dans79 wrote: ↑18 Jun 2019, 22:20
Unless something has changed recently and I didn't notice that the spacer and extra holes have only been seen on the rear tires. Imo, the spacer and the holes through the rim exist for one purpose, and that' to thermally isolate the rim from the hub. The rears where overheating because they couldn't adequately control how, when, and how much heat was getting into them.
I'd put this question to you! what benefit does generating vortexes in rear wheels have? They aren't going to help seal the floor, and their is nothing down stream from them, so all they would be doing is causing drag.
The front wheels have the extra teardrop holes in the spokes too, tho yes I agree it can be hard to know which wheel the photo is of sometimes, but still if they have those holes why wouldn't they energise them with the jets from the brake duct? as they have that technology
The spacer, well it's not too central to my opening point except that it's clearly just an insulator and was a great diversion. The spacers vent
immediately, they're not part of the same system as the holes through into the spokes. The holes into the spokes are there, you can see in my first post, so whatever explanation we come up with has to account for them
A vortex from the rear wheels will be to pull that tyre wake outwards and create a lower pressure and less messed up area for the edge of the diffuser flow and the flow that's come round the sidepods. Not that i'm an aero, but the whole effect of the sidepods flow is to entrain the diffuser flow as it exits, apparently, that's how important the exit of the diffuser is, and we can see how the diffuser flares outwards at the back, towards that wake area behind the tyre
And coming back to the texture issue, if they wanted to cool the rim that's the obvious and simplest way to do it, isn't it. And how do we explain a warming texture in one part and cooling fins in another part? And all this is happening at the same time as outwash suddenly was going to get massively cut, and also magically Mercedes seem to have suffered less than the others.
They have a non-outwashing front wing, relatively, but their floor is working better than the others and it's the floor they're desperate to keep the front tyre wake away from
Plus iirc at the end of last year their rears weren't lasting especially better but this year with the new suspension geometry they are
So, I have a few dots to join up i think