FIA - Centreline Downwash Generating (CDG) Wing

[manchild]

I'm sure that in 2008 cars won’t be designed according to current FIA plans. I don't like CDG because I don't believe it can generate more overtaking and until we see it on track it is my word against FIA. No one has seen it working and no one knows if it works. It is ugly for sure and decreases safety because it reduces visibility in rear mirrors and represents huge danger in case of tyre or suspension failure.

[DaveKillens]

That's great news! Do you have any details about why it has been rejected?

This is all I know about the stall, the technical directors want more time to study this new rule, and make it work http://www.f1racing.net/en/news.php?newsID=104553

From what I have read, this new rear system will be implimented in '08. It was hoped (by some) that quick approval would follow and this new wing system would be used in '07.

[polar_agva@hotmail.com]

how embarasing.... why is FIA doing this??? LMFAO...anyone think it looks weird with the cars???....if the tyre bupms on it it will break and coause a puncture.... very dangerous...hope no cars have it on

[ginsu]

But the tires never blowout and take body work with them! Wow,
they really thought that one out.

[Guest]

when humans race each other in self powered formats they are using a finite resource of energy that they can choose to use in different ways in different times. the 100m is nearing the exception to the rule as its a flat out blast, the 200 as well for top athlets. but all other forms of racing. be it swiming marathons or even the tour de france require a certain amout of managment of this finite power source.

in F1 the problem is all the parts are designed to last the whole race flat out, pioneered by shumacker in the 90s with his repetative qualy laps during races

early forumula one was much more about nursing the car to the end often masking problems with missing gears and sick engines. as technologies have improved so has reliabilty and thus this factor has been removed.

i think the fias idea of a single tyre was to intruduce a finite resource that requires managment throughout the whole race. it worked exectly as planned, as demonstrated by ferrari being all out at sea due to having designed a car and team around 3 or 4 short race stints rather than the endurance test its ment to be.

i agree that gear box manual shifts would increase lap times and introduce an extra unkonwn into the transmission and directly increase unreliabilty and thus open up races but i am not sure it is what is wanted or required by the viewing public.

motogp use heavly managed constant mess boxes with engine cut out on upshift and throttle bliping on downshift. but the rider still has to clutch and shift to make it work and runs a risk (admitadly small) of gearbox or engine damage, but then again gp bikes aint as 100% bannzi as f1 cars are whilst racing. and thus are managed more by the rider

so what remains that could be a finite resource, not effect the spectical and increase overtaking.
not downforce its a constant
not tires as they just binned that idea
not electronics as even the fia admit that they cant be policed
not much is there

Brakes. i mean carbon fiber brakes are awesome but can you see the awesomeness. no never. you can see and f1 car corner at mental speed you can see it accelerate out the pits but there is no impression of speed loss on the telly. even if the driver is geting 4 g on his harness it looks nowt to us.

make them have steal brakes. so that say they could last about 3/4 of the race if they where used 100% of the time thus making drivers 'manage' them. still allows hot qually laps. and opens up more passing under braking
and with braking areas increasing 100 m to 150 / 200 meters then the chances of a pass are increased.

i would also remove tire warmers, i so recal jaun stomping on the oposition after restarts or pits whilst in the champ cars

rant over
or to be continued...

[Reca]

As said elsewhere many many times (I think that coupled with the golf ball dimples the steel brakes are one of the most frequent proposals in forums...), with advance in modern technology for both steel brakes and pads the braking power, the stability of performance, wear rate, etc etc of current steel brakes are as good, if not better than the carbon/carbon ones, hence even if they adopted steel discs braking performance wouldn’t change at all. Besides, F1 braking ability is related more to grip (hence downforce) than to power of the braking system.
The only real reason teams use c-c brakes is that a carbon disc weighs less than 2 kg while a steel disc would be way more than twice that.

Anyway, in the current issue of Autosprint there are a few quotes from F1 people (MS, JPM, De la Rosa, Massa, Keke Rosberg, Frank Dernie and Patrick Head) about what would be needed to favour overtakes.
The interesting thing is that drivers (DlR, FM and Rosberg) mostly think that the reduction of downforce could be a solution, while engineers opinion is that downforce isn’t the problem.
I like particularly the opinion expressed by Frank Dernie, first because it confirms exactly what I wrote some months ago in a long post (it’s a typical feature of the human being appreciate people who share your opinion ); then because of the reference to wet races, I already heard from an ex-f1 engineer a couple of months ago the same reference and I consider it quite interesting :

my opinion is strictly personal, but I believe that in 25 years the only thing people wanted to do was to reduce the aerodynamic efficiency. Did we obtain more spectacular races that way ? I would say definitively no. The most enjoying and interesting races are the wet ones, and that should demonstrate that it’s the low mechanical grip, not the low aerodynamic grip, that favours overtakes. What we need in my opinion are harder tyres, with less grip. The CDG wing proposed by FIA never convinced me completely : in my opinion you can’t analyse completely its behaviour with studies and theoretical calculations. Anyway if we are thinking about the problem of turbulence in the wake, we have to remember that these are directly proportional to engine power. Hp are the only thing “dragging” the wing thru the air: if power goes down, also the turbulence diminishes. So with the introduction of the V8 the loss of downforce due to turbulence on the wake should be reduced.

Then I would also add Patrick Head quote :

People don’t realize how much the technical level of the F1 did improve. In old days, most of overtakes did happen because during the race the driver wasn’t able to maintain the same pace, brakes were losing efficiency, the gearbox was refusing gears... I find ingenuous by some people to say “give us back manual gearboxes and you’ll see spectacle again” If we had to design a similar transmission, nowadays it wouldn’t be as in the old days : it would be a perfect device, that doesn’t suffer failures during the race.

[manchild]

I agree with Patrick Head but even if manual gearboxes would be all perfect and equal there would still be a great difference between drivers, their style, concentartion and stamina under pressure and that is enough for mistakes and overtaking.

[bernard]

It was a good point about the tyre blow hazard. What if a tyre blows at 300km/h and takes the other side of the wing with it? Especially seeing as these wings are only attached by one(!) beam. Though when your tire blows at 300km/h losing a wing wont be the chiefest of your concerns.

[manchild]

Its enough for tyre to blow at 60 km/h and the cars behing will enter into barage of sharp shrapnels of various shapes and sizes which can not only hurt drivers but also jam airboxes and sidepods... not to mention additional accidents caused by punctured tyres. Exploded tyre would launch one whole side of CDG wing or pieces of it upwards and it would cause a huge mess on track.

As I mentioned before, simple loss of pressure in tyre or suspension failure can have same effect as exploded tyre.

Back to the drawing board Max!

[Guest]

i was under the impression that FIA will allow tire pressure auto regulation in subsequent years? no?

wouldnt this then drastically reduce likelihoods of tire failures?

[Sawtooth-spike]

so in the event of a tire failure, no only will you lose the grip from that tire and the front wheel on the opposite side, but you will lose all the downforce on that side of the rear end of the car i am sure that will help!

[Guest]

my opinion is strictly personal, but I believe that in 25 years the only thing people wanted to do was to reduce the aerodynamic efficiency. Did we obtain more spectacular races that way ? I would say definitively no.

I agree completely. They banned side skirts, and if they were in effect today, I'm sure we'd see more overtaking.

Then how do you regulate grip. The tires, exactly! I think we will be seeing the return of slick tires pretty soon, so they aren't completely deaf at the FIA.

[bernard]

Then how do you regulate grip. The tires, exactly! I think we will be seeing the return of slick tires pretty soon, so they aren't completely deaf at the FIA.

Hmm, well this is the eternal problem; how to increase overtaking?
People often say grip would be the key to it, but it's not necessarily so. Sure, you'd have more grip out of a corner, but so would your opponent.
Having instead less grip, dramatically less, would lead to the driver actually driving the car, and the cars would be twitchier, leading to the overtake and be overtaken type of chases that are very fun to watch.

But if you just hack away the aerodynamics and slap better tyres under the car you move from varying levels of grip to constant level of grip. Leading perhaps to even less overtaking.

The solution would be to leave the tyres as they are and hamper the aerodynamics with a vengeance. Cars would be faster on straights, harder to drive, safely slow in turns and generally more exciting. Hopefully.
The ideal situation would be to return the rules to what they were around 95-99, to the time before Max got bored and decided to find something to do. With a few exceptions, naturally.

Edit: spelling

[Tom]

Of course, if a tireblew out now it would,

cause a huge mess on track

, ow.
Sorry manchild.
I don't agree.
Also with the CDG if one wing fails then we won't see a catastrophic departure from the track, like Kimi in '04, Hockenheim.

I would like to see a few races with the CDGs, then evaluate their effectiveness.

[manchild]

Exploded tyre that would smash the CDG wing would launch whole side of the wing or pieces of it upwards with high force and than the pieces would fall down like a rain with cars behind running into them.

FIA has enough money to check the CDG effectiveness by testing two or more older modifed F1 cars than to impose it without testing and risk safety. They did such thing at the end of 1993 season and after tragedies and so many accients in 1994 they changed reguations completely for 1995.

Anyway, how can you say for sure that failure of CDG wing can't cause catastropy?