Dirty air sensitivity and regulations

[turbof1]

You are merely looking at the aero efficiency, which is not an indicator for turbulent wake. As Bhall explained and showed with animated cfd images, the diffusers produced the most turbulent airflow. By just reducing wings and increasing the floor/diffuser, the problem gets worse. This is why I am hammering on the fact that most people misinterpret the success of the ground effect cars: not the increased diffuser and floor df is the key, but the fact these cars lack a front wing and have a big yet low cambered rear wing. The latter is vital in upwashing the massive amounts of turbulent airflow.

While it is established that the diffuser produces the most turbulence are there enough data to support the claim that the diffuser gets affected by running in turbulent air?

Paddy Lowe says so, yes. You can bring the argument forward he says this for political reasons, but saying something for your own agenda does not make the statement de facto wrong. Again, Bhall brought forward arguments that underline what Paddy Lowe says, actually makes sense.

If GE does not get introduced for political reasons, then that's the right decision for the wrong reasons. But it is still the right decision.

For the record: a few months ago I had the same opinion as you did on the matter. Remove wings and let GE do the brunt of the job. Bhall showed me otherwise (often after lengthy discussions). He can be wrong at times, but he is still by miles away the best brain to pick around here on these matters.

[bhall II]

The floor of the F1 car is most efficient at creating down-force with least drag. While current cars have a lift to drag ratio of 2.5 cars of the past were a lot more efficient with 7.5

This is all the more reason as to why the down force from the floor needs to be increased and moved closer to the center of the car while reducing the reliance on wings to make cars less dirty air sensitive.

Taking your numbers for granted - I don't know one way or the other- that's a deliberate strategy intended to make slipstreaming easier. The Overtaking Working Group tried to maintain pre-2009 drag levels, but missed the mark by -10%.

Also, upwards of 90% of all downforce created by present-day F1 cars is from ground effect. The rear wing does little more than balance the car and help drive the diffuser (and whatever Paddy Lowe says about inwash).

[rjsa]

For the record: a few months ago I had the same opinion as you did on the matter. Remove wings and let GE do the brunt of the job. Bhall showed me otherwise (often after lengthy discussions). He can be wrong at times, but he is still by miles away the best brain to pick around here on these matters.

Unless, of course, you graduated as a Naval Architect, with endless hours of fluid dynamics under your belt - even some scale model testing - and don't agree with him.

[turbof1]

For the record: a few months ago I had the same opinion as you did on the matter. Remove wings and let GE do the brunt of the job. Bhall showed me otherwise (often after lengthy discussions). He can be wrong at times, but he is still by miles away the best brain to pick around here on these matters.

Unless, of course, you are a Naval Architect, with endless hours of fluid dynamics under your belt - even some scale model testing - and don't agree with him.

With all respect to your education and experience (seriously, with all due respect), but given even Paddy Lowe was surprised because of the results, I think it's pretty relative. My take on this is that turbulent airflow and the implications are barely understood even by experienced people. For the record: I am not claiming at all me or Bhall know it better, but we do acknowledge that the assumptions we had on it in the past do not have that much ground.

[bhall II]

I'm with rjsa on that one!

[turbof1]

I'm with rjsa on that one!

You are so full with dirty air ! That'll create an eddy in our laminar friendship .

[FW17]

Taking your numbers for granted - I don't know one way or the other- that's a deliberate strategy intended to make slipstreaming easier.

That is not a deliberate strategy by the outcome of the current regulations.

[FW17]

Paddy Lowe says so, yes. You can bring the argument forward he says this for political reasons, but saying something for your own agenda does not make the statement de facto wrong. Again, Bhall brought forward arguments that underline what Paddy Lowe says, actually makes sense.

Paddy Lowe has his own agenda. Last week he said Ferrari 2015 engine is the least powerful of the current field only for Honda to come out later and say that their current engine is less powerful than their last years unit.


Those figures are are not made up but by Willem Toet.

[Andres125sx]

PS: so the OWG did a similar proposal but you keep repeating that´s absurd, I don´t understand aero, etc.????

Yeah, and the Overtaking Working Group did such a bang-up job with the 2009 rules.

Maybe if they would have elaborated it a bit further instead of using only two small flaps to change its AoA....

They finally used those flaps for balance corrections mainly, wich proves DF can be adjusted with active aero. They only needed to go a bit further (to be able to increase DF more), and also limit the use of those active flaps when they´re within one second to the car in front

What about the adjustable ride height idea? What´s the reason they didn´t use it?

I've made it clear from the beginning that standardization is a different ball of wax, and the proposal in question called for virtually everything but the sidepods and front/rear wings to be proscribed by the regulations. Given identical floors (supplied by a third party), de facto standard suspensions, and incredibly strict bodywork rules that sought to limit wing elements and prohibit overlap, the grid would have been rapidly homogenized by convergence. In other words, the proposal would have turned F1 into IndyCar.

That might work for some folks, but it would have been a travesty in my eyes.

Probably that solution was asking for too much standarization, but aero is so limited currently I´m sure there must be something wich could be used only when in dirty air without standarizing the cars to much


Crazy idea... what if the adjustable ride height does affect only the FW instead of teh whole car? Imagine the pillars holding the FW are adjustable, so when the car is in dirty air the FW can be moved closer to the ground, improving GEs.

Could that improve DF on the FW enough when in dirty air to make any noticeable difference?

[turbof1]

Paddy Lowe says so, yes. You can bring the argument forward he says this for political reasons, but saying something for your own agenda does not make the statement de facto wrong. Again, Bhall brought forward arguments that underline what Paddy Lowe says, actually makes sense.

Paddy Lowe has his own agenda. Last week he said Ferrari 2015 engine is the least powerful of the current field only for Honda to come out later and say that their current engine is less powerful than their last years unit.


Those figures are are not made up but by Willem Toet.

Again: using arguments for your own agenda, does not make those arguments de facto wrong. A bit reasoning learns some pro-agenda arguments are more thrustworthy then others: i.e. Paddy does not and has not worked for either mclaren/honda or ferrari, but has seated an important position in the OWG. The first case has Paddy commenting on something he has no inside data on, the second case he actually has.

Does he use that for his own agenda? Sure. But just because he does, does not mean we have to automatically discard it.

Those figures are are not made up but by Willem Toet.

But as far as I know (correct me if I am wrong on this), Willem Toet has not seated in the OWG. The OWG had a specific task of getting a better understanding of running in turbulent air. Given even senior aero chiefs seated on the OWG were surprised by the results, it's not a stretch Willem Toet is not the best person to be commenting on the matter of turbulent airflow. He is an excellent aero chief, but you have to link specific knowledge and specific experience to the persons. Even if these persons have an agenda. Mind having an agenda is something we should take into consideration.

[rjsa]

I'm with rjsa on that one!

Bhall gets my seal of approval this time.

[bhall II]

That is not a deliberate strategy by the outcome of the current regulations.

Yes, it is.

The conclusion was that they needed to reduce downforce by 50 per cent while retaining similar drag coefficients to the 2006 car.

[...]

The final configuration pretty much hit its targets though baseline drag fell by 10 per cent.

Paddy Lowe has his own agenda.

Paddy Lowe wasn't the only member of the OWG, and the group's recommendations - including the exploitation of "inwash" - were based upon data supplied by all teams as well as work done by an independent third party (Fondtech).

Read the rest of the article above. "Inwash" is real; it's just irrelevant (because the relationship between "dirty air" and overtaking is largely mythical...to me, at least).

"I think that's one of the concerns that people have, because none of us really fully understand overtaking," [Former OWG member, Pat] Symonds told ESPN. "We can apply some truisms to it, roughly it's a truism that if you've got more downforce then it's harder to overtake, but that's not completely true because there are certain aerodynamics that are more harmful than others. I don't think any of us really understand enough about it and it would be nice if we did."

[FW17]

OWG never had overtaking as an agenda. There 1st agenda was to get the cars 5 seconds.

Pat Symonds of Renault, Rory Byrne of Ferrari and Paddy Lowe of McLaren represented the top 3 teams.

"Almost all of the attempts to reduce downforce in the recent past have been retrograde in terms of overtaking possibilities and wake behaviour," one member of the OWG said. "If we had wanted to make overtaking chances worse, that was what we would have come up with."

Some of these statements were amazing to read from the so called chiefs of aero. Till then they did not understand the interaction of rear wing and diffuser is just laughable considering each had been working at-least 20 years on the same.

[miqi23]

OWG never had overtaking as an agenda. There 1st agenda was to get the cars 5 seconds.

Pat Symonds of Renault, Rory Byrne of Ferrari and Paddy Lowe of McLaren represented the top 3 teams.

"Almost all of the attempts to reduce downforce in the recent past have been retrograde in terms of overtaking possibilities and wake behaviour," one member of the OWG said. "If we had wanted to make overtaking chances worse, that was what we would have come up with."

Some of these statements were amazing to read from the so called chiefs of aero. Till then they did not understand the interaction of rear wing and diffuser is just laughable considering each had been working at-least 20 years on the same.

..and my post got a negative review for stating what you just said in your last paragraph

[bhall II]

OWG never...

I agree that overtaking was curiously neglected by the Overtaking Working Group. It seems they erroneously skipped the question and dove straight into what they thought was the answer.

That said, I don't think it's fair to say anyone claimed to "...not understand the interaction of rear wing and diffuser..." I'm sure everyone had a excellent understanding of how those components work together on the same car. But the idea was to understand the effect on trailing cars, which no one had seriously investigated until that point, because it was never a design priority.