Rear wing flex and FIA regulatory test 2021

[Just_a_fan]

So how are the teams going to stiffen up the rear wings? Is it going to be a big time or big money consuming thing?

I saw some place today, that horner claimed it could/would cost $500,000 to change the wings, and that sounds like highly suspect to me. You need to change the orientations of the plys, and maybe and another one or 2, or change the modulus of the CF you're using. That should not cost 500k, you don't need to massively rework the aero of the car like he was hinting at.

Honestly, it's probably something they could get done between races if they wanted to. Instead they are putting on a dog and pony show, and claiming its a huge thing because they don't want to have to delay anything they already have in the pipeline with regards to upgrades (imo).

Vasseur agrees it's not gonna be a cheap fix:
https://www.racefans.net/2021/05/21/ben ... eur-warns/

He's hardly likely to say "yes, no problem, it'll cost us very little" is he? The flexi teams will cry "expense" and the rigid teams will cry "unfair". And the FIA will be wrong no matter what they do or say.

[dans79]

I found horner's exact comments for refernece.

https://us.motorsport.com/f1/news/ferra ... n/6512038/

Team principal Christian Horner said: "For a team like us, that's obviously running up against the cap, then of course strategically you have to make choices.

"You know the impact of something like this is probably about half a million dollars, so that will prevent something else from happening. So that's the juggling act that we're now having to make."

While rivals Mercedes and McLaren are unhappy that teams have been given a grace period before the new tests come in, Horner thinks it would be unfair to have made a change immediately.

"You can't just magic up components," he said. "I think if they changed the tests on the front wings for example this weekend, and we've seen far more performance from front wing flexibility, shall we say, then that would affect every single team, some much greater than others.

"I think that there has to be a lead time. You can't expect parts to be magic upped overnight with the costs that are incurred.

"The car complies to the regulations that have been there for the last 18 months or so with these load tests. And then, the test has been changed and there has to be a notice period for that."

But look at the contrasting remarks from Rossi, who's team is also considered to have a very flexy wing.

Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi, whose team is also suspected of running a flexible rear wing, says his outfit would make any changes necessary to comply with the new tests.

"We design a car that conforms to the regulations," he said. "If the tests prove that we have to comply to a new set of rules, we will do that. That's all I can say."

[El Scorchio]

I saw some place today, that horner claimed it could/would cost $500,000 to change the wings, and that sounds like highly suspect to me. You need to change the orientations of the plys, and maybe and another one or 2, or change the modulus of the CF you're using. That should not cost 500k, you don't need to massively rework the aero of the car like he was hinting at.

Honestly, it's probably something they could get done between races if they wanted to. Instead they are putting on a dog and pony show, and claiming its a huge thing because they don't want to have to delay anything they already have in the pipeline with regards to upgrades (imo).

Vasseur agrees it's not gonna be a cheap fix:
https://www.racefans.net/2021/05/21/ben ... eur-warns/

He's hardly likely to say "yes, no problem, it'll cost us very little" is he? The flexi teams will cry "expense" and the rigid teams will cry "unfair". And the FIA will be wrong no matter what they do or say.

It's just part of the game, isn't it. All the teams will have known and calculated the risk vs reward of putting the 'bendy' wings on their cars, and how extreme the amount of bend they think they can get away with. It's clear from the comments from those teams who apparently have the bendiest wings that they knew what they were doing and aren't shocked the tests are changing, even if they are annoyed about it.

[RZS10]

I know it's not really worth replying to this but here i go: [...] Nowhere do i write that anything we can observe could be used to determine whether any of the wings are legal or illegal. [...]

[...] You people keep claiming the wing is illegal and bending too much, sorry you contradict yourself too much to take seriously. It's not illegal now, and will remain legal, and you will still huff and puff that I'm somehow wrong despite the FIA giving it the all clear.

You do see the contradiction there, right?

Some teams have already admitted that they will have to rework their wings to make them comply with the stricter tests, some will have to change their wings but might not say that they did so, some might change them and then lie about it, some might pass it without any changes.

Red Bull is one of the teams that already said (in the person of Helmut Marko) that they will have to change theirs, so unless they're in another category of teams that don't have to change theirs but still lie that they did in fact modify it, i don't see how the wing in it's current build could possibly "remain legal".

We'll have to wait until Paul Ricard to be able to look at the wings, there might be some visible differences to the support pillars or carbon structure and if not we can always analyse them visually as with the current wings to see if there's more or less flex compared to the old ones, since it is entirely possible that some of them will still flex and it remains to be seen whether the FIA will then actually use the fixed, immobile rear facing cameras to determine whether it's still too much or not.

[El Scorchio]

Mercedes CEO Toto Wolff said yesterday the team first raised concerns over the FIA’s enforcement of its wing rules last season.

“We have been left in a limbo since a long time,” he said. “We have flagged the flexible rear wing situation last summer, without having received any feedback.

Wolff said the issue “should have been tackled much earlier”
“I understand some of the teams’ frustration when, making the concept of this year’s car, that this was an area that should have been tackled much earlier.”

So this didn't magically become a thing after the last Grand Prix on the word of one driver.

[SmallSoldier]

You know that those 4 pixels represent an illegal displacement of the wing.

I know it's not really worth replying to this but here i go: read what i wrote properly. Nowhere do i write that anything we can observe could be used to determine whether any of the wings are legal or illegal.

You can watch the videos and the wings' movement is absolutely evident without any gifs or lines, those just point out what is happening in the videos they're sourced from and it helps seeing the extent of any flexing that is going on (on all the wings) - you don't need to count pixels for that, but i know that it's your cheap way of dismissing the very clear evidence ... lol

At this point i'm not sure whether you're just merely pretending, or?

You are though. You people keep claiming the wing is illegal and bending too much, sorry you contradict yourself too much to take seriously. It's not illegal now, and will remain legal, and you will still huff and puff that I'm somehow wrong despite the FIA giving it the all clear.

If the rule is that there shouldn’t be any movable aero parts and the wings (both rear and front) are moving, then they are against the rules... The fact that it passes that current deflection test doesn’t invalidate the first requirement.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[hollus]

Question: How reproducible is the flex and how would teams consider that in their CFD calculations and wind tunnel models?
This being the rear wing, maybe one can ignore it and assume that it won’t affect other parts too much... (I won’t mention the obvious implications on other wings that don’t belong in this thread...)

[Hoffman900]

Question: How reproducible is the flex and how would teams consider that in their CFD calculations and wind tunnel models?
This being the rear wing, maybe one can ignore it and assume that it won’t affect other parts too much... (I won’t mention the obvious implications on other wings that don’t belong in this thread...)

I think the flex is very reproducible as is the CFD models. I am not sure on scaled wind tunnel models however.

I think they need to know how it works, and quantify it, because it's speed / load based, not just straight away, and they'll need to know how it effects things in medium-high speed corners.

[Just_a_fan]

Question: How reproducible is the flex and how would teams consider that in their CFD calculations and wind tunnel models?
This being the rear wing, maybe one can ignore it and assume that it won’t affect other parts too much... (I won’t mention the obvious implications on other wings that don’t belong in this thread...)

I think the flex is very reproducible as is the CFD models. I am not sure on scaled wind tunnel models however.

I think they need to know how it works, and quantify it, because it's speed / load based, not just straight away, and they'll need to know how it effects things in medium-high speed corners.

I think the high speed corners part is interesting. We know that all of the teams have front wings that reduce angle of attack with speed - it's a natural result of the cantilevered nature of the front wing flaps. So as speed increases, the front wing will actually slow down the gain in downforce - it won't increase with the square of the speed because the angle of attack is reducing with speed. This will create a natural tendency to understeer as speed increases. If the rear wing changes angle of attack with speed, as appears to happen, then the overall balance will not move towards understeer quite so much because the rear will be losing downforce too. That's a useful thing in and of itself. If a car with a flexi rear wing then has the wing fixed more rigidly, there will be a change in the inherent balance of the car, and one that will affect it not just at high speed but throughout the speed range - the front will have to be adjusted to compensate and this will have an effect on the way the car drives.

[peaty]

Did F1 teams went straight into the season or there was a pre-season in 2020!? So, start there.
A lot of things happen between pre-season and the first race.

[...] it's your interpretation that they didn't have anything concrete. They did indeed, but not formally (they didn't make it official).

Also, following your arguments of finding articles to "prove" your theory...which wing was in the spot light you said? Because the first article of a specific team that comes up is Wolff denying. Tombazis didn't mentioned RBR, did he?
[...]

I would love to see the rear wings of all cars during the first 3 races.

It's ironic that you seem to believe that what i posted is "my theory" that i would somehow have to prove (what a joke putting that word in quotation marks) when all I did is provide a timeline of events that is easily verfiable with some online searches.

The earth is flat and humans never set a foot on the moon. That is easily "verfiable" with some online searches.

There is absolutely no "theory" it's all facts that contradict what you claim, on the other hand most of what you posted is pure speculation that you cannot prove anyways and is heavily bordering on conspiracy theory territory - it's that easy.

This is nothing new. Everything that goes against Mercedes interest is conspiracy theory, illegal, etc.

No one talked about flexing wings during pre-season testing, not a single article mentioning it, not a single use of the word "flexing" or "flex" or similar on the forum in the 2020 pre-season testing thread.

I'm very confuse. Media articles and/or forum threads are what dictate reality now?

There's a direct quote from Tombazis that they did not have anything ready and that it was merely on their to-do list.
Of course being in an official function for the FIA he did not single out any competitor.

Thinking that they had a test ready at that time is highly speculative and would require that Tombazis lied.

Your claims are as speculative mines (according to your "standard"). He didn't say nor imply "they did not have anything ready and that it was merely on their to-do list". Did he!?

"We do hope to make some enhancements to the regulations and to the deflection test sometime in the not so distant future. But we want to do it reasonably carefully and not to rush it and make a wrong call."

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/fia- ... s/4838505/

He also said they hope to introduce the new test "sometime in the not so distant future". Is 10 month within that time frame? I don't think so...and we could keep questioning things like the new test procedure itself, etc.

Thinking that they then delayed it because Nugnes thought he saw the Merc wing "snap" into corners is plain silly.

You might be right, but it's not as silly as thinking that Mercedes was not behind the whole thing or thinking that the TD coming out after Hamilton' complaints is just coincidence.

It's also clear that Mercedes was lobbying for the test to be brought forward, just like other teams lobbied for other things to get banned previously - without a formal protest or asking for a clarification. This doesn't prove that Mercedes has any special "power", unless of course their main competitors have the same power but then it's not really that special, is it?

Yeah, it's pretty much the same. Mercedes is now where Ferrari used to be. Even better I would say. They have had the longest streak ever. That's ironic.

Of course you're free to believe whatever you want but bringing up your very own (conspiracy) theory every few days doesn't add anything to this topic at all.

Oohh yeah, the political side of F1 doesn't add to the technical topic at all. Politics just make a technical solution go from illegal to "ingenuity", "engineering prowess", "thinking outside the box", "innovative", etc as we have seen over the hybrid era.

[peaty]

Question: How reproducible is the flex and how would teams consider that in their CFD calculations and wind tunnel models?
This being the rear wing, maybe one can ignore it and assume that it won’t affect other parts too much... (I won’t mention the obvious implications on other wings that don’t belong in this thread...)

FSI have come a long long way. The wind tunnel side is a bit more complicated

[dans79]

Question: How reproducible is the flex and how would teams consider that in their CFD calculations and wind tunnel models?
This being the rear wing, maybe one can ignore it and assume that it won’t affect other parts too much..

Considering the level at which most f1 teams composite fabrication departments work, it should be very reproducible.

Their is a lot of software on the market for structural modeling of composites, so the biggest hurdle would be how integratable are all their design and modeling tools.

A 60% wind tunnel model might be a little more tricky, but still doable.

This being the rear wing, maybe one can ignore it and assume that it won’t affect other parts too much..

I wouldn't say they can ignore it completely, but it's not nearly as interconnected as other parts of the car are.

[gshevlin]

When I read the posturing and warbling by team managers and principals over the consequences of the FIA actually enforcing something that they made obvious was a basic philosophical rule, namely that movable aerodynamic devices are not permitted, I am inclined to the view that a much tougher enforcement regime would be desirable. Like disqualifying a team for an entire race weekend. The loss to the team would be a lot more than the claimed $500k to fix wings or other bodywork items to make them pass the rigidity rules.
The departure of Chase Carey seems to have resulted in a return to a lot of the behaviors of the Ecclestone era, such as posturing and negotiating in public.

[Hoffman900]

Question: How reproducible is the flex and how would teams consider that in their CFD calculations and wind tunnel models?
This being the rear wing, maybe one can ignore it and assume that it won’t affect other parts too much... (I won’t mention the obvious implications on other wings that don’t belong in this thread...)

I think the flex is very reproducible as is the CFD models. I am not sure on scaled wind tunnel models however.

I think they need to know how it works, and quantify it, because it's speed / load based, not just straight away, and they'll need to know how it effects things in medium-high speed corners.

I think the high speed corners part is interesting. We know that all of the teams have front wings that reduce angle of attack with speed - it's a natural result of the cantilevered nature of the front wing flaps. So as speed increases, the front wing will actually slow down the gain in downforce - it won't increase with the square of the speed because the angle of attack is reducing with speed. This will create a natural tendency to understeer as speed increases. If the rear wing changes angle of attack with speed, as appears to happen, then the overall balance will not move towards understeer quite so much because the rear will be losing downforce too. That's a useful thing in and of itself. If a car with a flexi rear wing then has the wing fixed more rigidly, there will be a change in the inherent balance of the car, and one that will affect it not just at high speed but throughout the speed range - the front will have to be adjusted to compensate and this will have an effect on the way the car drives.

Exactly what I was thinking too.

[TimW]

Any structure deflects under load, perfectly rigid materials do not exist. The Mercedes wing also deflects. So the requirement that a wing shall not deflect is always subjective. You can always make structures stiffer, and also the Mercedes wind deflects significantly.

By defining a test load with a limit the Fia made it objective requirement. Thereby a wing that passed the test becomes legal. I do not see how a judge could rule otherwise. But of course the FIA is not a court and lots of politics...

If I were Red Bull I'd push the FIA to make the requirements even stricter, such that all teams are affected and have to change their wing(and thus lose budget on it)