Idea to limit DF

[Pierce89]

In f1, I feel DF research could be limited by a very simple mechanism. With simply a combo of maximum wheel rate maximum ride height and a plank test you can place a hard limit on DF and push aero research into the much more relevant area of drag reduction. Discuss...

[Lycoming]

What about the tire? Tire spring rate will vary a decent amount from tire to tire, and over the course of the race as pressure rises and falls with temperature. You can't really police that.

Also, why limit downforce? to force them to focus on drag reduction? They already do that, so I don't understand what the point of this rule would be. Are you trying to make them only design purely drag reducing features? Limiting downforce won't do that. They could design something that increases downforce for small or negligible drag penalty and if that puts them over the limit, then they would just reduce wing angle. The end effect is reduced drag at the same downforce level, but it came about due to a feature that primarily was for increasing downforce. With this rule in place, the only thing that matters is, as it is now, downforce to drag ratio. It doesn't change anything, it's just an additional item that needs to be policed.

And would the downforce limit vary for each individual track? If so, how will you select the limit for each track? Because if you set a season wide limit at the monaco level of downforce, it literally changes nothing at every other track they run.

Bear in mind that absolute downforce is a bit meaningless because nobody ever runs with as much downforce as they can produce; the only place they do anything of the sort is at monaco. At every other track, they can run more downforce if they want; they just don't because (according to their calculations, at least) it will ultimately make them slower over the entire lap. Actually, the same almost certainly applies to monaco too. What actually matters is how much downforce they can make per unit of drag.

tl;dr, I don't understand what you would be trying to achieve with this limit, but it seems poorly thought out to me.

[Pierce89]

I want to put a quite low limit on downforce because although I'm an aeronautical engineering student and a devotee to aerodynamics in general, I can see the ruinous effect of collectively spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build 11 versions of the same aero gadget, especially when said aero gadget has zero use outside f1. Set your spring rate, ride height and plank wear limit to whatever the required numbers would be to allow teams to run 500kg of DF at 250 km/h. More DF and they wear the plank too much which leads to exclusion.

Then again, if you see no reason to at least reduce to importance of constant r&d for DF I'm probably talking to the wrong person anyway.

[Pierce89]

As far as your mentions of tire pressure variance teams already understand that and would have no problems dealing with that inside their new envelope of DF levels.

The point is an easy way to reduce spending on downforce because spending on downforce has gotten to unsustainable levels. I thought that was clear. Also , you mention changing specs to allow the teams more or less DF in places like Monaco or Monza. Why? That goes against the whole point my idea. I thought with the term LIMIT it would be clear to reduce DF to a point where everyone can easily achieve it and force spending into areas that are at least slightly less useless.

[Lycoming]

Ok, I get it now. Limiting them to less than 1g of downforce in most corners means they'd get spanked around a circuit by LMPC cars. Thus nobody will want to watch F1 anymore and all the money will follow elsewhere instead of being wasted developing very expensive toys.

Or do I have that wrong?

In all seriousness:

First of all, F1 will always collectively burn hundreds of millions of dollars on things which have absolutely no purpose outside of F1. This will be the case for the forseeable future.

Second, as I explained above, setting a limit on downforce will not shift the focus to drag reduction. They do not design to maximize downforce, they design to maximize lift to drag. Marussia can make as much downforce as red bull if they want, they just can't do it without running an unnacceptably large drag penalty. If you just limit maximum downforce, they're still designing to maximize lift to drag... the goal hasn't changed, the constraints are just slightly different. It wouldn't stop them burning enough cash to feed a small city for a month on aerodynamic research that gains them tenths of a second a lap and has nothing to do with road cars. If you want to stop them spending cash on aero research, limit vehicle speeds so that aerodynamic forces are negligible. But trust me when I say to do that, you'd need to bring average speeds well below 50 km/h.

Third, even if you kill spending on aero by giving them a spec aero package... They'd burn the money saved on engines, or composites, or some other hideously expensive toy that buys them tenths of a second over the next team and has no purpose outside of racing. Indeed, many of the things they do have little to no purpose in other forms of motorsport. I mean, who else uses carbon a arms? almost nobody.

Finally, If you want them to use that money to do something beneficial to society at large or something like that... Racing is racing, and everything else is everything else. Wanting racing to be road relevant is like wanting any other form of entertainment to yield some additional benefit to humanity. While it was once true that racing was directly related to road car development, today, racing is just another form of entertainment. Michael Bay spends as much money on a movie as an f1 team does in a year (roughly). Would you say that money is better spent? If you want them to stop burning cash on superfluous things with no value outside of F1, you're better off limiting spending in general. You can be successful in indycar, LMP2 or Nascar on an annual budget of about 20 million. A top F1 team needs over 10 times that. I can't speak for indycar (which I don't like because of their unsatisfactory safety record) and nascar (which I don't like for obvious reasons) but ALMS and WEC are, for me at least, more entertaining than F1 and a hell of a lot cheaper too.

[tok-tokkie]

I must say that your reasoning seems spot on to me. Easy to measure & check. It has previously been proposed that there be a maximum allowed downforce but your proposal achieves that while making it easy to police.
EDIT: As long as they are prevented from locking the suspension - by locking the dampers for example.

[Pierce89]

Yes I've gotten more downvotes since I started this thread than I have since we started the voting. I guess I've learned my lesson about trying to sound out an idea. Instead of constructive criticism, it's torches and pitchforks.

[xpensive]

The above should work, but even simpler would be to impose an all-the-way flat-bottom rule, if you ask me of course.

The point is obviously limit the pay-off from xcessive spending on aero, with a flat bottom there's really not much you can do.

And take away that hideous front wing, so cars can get close and actually race wheel to wheel.

[Tim.Wright]

Its not a bad thought but I'm sure it will start a massive arms race in developing suspensions which pass the test but remain hard on the track.

I actually don't mind letting them develop the floors because it gives the required downforce without disturbing the air behind which is better for close racing. I'd rather see the floor rules opened up and the wings reduced or removed.

[marcush.]

lmp racing has specified a very hard rule for the bottom of the car with tunnels and such all defined .also they have specified a maximum number of appendages to the main body and sorry guys if you want to save money you have to freeze the aero kit for the whole year ,simple as that .
You could easily police df levels if you really wanted.Say you got an average vertical force of say 5000N per wheel allowed +tolerance say 2% over race distance .you will have to take into your calculations temperature effects and height above sea level ,fuel load etc and filter out the inevitable peaks through wind gusts so you just get the mean numbers over time .It´s a bit of work in putting the maths in place but nothing spectacular really.

But what about a device connected to your force measurement disturbing the production of downforce and adding drag as well?
Idea:
Two vertical spoilers on the underside of front and rear wing would deployed in several sequential steps to limit the maximum downforce ...voila nobody would dare to try and run too close to the allowed limits ,as the downforce would go down + drag would increase.

[MOWOG]

I can see the ruinous effect of collectively spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build 11 versions of the same aero gadget, especially when said aero gadget has zero use outside f1

I fully agree with your major premise. =D> And whether or not race cars in other series would be faster or slower is irrelevant unless and until they start racing on the same track at the same time as Formula One cars.

Xpensive's flat floor idea is one I have had as well.

But before getting further into the discussion, i think it necessary to clarify what the objective is. I agree that if aero went away completely, the teams would find some other whizz bang idea to waste their money on.

Ultimately it comes down to "What do you want Formula One to be? Is there too much emphasis on the cars and not enough on driver ability? Should they be the fastest race cars on earth? Should the sport focus on creating entertainment opportunities for The Black Eyed Peas and Miley Cyrus? What?

So Pierce, what is the point of your proposed changes? Cuz saving money is not something anyone in the sport is remotely interested in doing, even though we as fans might think it a cracking good idea.

[SectorOne]

I think the key is having a fan on the floor and have all your downforce generated by that.

Maybe i have understood it wrong but essentially a fan sucks air from the underside creating a vacuum right?
Then would it not even be beneficial if you have a person ahead of you already moving tonnes of air away from you?
i.e. less air for you to move yourself = stronger vacuum = more downforce?

[xpensive]

...
Xpensive's flat floor idea is one I have had as well.

But before getting further into the discussion, i think it necessary to clarify what the objective is. I agree that if aero went away completely, the teams would find some other whizz bang idea to waste their money on.
...

Thanx, but point being that aero has completely taken over F1-technology nowadays, when all engines are the same, and what we would hope for is to diminish the pay-off and incentives for spending money like a drunken sailor on new year's eve.

If Mateschitz still wants to spend a billion or two on something of miniscule importance, fine, knock yourself out.

[Jersey Tom]

I want to put a quite low limit on downforce because although I'm an aeronautical engineering student and a devotee to aerodynamics in general, I can see the ruinous effect of collectively spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build 11 versions of the same aero gadget, especially when said aero gadget has zero use outside f1.

So what? It's sport. Entertainment. No different than spending billions of dollars in the NFL or MLB or Champions League or whatever to pay some guys to run, kick, bat, or throw a ball around.

F1 has never been some development field or the auto industry. It's a drop in the bucket anyway, to be honest. What's a top F1 team spending this year in budget, a few hundred million? Ford motor company's annual R&D budget is somewhere around eight billion dollars. One OEM could run a whole F1 field and then some just on the cash they spend in R&D every year.

To me the notion that some widget on an open wheel car (like a toggling rear wing) is going to pay dividends on a minivan.. is unrealistic.

[Pierce89]

I want to put a quite low limit on downforce because although I'm an aeronautical engineering student and a devotee to aerodynamics in general, I can see the ruinous effect of collectively spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build 11 versions of the same aero gadget, especially when said aero gadget has zero use outside f1.

So what? It's sport. Entertainment. No different than spending billions of dollars in the NFL or MLB or Champions League or whatever to pay some guys to run, kick, bat, or throw a ball around.

F1 has never been some development field or the auto industry. It's a drop in the bucket anyway, to be honest. What's a top F1 team spending this year in budget, a few hundred million? Ford motor company's annual R&D budget is somewhere around eight billion dollars. One OEM could run a whole F1 field and then some just on the cash they spend in R&D every year.

To me the notion that some widget on an open wheel car (like a toggling rear wing) is going to pay dividends on a minivan.. is unrealistic.

You're kind missing the inability for f1 cars to put on a proper race. The car behind is always automatically disadvantaged. That seems dumb to me.