Red Bull concept at the end?
The teams are already preparing for 2021 at full speed. 2022 is just around the corner. Which concept will prevail in the future? A lot of employment like at Red Bull or little like at Mercedes? We give answers.
Mercedes has already stopped developing the 2020 car. Racing Point and Renault too. Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren cheerfully continue to upgrade. Although they are stealing wind tunnel time for 2021. Your argument: Everything that comes to the car now will also pay off in the next year.
Originally, the plan of many teams was to prepare the big upgrade for 2021 and then to switch to the completely new concept for 2022 from January 1, 2021. But the serious cuts in the underbody for next year's cars have messed up this plan for many teams.
Also at Racing Point. Head of Technology Andy Green will definitely reserve wind tunnel time for the 2021 car in the coming year. Even if the season has already started. The cut that the FIA has decreed to prevent the downforce from exploding is too significant for one stage of development to be sufficient to compensate for it.
Two different racing cars
Green estimates that you would lose over a second if you retrofitted the underbody around the rear wheels and the diffuser as required by the 2021 rules. "We will lose downforce in the rear. It will not be easy to compensate for that completely because you lose a lot of surface area. But we believe it will be possible."
In contrast to Red Bull, Mercedes relies on an aero concept with little employment in the rear.
At Racing Point, that will happen in at least two major stages, possibly followed by minor adjustments. "We will definitely build a presentation car and a season-opening car. The new aero rules require bigger changes than expected. Because the details were only approved a few weeks ago, we cannot get everything ready for the winter test We will have the first aero approval for the presentation car ready in a month. "
"But that's not the end of the development. I even expect further small development steps in the first half of the 2021 season. In the first step, so much downforce is lost that we are now back at the bottom of a very steep learning curve. That calls for upgrades, which doesn't help save money. "
Which aero concept suffers more?
While the trend at the moment is more towards reducing the angle of attack based on the Mercedes model, Green is not yet sure whether this will continue next year. "The new rules could punish us more than the cars with a higher rack. Some of the parts that disappear under the floor make less of a difference to the cars with a higher rack than to the concept of Mercedes and us." So good news for the Red Bull Group? Answer Green: "Probably the other side argues exactly the other way around."
But one thing is certain: in 2022 all cars will drive lower on the rear axle. That was also the reason that made Racing Point change its concept for this season. "With the 2022 rules, you can forget about a higher rack. This is a ground effect car that works according to completely new rules." Red Bull guru Adrian Newey will have to renounce his philosophy, believes his colleague from Racing Point: "We all know how ground-effect cars work. They have to drive as close as possible to the road."
McLaren has already carried out initial tests in Belgium with an underbody cut like in 2021.
It will be exciting to see which of the different development roadmaps will ultimately prevail. Is it an advantage to have left the development of the current car early on? Green believes: "We have been working in the CFD simulation and in the wind tunnel on the 2021 car for five weeks in order to prevent us from going into the next season behind and being forced to catch up."
Large teams have to limit themselves
This is especially true for a small team that cannot afford parallel developments. The very limited wind tunnel times and CFD capacities also play a trick on large teams like Red Bull. "Red Bull is theoretically able to run two programs at the same time, but the aerodynamic restrictions and the token rule will prevent them from doing so. You have to choose one or the other. It doesn't matter how big your team is. The rules are very restrictive. "
A new factor will be added in the aerodynamics development next year. The world championship position decides how much wind tunnel
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