, turn or accelerate. Those are purely tyre related, influenced by weight, CG, downforce, suspension...

What I said was that, unbalancing the car towards the front, the rear would have less total grip, for braking, cornering and accelerating purposes, regardless of the TC setting...

[dumrick]

The post above is mine...

[Guest]

back to it..
If I´m in the pack and suffering U/S due to the wake of the car in front I´ll never be in place to make a move .

So a setup with some aero oversteer makes sense . As the T/C is the only variable the driver has in hand to trim the U/S O/S characteristic of the car ,I really think this could work.
OPf course you´d have some corner entry O/S with more frontend downforce you could not get rid of with TC but that´s the tradeoff.
As for the suspension setuo with o/s dialed in this would of course hurt you in all corners whereas the aero thing would only come into the equation at higher speed corners,where the pilot is complaining because he can´t stay in the slipstream....