shelly wrote:I am not sure it is related to spillover; I think instead that the choice is dictated by three concurrent aims:
-create a low pressure zone (corresponding to the point when the flow turns from ouward toi inward on the sidepod) in communication with the floor -ie immediately above it
-avoid that low pressure could act on the upper pointing surface of an exposed floor by using all width
-producing a shorter even if wider sidepod, that (in rbr view?) could be more useful than a narrower but longer packaging in potimising flow over the top downstream part of the floor
Sorry Im bringing this up from the dead. I hope nobody minds. To be honest some of the terms used in this thread are different than I am used to so I may be misunderstanding something so please correct me if I am.
I wondered when i saw the difference in their side pod shape and their increased rake.... Any time you improve the stuff in the front of the car with a higher downforce strategy you almost invariably rob the underbody of "clean" air and so the diffuser suffers. On a higher downforce car the diffuser will get a larger amount of its feed air from around the side of the car and so on a car which is more diffuser dependent you are often trying to recover those losses.
Any given design of diffuser or tunnel or whatever if you imagine it in isolation, it will improve its performance by either increasing the pressure before you enter the diffusion section, decreasing the pressure at the back of it (same for increasing the quality and quantity of the feed air). So if you have clean air coming in from around the sidepod and you let it spill around to the underbody (rather than out the back to fill the wake) a larger amount of ground clearance at the back can help that. The increased rake could possibly be to help with diffuser "supply side" if its worth the trade off. Rake will also pickup some downforce in the forward areas of the flat floor by nature of the angle of attack. So you pick up downforce on both front and rear by improving the supply into the diffuser and giving angle to the floor. People seem to think its always about sealing the underbody off but it all depends.
I think to be honest.... their design is all working in harmony and is simply a higher downforce design than others. Others will try that side pod shape but it may not test out beneficial because they aren't using all the other pieces of the puzzle.
Now whether or not this is a more or less *efficient* approach I could not say for sure.. but is conceivable to me that in terms of L/D it could potentially be a better tradeoff, even if it was looking at a higher raw drag coefficient. That is just venturing a guess though and perhaps not really relevant either. The real question to me is not the efficiency but what follows out to a quicker lap time and what wont get you passed on the straight. To me though DRS changed that.... Having a gap before the straight away gains a greater value, you need to avoid the car behind getting within DRS range. If you are behind them and can catch before the straight you will have a higher top speed no matter what. In my uninformed overly-simplistic analysis I would say go for a high downforce strategy start with a more agressive front wing, follow through to less side pod undercut and more rake. Could help with tire management as well.
