As it has been for some time, these cars are finely tuned aerodynamic systems. The sad thing is, it seems it will become more prevalent in this formula that there is a single overarching system that is the best, and the team will converge on it.AR3-GP wrote: ↑18 Jul 2023, 23:13The messaging is all over the place.scuderiabrandon wrote: ↑18 Jul 2023, 22:54Despite it being impossible in-season to make such a drastic change, it's pretty clear now that sidepods were the least of mercedes issues.
Allison says they don't matter: https://us.motorsport.com/f1/news/red-b ... /10488817/
Toto says the RB sidepod cause a significant loss of downforce:
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/merc ... m=referral
Cutting the sidepod off the RB and gluing it to the Mercedes isn't going to make Mercedes faster (this is the point Allison makes, but it's the layman's low hanging fruit, or the so called "trivial solution" in math). Toto points out in the second link, that when you do this, you lose chunks of downforce. That is correct. The rest of the car is not optimized around the new sidepod.
The more interesting "solution" is the one that shows that a certain sidepod design goes hand in hand with a certain front wing and floor design. This is what is really meant when people point to the zero-pod as the problem. That it points to a conceptual error for the entire vehicle.
In previous Formulas, we saw more divergence and multiple systems working well.