NL_Fer wrote: ↑24 Apr 2018, 21:31
Looking at the current f1 car, it looks like an evolution starting in 1998 with narrow cars and grooved tyres, to 2008 big front wing, small rear wing, to 2014 no diffusor. Again in 2017 going up in DF with all sorts of little added wings.
Can we not continue from 1997 with the current track width and tyres. Narrower less fragile frontwing and get rid of the fragile barge boards and winglets and underfloor sticking out under the sidepods.
The problem is you can't force teams to unlearn what they've learned. In the late 90's CFD was still in relative infancy, so the majority of aerodynamic testing was performed in wind tunnels or on track (testing was unlimited back then). The advantage of CFD is being able to visualize the flow field around the car - which is where teams started playing with vortices to influence the rest of the car. Having that extra detail is when the car's started to sprout the extra aerodynamic features - as the teams really started manipulating and controlling the air around the car for net gains. The regulations between 2016 and 2017 weren't all that different really, conceptually, basically the car's were stretched to make them wider - the longer diffuser and wider rear wing were the main differences (for the design concept).
This for me is one of the problems when it comes to following another car - the flow field is so finely tuned that any disturbance will negatively impact performance. On top of the base effect of the wake - which is a dynamic pressure effect. Cleaner cars are generally easier to follow as spec series show - F2, Indycar, Superformula, Formula E... etc all have lower downforce than F1, but also cleaner aerodynamic surfaces.
It would be relatively easy to define a wing and a strake in the rules and fix those in specific volumes on the car - to clean up the aesthetic of the cars. e.g.
an aerofoil is a surface defined by a cambered pair of arcs whose intent is to generate a force perpendicular to the direction of travel (vertical or horizontal). Aerofoils can only be present in the boxes defined in section ... as 'front wing' and 'rear wing', each consisting of a maximum of 2 elements named the 'mainplane' and 'flap'.
I'm yet to be convinced an in-wash wing endplate is inherently better for following than an out-wash endplate - every other open-wheel series used out-wash and following is easier than F1. My understanding of the proposal is a standardised endplate - which of course is going to be better for following if it's simpler in design. (I will add I prefer the look of the car when the front wing is the same width as the bodywork behind!)