A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
There is a difference between the A522 and the other 3 ramp-shaped sidepod undercuts. The A522 front undercut is more classic and is turning air more aggressively towards the floor edge wing -a big gurney flap in the case of Alpine- (and is working with the underbody fences)
RB recently added that blister to the floor though (Spain) which seems to orientate some of the flow towards the small edge wing and that gruney-like flap (red)
So now it looks like a mix between both undercut designs
#flowviz
Nextgen-auto
Last edited by Blackout on Fri Jun 24, 2022 12:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
The Alpine is also the only car with a low rear cooling outlet. The other cars raise it and shrinkwrap the bodywork around the gearbox (like here on the Toro Rosso for example)
So it seems the other teams wanted to clear that path toward the diffuser top/beam wing bottom as much as possible, whereas Alpine seems to have scarified it a bit (that path is fairly cluttered with all those suspension arms anyway) and cleared the top of the beam wing instead.
It's visible here too. It's clear how Alpine is using its "unnecessarily" wide and humpy rear bodywork to actively orientate the airflow towards specific areas, and probably to attract some of top flow downwards. #downwash
I think the top rear of the sidepod, yellow and orangle lines act as a venturi. I beleive that the air passing through there gets converged through the yellow section and therfore accelerates. Air passing above that squeezed section will deaccelerate in layers till it matches the speed the car is traveling at and act as a lid of the venturi. The faster the car is traveling the better the seal. The slope down in both the ridge and "valley" section have been carefully sculped to create a diverging section. At high speed this will create a suction and pull air in from the over ridge of the side pod.
I thought they told us it was gonna be primarily focused on the floor! Would love to see another angle to see how deep the “bowl” is on the top surface.
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