JohnsonsEvilTwin wrote:@Bhallg2k
Would a cars wake not hamper the trailing car? The term "dirty air" has been used countless times by engineers, team principals commentators and many online guru's.
Inbox me so as not to incur any Mod intervention for off topic discussion....
This can easily be on-topic.
I suppose I shouldn't say that dirty air is a myth, because, of course, it's real, and it does affect the ability of a car to closely follow another. What it doesn't do, however, is adversely affect overtaking; that's the myth.
Overtaking is all about one car being faster than another. Nothing else matters.
In a hypothetical situation, Car A could leave behind a golden wake of perfectly serene air that's ripe for making downforce, but Car B will never be able to overtake unless it's faster than Car A. Otherwise, cars of similar performance tend to belong on the same spot of the track at about the same time, which we all know cannot happen. That's how processions start.
Watch some of the video I posted earlier of the 1985 European Grand Prix. Rosberg (Keke) simply could not get by Senna (Ayrton) in the opening stages of the race, despite the relatively immature aerodynamics of the time. He just wasn't fast enough.
The Pirelli tires negate the claustrophobic regulations that produce virtually identical cars by assuring that it's nearly impossible for Car A and Car B to have the tires working equally well within their extremely narrow window of optimum performance. The absurdly dynamic nature of tire degradation then induces the performance differentiation required for overtaking.
This is why overtaking has exploded over the last two years. If dependence on aerodynamics is really the bane of overtaking as it's often made out to be, the game would have changed in 2009 rather than two year later.
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