DRS alternative which take advantage of drafting/dirft air.

[honkskillet]

(This is my first post so go easy on me.) I had always wondered why in all other forms of motor sports drafting is a huge advantage but in formula 1 "dirty air" is much larger concern. After reading through this thread, http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewto ... f=3&t=1206, I think I can summarize the issue roughly as follows (challenge this if it is wrong)...
* A trailing F1 car does gain an advantage on the straights from overall drag reduction from drafting yielding increased top end speed.
*In F1, were there are many corners (especially high speed corners), the advantage gained from drafting is more than offset by disadvantage of dirty air, which decreases downforce, thus lowering the speed a trailing driver can sustain in the corners.

This has been an issue for F1 because it tends to lead to runaway winners on track. Management's 'solution' has been DRS, which some object to because it gives a contrived advantage to trailing race cars (amongst other reasons).

How about this for an alternative to DRS? Instead of Drag Reduction System, F1 cars could have a Drag Increasing System (DIS) on the rear wing. Instead of trailing cars decreasing their drag in the straights by using DRS, they would increase their downforce in the corners using DIS. Since 'dirty air' affects trailing cars in the curves more than it affects lead cars in 'clean air', DIS would be a greater advantage to the trailing car, even if it were available to both cars.

Since a car with DIS enable would be safer (more downforce, slower in a straight), you could get rid of detection zones entirely.

Lastly, during qualifying DIS would be disabled entirely and the setup of a car's wing would be locked in for the race.

Thoughts?

[krisfx]

Why doesn't F1 just use the DTM style of DRS, where a driver can activate it once per lap when they are within 1s(?) of the car in front anywhere they want to. It adds more strategy and means that the overtaking driver doesn't just push to pass.

[thepowerofnone]

This is a really quite novel idea, and it has pretty decent justification, but sadly it also has a huge flaw: say we have a similar situation to Monaco, where two leading cars are pretty even on pace and there is a third car trying to catch up. With DRS, and assuming HAM doesn't have to drive defensively, which is a pretty big assumption but probably valid for Sunday's race, HAM can chase ROS as much as he likes, and it is down to RIC to be sufficiently faster to pass HAM and catch ROS. The DRS in its current form pretty much allows RIC to follow HAM at HAM's pace, which is not far off of ROS's pace.

Switch to your system: HAM is slowed and RIC must try to pass, so ROS can race off at +1 second a lap. RIC takes, let's say 3 laps, to pass HAM, then once he is past gets hit instantly by a DIS (drag increasing system), causing him to lose further time even assuming HAM doesn't come back at him. Your DIS benefits ROS, who isn't even remotely involved in the HAM-RIC battle and gifts him the win, whereas HAM is disproportionately disadvantaged as being slowed by RIC allows fourth place ALO (ok so maybe no last Sunday where the margin was huge but you get the idea) to catch up and slow him further. Basically a DIS system punishes you for being involved in a race with another car, rather than rewarding you for being stuck behind another car and trying to pass.

On slightly more farfetched lines, I see two other problems with this: middle-of-the-field teams plan for spending most of their race with other drivers close and the increased drag, then when they get passed or otherwise find a gap have dangerously low levels of grip on the rear end; team orders allow one driver to pull up behind another car and slow it, but make no attempt to pass, allowing their teammate (or anyone else) to come up and catch said car - I'm not saying that this is likely, but there have been a fair few world championships where this might have changed the outcome and there is certainly enough money on the line to make it worthwhile.

Why not DRS anywhere? Because its dangerous, DTM doesn't have the same aero sensitivity of F1 cars in the corners and you can always trust a race driver to do something stupid and try something when it isn't safe. The exact same reason "DRS anywhere" stopped in qualifying - it forces risks where there are no need for them. Push to pass still exists in KERS without the "lack of control issues".

[stephenwh]

(This is my first post so go easy on me.) I had always wondered why in all other forms of motor sports drafting is a huge advantage but in formula 1 "dirty air" is much larger concern. After reading through this thread, http://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewto ... f=3&t=1206, I think I can summarize the issue roughly as follows (challenge this if it is wrong)...
* A trailing F1 car does gain an advantage on the straights from overall drag reduction from drafting yielding increased top end speed.
*In F1, were there are many corners (especially high speed corners), the advantage gained from drafting is more than offset by disadvantage of dirty air, which decreases downforce, thus lowering the speed a trailing driver can sustain in the corners.

This has been an issue for F1 because it tends to lead to runaway winners on track. Management's 'solution' has been DRS, which some object to because it gives a contrived advantage to trailing race cars (amongst other reasons).

How about this for an alternative to DRS? Instead of Drag Reduction System, F1 cars could have a Drag Increasing System (DIS) on the rear wing. Instead of trailing cars decreasing their drag in the straights by using DRS, they would increase their downforce in the corners using DIS. Since 'dirty air' affects trailing cars in the curves more than it affects lead cars in 'clean air', DIS would be a greater advantage to the trailing car, even if it were available to both cars.

Since a car with DIS enable would be safer (more downforce, slower in a straight), you could get rid of detection zones entirely.

Lastly, during qualifying DIS would be disabled entirely and the setup of a car's wing would be locked in for the race.

Thoughts?

DRS wasn't "Managements" solution. The FIA took the issue to the teams, a technical working group was created, headed by Ross Brawn. DRS is what they came up with after considering a "spit rear wing" The FIA then implemented what we have now. DRS is probably never going away...too much time and effort was put into creating it.

I don't actually have a problem with DRS, because you have to be within a second of the car in front, so it does solve the problem...rather well too...I say that because I have seen plenty of races where the trailing car has DRS open but can't get the pass done, so I don't see it as an unfair advantage...DRS does not guarantee the pass.

[Cuky]

isn't it WSbR where they have DRS available for the whole race whenever they want whether they are leading or following car, but they can use it only 20 or 30 times in a race? That could be better, and maybe more interesting solution without actually ditching DRS completely.

[radosav]

It is easier to use DRS than DIS, because with DIS teams would have to spent much more time to develop car setups for races.
They would have to find setup so that car behaves good in every corner of circuit for two levels of downforce on rear wings .
Variables that define setup would double.
With DRS you use it only on straights, which is much easier.

[Pierce89]

isn't it WSbR where they have DRS available for the whole race whenever they want whether they are leading or following car, but they can use it only 20 or 30 times in a race? That could be better, and maybe more interesting solution without actually ditching DRS completely.

You got the series correct, but its limited by time not number of applications. I think they generally allow somewhere in the region of like 350 seconds of drs a race.

[gixxer_drew]

I would like to see a more advanced version of DRS. I was really skeptical about it before but I like it now.

Why not have a more aggressive wing configuration only available when behind another car (to compensate for lost downforce) plus the drag reduction on the straight? When you are in dirty air wake behind another car the pitot pressure fluctuates whereas it is stable dynamic pres value in clean air. You can base activation on that potentially. The idea would be any cars in a pack get faster and reduce the lead car "running away with it" you see now. Not just getting a couple tenths quicker per lap, the car gets a good bit quicker everywhere and you can get passing in corners not just on the straights.

[OO7]

http://forums.autosport.com/topic/13191 ... odynamics/

[wuzak]

I would like to see a more advanced version of DRS. I was really skeptical about it before but I like it now.

Why not have a more aggressive wing configuration only available when behind another car (to compensate for lost downforce) plus the drag reduction on the straight? When you are in dirty air wake behind another car the pitot pressure fluctuates whereas it is stable dynamic pres value in clean air. You can base activation on that potentially. The idea would be any cars in a pack get faster and reduce the lead car "running away with it" you see now. Not just getting a couple tenths quicker per lap, the car gets a good bit quicker everywhere and you can get passing in corners not just on the straights.

They tried this with the adjustable front wing.

The idea was that the trailing car loses most from the front wing, upsetting the car balance. By adjusting the front flap, the lost downforce could, in theory, largely regained. In practice it didn't work.

[honkskillet]

They tried this with the adjustable front wing.

The idea was that the trailing car loses most from the front wing, upsetting the car balance. By adjusting the front flap, the lost downforce could, in theory, largely regained. In practice it didn't work.

Interesting. When was this tried?

[honkskillet]

Switch to your system: HAM is slowed and RIC must try to pass, so ROS can race off at +1 second a lap. RIC takes, let's say 3 laps, to pass HAM, then once he is past gets hit instantly by a DIS (drag increasing system), causing him to lose further time even assuming HAM doesn't come back at him. Your DIS benefits ROS, who isn't even remotely involved in the HAM-RIC battle and gifts him the win, whereas HAM is disproportionately disadvantaged as being slowed by RIC allows fourth place ALO (ok so maybe no last Sunday where the margin was huge but you get the idea) to catch up and slow him further. Basically a DIS system punishes you for being involved in a race with another car, rather than rewarding you for being stuck behind another car and trying to pass.

That's not how I'd envision DIS working. No one would ever use it if it slowed them down. It would only be engaged in corners to provide more grip. Increased downforce in corners in the form of downforce will make the cars go faster not slower in the corners.

Why not DRS anywhere? Because its dangerous, DTM doesn't have the same aero sensitivity of F1 cars in the corners and you can always trust a race driver to do something stupid and try something when it isn't safe. The exact same reason "DRS anywhere" stopped in qualifying - it forces risks where there are no need for them. Push to pass still exists in KERS without the "lack of control issues".

DIS would not suffer this problem as when it is engaged in the corners the car becomes safer. In contrast, when DRS is engaged in the straights it is less safe. To ensure that DIS is safe when it is DISengaged (ie low downforce setup), teams would be forced to qualify with the system DISengaged.

[adrianjordan]

They tried this with the adjustable front wing.

The idea was that the trailing car loses most from the front wing, upsetting the car balance. By adjusting the front flap, the lost downforce could, in theory, largely regained. In practice it didn't work.

Interesting. When was this tried?

2009

What they found thought was that teams would just use the system to adjust the balance of the car to compensate for front tyre wear...

[McMrocks]

With the current fuel flow limits we could introduce a Indycar-like push2pass-system which is a fair alternative. Everybody is allowed to use 20 time 105kg/h for 20seconds. Of course the leader could use this too in order to defend but that is just fair. The current system gives a big disadvantage to leading car for beeing faster in Q

[honkskillet]

They tried this with the adjustable front wing.

The idea was that the trailing car loses most from the front wing, upsetting the car balance. By adjusting the front flap, the lost downforce could, in theory, largely regained. In practice it didn't work.

Interesting. When was this tried?

2009

What they found thought was that teams would just use the system to adjust the balance of the car to compensate for front tyre wear...

Thanks. I have only been following f1 since around 2011.

For the variable front wings, where they allowed to adjust them within a range or was it a binary on/off setting. If you give the teams the option to adjust within a range there is no way a variable front wing would lead to an advantage for trailing cars.

I rather suspect that a theoretical DIS system might fail because any advantage it confers to the trailing car wouldn't be large enough to overcome the lead cars clean air advantage.