F1Technical Overtaking Working Group

Here are our CFD links and discussions about aerodynamics, suspension, driver safety and tyres. Please stick to F1 on this forum.
DaveW
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Joined: 14 Apr 2009, 12:27

Re: F1Technical Overtaking Working Group

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richard_leeds wrote:
Are you saying that deformable wings are bad because the forces can suddenly flip, resulting in a near instantaneous loss of downforce?
Not really, although what you suggest could happen. I was simply pointing out that deliberately designing a structure to deform in response to a load in order to modify that load is dangerous & requires much care, understanding & testing. Past mistakes have caused spectacular accidents & that is the reason the practice has been banned, or at least curtailed, by regulation.
again:
I can see that happening if the wings flapped around like a badly trimmed sail, or a mast with subject to cross wind galloping. But that sort of scenario is also possible with a rigid wing that is very pitch sensitive on a car bouncing over kerbs?
"Aero" vehicles do become unstable, even without kerbs and despite the best efforts of designers. All can "porpoise" (oscillate) at high speeds, LMP & IRL vehicles (in particular) do still depart (take off), occasionally. Both are aeroelastic phenomena, with the flexible element(s) being (mainly) suspension.

bill shoe
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Joined: 19 Nov 2008, 08:18
Location: Dallas, Texas, USA

Re: F1Technical Overtaking Working Group

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Remember during pre-season when the big topic was improving overtaking?

Indycar racing in the US has had a similar problem for several years. At the most recent race they tried to improve overtaking by making some simple modifications to the existing cars. It worked well.

There is no clear technical description of the change, but from reading between the lines it appears they used large wicker bills on the wings to do a couple of things-

1. Reduces wing sensitivity to turbulence. The wing with the big wicker bill makes more consistent downforce behind other cars.

2. The big wicker bill makes the wing less efficient in terms of downforce relative to drag. Previously teams were using extrememly efficient wings that gave downforce at a low cost (in terms of drag). Therefore there was no incentive to do anything other than nail the car to the track with lots of downforce. Now with the inefficient wing, downforce comes at a large cost in drag. The teams have an incentive to use less downforce in order to keep drag under control. The result is cars that are not nailed to the track. It's possible to go around the oval corners on the outside and still be quick instead of only using the inside line because it's the shortest distance (if you have all the downforce in the world you only care about the shortest distance around an oval).

The interesting thing is that this solution would have been possible years ago and it was conceived by a couple of team engineers on an informal basis. Not a committee. Not a high tech solution. Just ask the rank and file engineers what to do and they can probably tell you.

Here is the limited info I saw--

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/article/ ... on-target/

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vorticism
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Joined: 01 Mar 2022, 20:20

Re: F1Technical Overtaking Working Group

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Worth considering that 2008 provided five teams with Grand Prix victories. afaik a figure this high has not occured since.
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hollus
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Joined: 29 Mar 2009, 01:21
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Re: F1Technical Overtaking Working Group

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6 in 2012
Rivals, not enemies.

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vorticism
323
Joined: 01 Mar 2022, 20:20

Re: F1Technical Overtaking Working Group

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Indeed, I didn't remember that was the year Maldonado won one and Kimi & Lotus took third in the WDC. This metric of # of teams winning doesn't get spoken of as much as, say, number of passes.
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Sofa King
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Joined: 18 Mar 2022, 15:15

Re: F1Technical Overtaking Working Group

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Can we talk about a thread with a 13 year gap in comments?

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Big Tea
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Joined: 24 Dec 2017, 20:57

Re: F1Technical Overtaking Working Group

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Sofa King wrote: ↑
04 Sep 2022, 04:15
Can we talk about a thread with a 13 year gap in comments?
(Someone once said)
Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

You only learn of the past if you read it later.
I think it is all good points, even if we still ignore them we know of them
When arguing with a fool, be sure the other person is not doing the same thing.

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Stu
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Joined: 02 Nov 2019, 10:05
Location: Norfolk, UK

Re: F1Technical Overtaking Working Group

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Indeed!
It is a great shame that it wasn’t resurrected sooner, the first post on this page would have helped some teams out when developing this years cars…
Perspective - Understanding that sometimes the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.