How to get rid of dirty air

[Mr_Thyroid]

How about the reverse of DRS - DIS Downforce Increase System.

Each car has small aerodynamically neutral wings to the side of the front and rear wings - when following within 1s of another car the driver can set them to add downforce in the corners.

This could mean the teams will set up their cars to naturally run more slippery thus reducing grip, increasing mistakes, decreasing dirty air, increasing straight line speed, increasing braking distances etc.

Maybe teams could chose to run either DRS or DIS but not both.

[rykard]

Reduce the aero massively. Some of the best racing i've seen at Mallory was formula V, historic formula fords and 2Cvs, none have an abundance of power or aero..

[geeks]

I guess you need to ask yourself if F1 is supposed to be the fast cars available? If so then overtaking will be nature be tricky. There are alot of people smarter than us discussing it and they still struggle to solve the question so it cant be as easy as everyone is making out or they would have done it already. F1 has always suffered an overtaking problem, this isn't a new thing, but we have to have something to complain about don't we

[George29]

Ahonen said:

It's interesting, this. MotoGP (and Superbike) lap times are far, far slower than F3, but no one cares. They have no downforce, huge braking distances and slow apex speeds. Does anyone give a toss? No. I can stand at Cadwell for a whole day (well, three days really) during a BSB race weekend and not be bored for a second. You can see the riders working and the bikes move around, which is one of the reasons historic car racing is also so popular.

The FIA wked themselves into a frenzy over faster lap times because that's what "The Fans" apparently wanted after people squawked that the cars were faster 10 years ago on Twitbookface after every race. We're going to see lap records tumble everywhere this year. It's awesome, isn't it? What do you mean the racing is processional? The lap times are amazing! It's what the fans wanted.

Bike racing is completely different. MotoGP bikes are breaking lap records and getting faster and faster. Yes the spectacle is more (and something I prefer).

If you suddenly made F1 cars go 30 seconds a lap slower but there was loads of overtaking, you wouldn't have F1 anymore. You'd essentially have tuned up Formula Fords. F1 has never been about loads of overtakes, looking back in history the entire grid is actually closer together now than it was in the 70s/80s that people remember so fondly. If you want to watch a series with loads of overtaking you can go and watch BTCC, but why turn F1 into something it never was?

[KevinCamaroSS]

But is it racing if it is a procession? Not to me.

[George29]

KevinCamaroSS said:

But is it racing if it is a procession? Not to me.

Yes. It's about who crosses the line first not who can overtake the most. For an F1 team an ideal victory would be 1-2 with 3rd place lapped. Wouldn't make great racing but the teams aren't there to make great racing, they're all there to win.

When has F1 ever been filled with overtakes? Only recently there has been a lot due to the DRS, and personally I don't see any skill in passing someone in a straight line as you've been given a straight line speed advantage. Proper overtakes havecalways been minimal. I don't know why people would expect anything different now?

There are plenty of other motorsports available if you want to see loads of overtaking. I'd suggest Moto3.

[Timbo_S2]

Ahonen said:

It's interesting, this. MotoGP (and Superbike) lap times are far, far slower than F3, but no one cares. They have no downforce, huge braking distances and slow apex speeds. Does anyone give a toss? No. I can stand at Cadwell for a whole day (well, three days really) during a BSB race weekend and not be bored for a second. You can see the riders working and the bikes move around, which is one of the reasons historic car racing is also so popular.

Unfortunately MotoGP is becoming more reliant on downforce - look at the wings last year, banning them has just led to extremely complex multi-surfaced fairings with built-in vanes. Expect to see these filter to homologated road bikes (and therefore WSB / BSB) shortly...

Aerodynamics are here to stay, you can;t put the genie back in the bottle. All the latest supercars all employ a large amount of downforce too. I agree that active suspension within F1 should be re-introduced, as the costs can;t be prohibitive now, and they could all be forced to use the same control unit to reduce costs.

[Eric Mc]

geeks said:

I guess you need to ask yourself if F1 is supposed to be the fast cars available? If so then overtaking will be nature be tricky. There are alot of people smarter than us discussing it and they still struggle to solve the question so it cant be as easy as everyone is making out or they would have done it already. F1 has always suffered an overtaking problem, this isn't a new thing, but we have to have something to complain about don't we

See my point above though. Getting fixated on lack of overtaking is missing the point. The cars have to look fast and difficult to drive fast.

The recent changes make them fast and they even LOOK fast in certain situations. But they don't LOOK difficult to drive fast - even if they are.

[GroundEffect]

kambites said:

The only solution I can see is to ditch wings (or at least make them vastly less significant) and massively increase the downforce generated under-body.

I contest that point. I have never seen any data to show that underbody aero is much if any better in response to 'wake effects' than current configurations.

[kambites]

GroundEffect said:

kambites said:

The only solution I can see is to ditch wings (or at least make them vastly less significant) and massively increase the downforce generated under-body.

I contest that point. I have never seen any data to show that underbody aero is much if any better in response to 'wake effects' than current configurations.

Well it's far less dependent on angle of attack; I guess "dirty" air will have some effect on how much air is passing under the car and hence the speed of the air traveling under it, but since under-body aero can't really "stall" as the flow is fundamentally laminar over a very flat surface, I'd have thought the effect would be far less pronounced than with a wing tuned right to the edge of its stall envelope (if that's the right term).

[KarlMac]

Apologies if this is a really stupid question, but why don't teams design the aero to compensate for dirty air? From a layman it seems all aero work is based on the car moving into free air with some allowances for crosswinds.

[Galileo]

It is said that the designers rely too much on the front wing and it's ability to condition the air for the rest of the car and that when it gets into dirty air it can no longer produce downforce efficiently or condition the air going to the rest of the car.

I would think that removing the reliance on the front wing to do all the work would eliminate the problem. So smaller less technical front wings would negate the dirty air problem but the front downforce would need to be generated under the car where the dirty air has a lot less effect. If you look at the cars from the early 80's and the wing effect they used, they used to be able to follow right behind the car in front with no detriment to downforce.

I am pretty sure I've been singing the same tune since they banned side skirts, under body aero and put in flat bottoms, and suddenly found they couldn't overtake.

[kambites]

KarlMac said:

Apologies if this is a really stupid question, but why don't teams design the aero to compensate for dirty air? From a layman it seems all aero work is based on the car moving into free air with some allowances for crosswinds.

Because it would make the car slower in clean air; there's no point in being able to overtake a slower car if there aren't any slower cars.

[George29]

KarlMac said:

Apologies if this is a really stupid question, but why don't teams design the aero to compensate for dirty air? From a layman it seems all aero work is based on the car moving into free air with some allowances for crosswinds.

It is impossible to design an aerofoil to be as efficient in turbulant airflow as it would in clean air. You can make it less susceptible to it however you would then lose downforce, so no team will go for that idea. You have to be able to catch the car in front to overtake him, not going to happen with a compromised aero package. Not to mention you'd be slower in qualifying.

[slipstream 1985]

Mr_Thyroid said:

How about the reverse of DRS - DIS Downforce Increase System.

Each car has small aerodynamically neutral wings to the side of the front and rear wings - when following within 1s of another car the driver can set them to add downforce in the corners.

This could mean the teams will set up their cars to naturally run more slippery thus reducing grip, increasing mistakes, decreasing dirty air, increasing straight line speed, increasing braking distances etc.

Maybe teams could chose to run either DRS or DIS but not both.

Interesting concept. Hard to regulate as what happens if you lose distance to the car in front.. Mid corner your extra wings would deactivate.

[Crafty_]

R8Steve said:

sandman77 said:

I think he meant just limit the power they produce? Although I'm not sure how having cars with identical power would provide more overtaking.

Works just fine in pretty much every other race series.

Last year Manor had the same engine as Mercedes. They weren't exactly on par were they ?

As said aero is as important as the engine.

Ahonen said:

George29 said:

Then expect massive complaints when F1 cars are slower than F3 cars. It was bad enough that GP2 cars had faster corner speeds last year. F1 still needs to be the fastest form of motorsport.

It's interesting, this. MotoGP (and Superbike) lap times are far, far slower than F3, but no one cares.

Bad analogy imho. F1 being slower than F3 or Gp2 etc is more like MotoGP being slower than Moto3

KarlMac said:

Apologies if this is a really stupid question, but why don't teams design the aero to compensate for dirty air? From a layman it seems all aero work is based on the car moving into free air with some allowances for crosswinds.

One issue is there is only so much you can do to negate dirty air. if a vehicle in front has punched a hole through the air, it can't flow over the following car and thus that car loses downforce.
The question is can we design aero (and more importantly write regulations) to minimise the dirty air effect? The answer most likely is yes, the difficulty is working out exactly how.

Edited by Crafty_ on Thursday 30th March 21:08

[HardtopManual]

longshot said:

For me, the simplest way to bunch the cars up and make for more racing and therefore more overtaking is to standardize the engine output.

We had closely-matched engines in the early part of this decade. The bit where Vettel won 4 WDC on the bounce.

rykard said:

Reduce the aero massively. Some of the best racing i've seen at Mallory was formula V, historic formula fords and 2Cvs, none have an abundance of power or aero..

Why would you like to see F1 aero reduced massively when the type of racing you like is available in the series you mention? Just watch those series you enjoy.

[Gary C]

You could set a max downforce generated at a speed so that designers no longer have to chase every kg per drag and can concentrate on making that kg figure as efficiently as possible which in theory should reduce the turbulent air behind the car.

I would like to see totally unlimited energy storage and use plus a removal of the peak fuel flow limit coupled with an appropriate limit on fuel capacity and energy storage weight.

Just like the old turbo era, a driver should be able to significantly increase the power of the engine to overtake at the expense of fuel/energy storage, allowing banzai overtakes followed by conservation.

The energy storage weight could be reduced overtime to encourage battery technology to advance

I would also allow unlimited use of engines (except maybe race and qual should be the same) to allow some teams to really push and others to go conservative as they wish. It really shakes things up.

[Steve7777]

You could paint a short stretch of extra grippy coating on the inside line of the corners at the end of long straights, or on the outside line of corners. By varying the friction of the track surface you could create extra overtaking lines that aren't possible today.

[George29]

Gary C said:

You could set a max downforce generated at a speed so that designers no longer have to chase every kg per drag and can concentrate on making that kg figure as efficiently as possible which in theory should reduce the turbulent air behind the car.

I would like to see totally unlimited energy storage and use plus a removal of the peak fuel flow limit coupled with an appropriate limit on fuel capacity and energy storage weight.

Just like the old turbo era, a driver should be able to significantly increase the power of the engine to overtake at the expense of fuel/energy storage, allowing banzai overtakes followed by conservation.

The energy storage weight could be reduced overtime to encourage battery technology to advance

I would also allow unlimited use of engines (except maybe race and qual should be the same) to allow some teams to really push and others to go conservative as they wish. It really shakes things up.

How exactly would you enforce that max downforce regulation? It's easy to say but impossible to check. Reducing drag doesn't mean that less turbulant air is created - for example the Overtaking Working Group found that no rear wing on the car was worse than a tall, narrow rear wing - hence why the regulations went like that. Same with the front wing with the standardised middle section.

Drivers can significantly turn up their engines. It's just a switch on the steering wheel. Look at Mercedes qualifying mode for example. The only difference is how many engines they're limited to a season, and how many miles each engine can do in each mode. I agree it would be nice to see no penalties over engine changes but you would just see the manufacturer teams having new engines every race and having a huge power advantage over the rest of the field. It has to be regulated to keep the costs down (sort of, even though these new engines are ridiculously expensive).