I Have seen these during practice in Barcelona, and now during practice in Monaco:
some sort of strut running from
the so called water-wings
to the monocoque...
Does anyone have an idea what purpose they are serving?
To me it looks like there just there to support the wing. Maybe the loads applied to it are to much for it to handle and making it stronger adds too much weight...But i could be wrong
It's deninitely for support...probably for the board under the car to withstand more force.It doesn't seem aerodynamically good to place an object in front of the sidepod inlets...unless thermodynamic related.
quite interesting...they put something about 50-100kilos of ballast into the car and have to stabilize aero appendiges with struts.You could argue if the ballast could be posed at a much better place in the form of a stiffer layout of this device...but they sure know what they are doing
Support seems wierd since that part of the car has to resist a certain amount of side impact according to the FIA Rule. The teams with the sidepots a bit further back all had these straight 'wings' once the rule was introduced. Some changed the sidepots over the years others kept the things because they also have an earodinamic purpose to get better flow under the car.
So support seems really strange since they have to be rather strong anyway. And teh topic starter mentioned the struts are only around during the 1 practise day. So what can it be? Some sort of sensors seem unlikely too
That strut was already on the car in Spain and I think that it could have to do with the vortex generated by the tip of the fin that, because of the deformation, wasn’t in the optimal position compared with the sidepod and that was reducing the efficiency of the underfloor.
That diagonal rod is the fastest and also the most efficient way to correct the problem from a structural point of view, the theoretical downsides are drag and disturbance to the flow towards the radiator but both effects are probably negligible.
