Would this "fix" F1?

[KaraK]

We all know the main problem causing the lack of overtaking is the car's inability to follow closely due to the aero right? However if you take away the aero the cars will have no downforce and you'll end up slowing the series to the point where its hard to justify its existence over GP2 for example.

So in order to keep F1 fast and produce good overtaking you need to find a way of producing high levels of downforce in such away that the car behind can still follow closely - would allowing more use of ground effect do this? You then restrict the rest of the aero to the sort of package that wouldn't ruin the airflow much.

Would this work or am I talking complete rubbish?

[10 Pence Short]

As far as I'm aware the cars already make a great deal of use from 'ground effect'.

Rely on it too much and you run the risk of Senna-esque incidents where the car grounds, the aero benefit disappears and the car meets the scenery at speed.

From what I see and hear as a layman, the problem still seems to be the cars producing 'dirty' air in their wake. Maybe the aero regulations should focus on modifying the behaviour so that it is harder to produce that dirty air?

[scubadude]

Good areo and Ground effect allows for fast cornering, to increase the chances of overtaking you want to increase braking distances (so reduce cornering speed if possible) so less aero/ground effect while encouraging closer running (less dirty air).

Having just said that maybe the answer would be crappier brakes, ditch the carbon wonder stoppers and slap some old iron discs with off the shelf pads on?

Whats the spec/lap time difference of F1 over F2 anyway, how much "slip" is available in performance to provide more "entertainment"?

[Project7]

One of the problems is, that it is in the interest of the Aerodynamicist to make the air coming off the back of the car as 'dirty' as possible to make it more difficult for the car behind to overtake.

Although this isnt particularly sporting, reducing the areo efficiency of the car behind has a clear 'defensive' advantage.

So its 'kinda' a catch 22 situation.

Edited by Project7 on Wednesday 5th August 09:55

[Scuffers]

scubadude said:

Good areo and Ground effect allows for fast cornering, to increase the chances of overtaking you want to increase braking distances (so reduce cornering speed if possible) so less aero/ground effect while encouraging closer running (less dirty air).

Having just said that maybe the answer would be crappier brakes, ditch the carbon wonder stoppers and slap some old iron discs with off the shelf pads on?

Whats the spec/lap time difference of F1 over F2 anyway, how much "slip" is available in performance to provide more "entertainment"?

not sure I agree with that...

Ground effect does not create the same kind of wake that wings do (as in what the problem is)

Having high up rear wings is the real problem, loosing these and using better diffusers/tunnels and low level rear wings to help drive these would create significant down force without the huge aero wake.

steel brakes would also make sod all odds, no reason they can't work as well as carbon/carbon, it's just a weight issue.

other way would be to just have more engine power than grip, ie. bring back V10/V12/*anything* with 900+ Bhp but the same tyres and aero levels

[philis]

Why not put a ban on using airo parts all the way down the formulas, thus keeping the performance gap between them the same.
Karting can be amaizing to watch even tho they have 125 cc enginges and no down force, moto gp manages without downforce and it enhances the spectacle.
Personaly i tune in to watch f1 to see the best teams and the best drivers in the world going head to head on a sunday afternoon, lap time and corner speed are irrelevent to me watching on tv, and are only used by members of the teams looking at graphs on a computer screen. Yet everyone in f1 persues laptimes as the holy grail of motor racing, whats the point in catching someone if you cant pass them??

Lose all downforce!

[AndrewW-G]

Surely one of the main reasons for the lack of overtaking is the lack of flexibility in the rules, maybe it's my rose tinted glasses, but years ago different cars seemed to work better on different tracks.

To make things more exciting you could open up the Engine (any config upto a certain volume and max rpm) & Aero regulations, whilst banning refueling and limiting the cars to a specific maximum fuel use over a race weekend (even the gaurdian reading greens couldnt complain as much!)

The engine configs at the moment may make things cheaper but it also means there are far less mechanical issues as the cars are designed to last far longer . . . . . . a switch back to multi engine race weekends would be more spectacular even if it's just from the odd engine going kaaaabooooooom (think how many times a GP was effected by the introduction of water\oil from a blown motor all over the track!)

Kers was supposed to give drivers the ability to whooooosh past people at the press of a button, I think we all agree that it was a good idea in principal bot a terrible one when only used by a few teams and with the ability to use it every single lap, why not have it limited to 5-10 uses per race weekend and make it mandatory

Edited by AndrewW-G on Wednesday 5th August 10:23

[sperminator]

yes taking off the body aero and replacing it with ground effects would solve the overtaking problem. However we've been there before, the problem then becomes that the cars grip too much and can go too quickly, particularly through turns. In the "ground effect era" the effects of the strains and stresses exerted on the drivers by flat out cornering in ground effects cars was astonishing, You'd quite often see the drivers staggering around like they were pissed after a race ( some might have been admitedly) because of all the shenanigans that had gone on with their bodies balance mechanisms. Also if a car is relying on ground effects for super fast "slot car" cornering you have to hope nothing happens to the car which causes the ground effects to suddenly dissapear unnexpectedly in a corner or the car will be fired off the track with poor consequences for the driver most of the time.

I think the only way to achieve good overtaking as safely as is possible with a 200 mph racing car is to take the aero off accept the speed reduction and increase mechanical grip. If you reduce the aero in all formulae simultaneously they will all take a step down together and there will be no performance differential between formulae. This will however make the sport less interesting than it is now and Crown green bowls would seem like a better bet for excitement.

[stifler]

AndrewW-G said:

Kers was supposed to give drivers the ability to whooooosh past people at the press of a button, I think we all agree that it was a good idea in principal bot a terrible one when only used by a few teams and with the ability to use it every single lap, why not have it limited to 5-10 uses per race weekend and make it mandatory

That is pretty much the way that FPA works. 8 shots of 6 seconds boost throughout the race. The difference is that all the cars have the boost. in F1 this year, only some of the cars have had the KERS, this has made it seem like less overtaking and more blocking being done with the KERS. You have to say that it does help with the starts though.

[ruddermode]

Is it possible to measure the turbulence of the air coming off the back of a car (in a wind tunnel, say)?

[AndrewW-G]

stifler said:

AndrewW-G said:

Kers was supposed to give drivers the ability to whooooosh past people at the press of a button, I think we all agree that it was a good idea in principal bot a terrible one when only used by a few teams and with the ability to use it every single lap, why not have it limited to 5-10 uses per race weekend and make it mandatory

That is pretty much the way that FPA works. 8 shots of 6 seconds boost throughout the race. The difference is that all the cars have the boost. in F1 this year, only some of the cars have had the KERS, this has made it seem like less overtaking and more blocking being done with the KERS. You have to say that it does help with the starts though.

IMHO whilst it makes some starts more interesting, it the skews the results of the race with the genuinely quicker drivers being stuck behind the slower KERS equipped cars.

Yes the Formula Palmer Audi system is the sort of thing that I imagined KERS to be when announced, rather than the blocking device currently used

[navier_stokes]

Project7 said:

One of the problems is, that it is in the interest of the Aerodynamicist to make the air coming off the back of the car as 'dirty' as possible to make it more difficult for the car behind to overtake.

Although this isnt particularly sporting, reducing the areo efficiency of the car behind has a clear 'defensive' advantage.

So its 'kinda' a catch 22 situation.

Edited by Project7 on Wednesday 5th August 09:55

I doubt the aerodynamicists have any interest at all in creating dirty air coming off the back of the car. It is just a bi-product of any aerodynamic wing - it must create vorticity in order to generate lift (downforce), and therefore creates turbulence.

[paulrockliffe]

ruddermode said:

Is it possible to measure the turbulence of the air coming off the back of a car (in a wind tunnel, say)?

What and have the amount of KERS power available dependent on the wake of the car infront, and only available when you're within the wake and not available to the car creating the wake, thereby negating the effects of the wake and allowing overtaking?

Sounds simple enough when you put it like that.

[navier_stokes]

Scuffers said:

scubadude said:

Good areo and Ground effect allows for fast cornering, to increase the chances of overtaking you want to increase braking distances (so reduce cornering speed if possible) so less aero/ground effect while encouraging closer running (less dirty air).

Having just said that maybe the answer would be crappier brakes, ditch the carbon wonder stoppers and slap some old iron discs with off the shelf pads on?

Whats the spec/lap time difference of F1 over F2 anyway, how much "slip" is available in performance to provide more "entertainment"?

not sure I agree with that...

Ground effect does not create the same kind of wake that wings do (as in what the problem is)

Having high up rear wings is the real problem, loosing these and using better diffusers/tunnels and low level rear wings to help drive these would create significant down force without the huge aero wake.

steel brakes would also make sod all odds, no reason they can't work as well as carbon/carbon, it's just a weight issue.

other way would be to just have more engine power than grip, ie. bring back V10/V12/*anything* with 900+ Bhp but the same tyres and aero levels

The rear wing and diffuser are completely linked: the rear wing is one of the main drivers for the diffuser. Similarly, the diffuser aids the flow over the rear wing. Take one or the other away and you're going to reduce downforce massively... getting on for roughly 40-50% I would have thought.

[hairyben]

Banning of ground effect was due to it's cliff-edge breakaway point. Perhaps experiments could be conducted into mechanisms/designs that would reduce this.

Something else I'd like to see is experimentation into how track design could be improved to allow closer racing; most tracks were designed for very different cars and perhaps modern F1 cars have "outgrown" them, perfected to the point there's nothing between the cars. Perhaps more variable and challenging circuits are needed to compromise the cars, or corners designed to allow different lines.

Both of those however would need close co-operation between the teams and the governance to experiment. The FIA prefer to bludgeon the teams with simplistic and ill conceived new rules rather than work together.

[Project7]

navier_stokes said:

Project7 said:

One of the problems is, that it is in the interest of the Aerodynamicist to make the air coming off the back of the car as 'dirty' as possible to make it more difficult for the car behind to overtake.

Although this isnt particularly sporting, reducing the areo efficiency of the car behind has a clear 'defensive' advantage.

So its 'kinda' a catch 22 situation.

Edited by Project7 on Wednesday 5th August 09:55

I doubt the aerodynamicists have any interest at all in creating dirty air coming off the back of the car. It is just a bi-product of any aerodynamic wing - it must create vorticity in order to generate lift (downforce), and therefore creates turbulence.

I appreciate that turbulant air is an unavoidable by-product of an aerodynamic wing - but at the same time having a car that is difficult to follow closely is an advantage, and at the least the aerodynamicists would not have optimised the wing to minimise the effect. Not one designer on the grid, thought to themselves 'how can i make this car easier to overtake

[spend]

If you actually reversed the wake so that cars had an advantage when slipstreaming I'm not sure it would make things any better - we'd just end up bored with cars leapfrogging all the time.

I think the biggest problems are the tracks, in that they are far too narrow and the evolution of a single well rubbered line over the weekend.. Making the tracks so that several lines can be taken in overtaking zones and then changing surfacing / tyre compounds to allow them to be used would seem to be the answer as I see it.

TBH this is the real disappointment of having moved to a single tyre supplier. I think I like many preferred the 'tyre wars' eras,but bought in to the extra competitiveness that was promised with a single supplier, unfortunately it didn't really come to fruition IMHO.

[KaraK]

paulrockliffe said:

ruddermode said:

Is it possible to measure the turbulence of the air coming off the back of a car (in a wind tunnel, say)?

What and have the amount of KERS power available dependent on the wake of the car infront, and only available when you're within the wake and not available to the car creating the wake, thereby negating the effects of the wake and allowing overtaking?

Sounds simple enough when you put it like that.

Doesn't work like that - the problem for the car in the wake isn't lack of power, its lack of downforce. The wake prevents their own aerodynamics from working effectively.

[PhillipM]

Put speedbumps on the racing line.

[AndrewW-G]

PhillipM said:

Put speedbumps on the racing line.

Or a button on the dash that raises the ride height by 4 or 5ft ala Bugs Bunny or Roger Rabbit