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Mrs. Hungry vetoed my trip to rolex 24 cause she much rather the Chili Cookoff Country Music Festival. So instead of a cold, excited and freezing rain with race cars. I got cold, terrible, and freezing rain with a ton of drunk red necks
I p lucky. Was watching Rolex 24 and wife asks me if we can go one year.
As the following car gets closer the air coming from the wing/floor and around the rear wing of the first car has less energy and disrupts the rear wing which not only weakens its downforce but also disrupts the floor's flow and it's downforce. This is why the downforce balance shifts forward as the car gets closer, inducing understeer.
okay now that's two people ITT
why do people think the rear wing losing downforce will cause understeer?
The talk is that the main focus of change will be in combustion, with the chamber set for a considerable increase in pressure thanks to the latest work on the Turbulent Jet Ignition System that has been used in recent years.
It is suggested that there is a new micro-injector design from Magneti Marelli – which helps ensure the perfect flame for the ignition chamber to increase performance, but also minimises fuel use to reduce consumption.
The changes will put the engine under tremendous forces – with 400 bar pressure possible – plus a big increase in temperature that can be a threat to reliability. To meet its targets, Ferrari is having to revolutionise its approach to engine design, and has decided to focus on innovation. Tests are now ongoing about a novel piston design concept that use a new steel alloy.
Read the article. A neat simulation of cars running in line. Actually sounds like this is a good thing since the following car's rear downforce (and hopefully, typically anyways, drag) will be greatly reduced following it.
But I didn't see where they tested this yaw (actually no mention of yaw in the artcile that I found). I don't think the front wing will keep that beautifully flat efficiency curve when its got the wake of the leading car and the front tires fuxing up all the flow.
In sum, I'll believe it when I see it. It's still a net positive IMO as the slipstream should be stronger than in previous years even without DRS.
Underbody tunnels would probably help overtaking since the floor would provide the majority of the downforce instead of the wings.
From Paddy Lowe:
Originally Posted by Super F1 Kenyan
Some very interesting results came out of it and many of them were not intuitive as well. The paddock is full of amateur aerodynamicists, amateur overtaking experts and car wake experts, and actually when you get into the experimentation you find that things were not actually as you expected.
i very much doubt their simulations are going to translate into real world performance. i am saying it would be neat if it did happen because watching drivers that can handle oversteer (ALO) would be more fun than watching the understeering bandits (BUT).
i very much doubt their simulations are going to translate into real world performance. i am saying it would be neat if it did happen because watching drivers that can handle oversteer (ALO) would be more fun than watching the understeering bandits (BUT).
Well good news, BUT isn't driving next year!
BUT (see what I did there?) it would be neat if the cars slid a little behind them. The aliens would come back to the front me thinks.
Question falcong, does RBR have two aliens driving for them? Or just one?
The article infers otherwise (at least from their modeled 2017 cars). To simplify, their study found the air being pulled from the floor attaches to the rear wing and helps the first car maintain a 45F/65R downforce distribution. As the following car gets closer the air coming from the wing/floor and around the rear wing of the first car has less energy and disrupts the rear wing which not only weakens its downforce but also disrupts the floor's flow and it's downforce. This is why the downforce balance shifts forward as the car gets closer, inducing oversteer. It seems the new front wings are less prone to losing efficiency when following a car closely.
I wonder if a beam wing would help prevent the floor flow from detaching for the rear wing.
There was an article in F1 Racing magazine in the late 90s saying how a CART car gets the majority of its downforce from the underbody and the front and rear wings are for tuning the car's balance. When following another car a CART car doesn't lose as much downforce as an F1 car. It was all generalizations with the article suggesting that this could help passing in F1. There was no science or diagrams or calculations from what I remember.
relying heavily on underbody downforce is a no-go as it is too dangerous. if anything upsets the ride height the downforce disappears and you have a sheet of paper in a stiff breeze
relying heavily on underbody downforce is a no-go as it is too dangerous. if anything upsets the ride height the downforce disappears and birds take to the sky
Ok, maybe I'm making this way to complicated or maybe I've been smoking really good weed and this wont work.
What if - and believe me this is a hypothetical - but what if the cars had a standard active suspension that could control the attitude of the car to maintain relative df levels in all situations, like +/- 10% (random number for display purpose only). I'm not saying the cars are given equal downforce, I'm just saying the pressure sensors on various parts of the car are used to try and maintain that particular car's downforce level and distribution. Does that make sense and moar importantly would it even be possible?