turbof1 wrote:That's not a good idea. The car would become very understeery due the imbalance between the front wing running in dirty air and the diffuser gaining downforce above the normal balance. It's better to create the extra downforce at the front, which is difficult because that part is hit the hardest by the car wake, or at the center. As bhall mentioned, ground effect is affected the least by the dirty air, so imo the extra downforce should come from the floor.
But you would get an excellent exit out of corners which is what you need for an overtake
In my view, folks just need to understand that we can have blisteringly fast cars or we can have lots of overtaking. We can't have both, because the aerodynamic elements that enable cars to be very quick are the same elements that make overtaking very difficult. That's simply the nature of the beast.
I'm in the "blisteringly fast" camp. It doesn't matter if the cars are similar to one another or vastly different, fast will always be fast. Overtaking, on the other hand, is wholly dependent upon performance differentiation, which tends to be very short-lived, because design convergence is pretty much guaranteed.
(On a somewhat related note: if you ever find yourself brainstorming ideas to improve F1, try to remember that any changes made to all cars [except 100% standardization] will have no effect whatsoever on any differences between them. Such changes are purely cosmetic.
That's why the adoption of a neutral section on the front wing has never quite made sense to me. Sure, they're technically the same for everyone. But, the impact they have on a car's performance varies from team to team. Those that get more from them [or lose less because of them] tend to be quicker, which nullifies the very reason for their existence, because slower cars generally don't threaten quicker cars under any circumstances.)
I do agree with you Bhall, but I do think it will allow the faster car which got stuck somehow behind the slower, to overtake the slower car. Cars of similar performance would also have more action inbetween.
It will not allow a Manor to be faster then a Mercedes, but honestly who would ever expect that.
I honestly feel F1 should target situations like Hamilton getting stuck behind Vettel. If you are half to a full second faster per lap, in clean air, then that advantage should be translated also in dirty air.
You are right of course: generally the faster car will be in front of the slower car. Fortunaly F1 is not that dull; there are almost always situations where we have a couple of faster cars being behind slower ones.
turbof1 wrote:I honestly feel F1 should target situations like Hamilton getting stuck behind Vettel. If you are half to a full second faster per lap, in clean air, then that advantage should be translated also in dirty air.
Yeah, I'm sure Alonso would have paid any price for DRS at Abu Dhabi in 2010.
All the same, convergence and diminishing returns eventually make that type of scenario unavoidable. Even DRS will lose most of its potency at some point.
Due to its heightened sensitivity to external factors, managing aerodynamics is simply not a very good strategy for influencing overtaking trends. There's a much better way...
As powerplant variety dwindled, so too did instances of overtaking (until Pirelli tried to redefine what it means to be absurd).
bhall II wrote:In my view, folks just need to understand that we can have blisteringly fast cars or we can have lots of overtaking. We can't have both, because the aerodynamic elements that enable cars to be very quick are the same elements that make overtaking very difficult. That's simply the nature of the beast.
One can also look at it from a drafting point of view.
The more downforce you pile on the cars, the bigger the slipstream effect.
We saw quite powerful slipstreams back in the full on Downforce era.
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of sh*t"
SectorOne wrote:The more downforce you pile on the cars, the bigger the slipstream effect.
For the most part, yeah.
Regardless, I often think aerodynamic development has been somewhat unfairly maligned over the years. Though it's become the most visible aspect of a car's design, most folks still don't really understand how it all works. They just see winglets and other devices sprout up all over the place, and they hear drivers complain about the difficulties of trailing other cars. All combined, those factors make it pretty easy for the uninitiated to blame aerodynamics for the sport's ills, especially after overtaking more or less dried up from the late '90s to the late '00s when aerodynamic development was at its visible zenith.
In reality, the sport is just in a new phase of existence that's a sort of developmental no man's land, so to speak. For a whole host of reasons, the regulations keep the field pretty well bunched together, and that presents the illusion of competitive balance. Yet, things are too strict for big ideas, which prevents a more "organic" shuffling of the grid, and they're not strict enough to force genuine competitive balance, which means the running order is more or less set in stone throughout the season.
As an example, here are the qualifying times for the 2008 French Grand Prix. Even if those cars were in no way influenced by aerodynamics, the narrow but nonetheless firm margins between them would still make overtaking very, very difficult.
None of this is to say the sport shouldn't consider the impact of aerodynamics on competition. But, there's really no reason why even copious amounts of downforce and high entertainment can't go hand in hand. To wit...
I agree with Bhall's sentiment, it's more important for F1 to be fast then for their to be a lot of overtaking. Cars of similar performance are always going to have a difficult time in overtaking, how many touring car races have we seen where you have trains of cars follow each other lap after lap because the performance is so similar between the cars and drivers.
I'm looking forward to more active aero. How about only applying downforce when it's needed? That'd reduce the turbulence, & lap times, & fuel consumption
