F1technical.net

n smikle wrote:Sorry but I need to post this... lets see who gets it!

WhiteBlue wrote:
1. Question: Yeah a 10 year rule freeze would have some of the desired effects but not all. In particular I don't believe that they will be able to not touch the aero rules that long if the race for downforce continues. You also disregard the other part of my proposal, that rules should be less restrictive. If designers have more choices to play with like tunnels, double diffusors, front and rear wing elements and dimensions we would possibly see different schools of thought. Constant downforce does not mean that the cars would look uniform. I actually think quite the opposite is true.

2. Question: Naturally that is a question of opinion. I know you work in the aero industry and you are a big fan of aero. I have a different set of values and I believe that it would benefit F1 more to pick one set of performance, downforce and aero rules and focus all the money on improving the efficiency of the engine, the energy recovery and the chassis. That way we can still have a development race in many different disciplines and it would be interesting for many fans with different technical back ground.

I mean this is basically the issue of the thread. Showing ways of making F1 tech more interesting. I believe that my proposal would do this.

rules open or not a standard amount of downforce would have little to no effect on making the other parts of the car more important teams are already doing what you propose. Downforce is limited by engine power the goal is keep the same drag level and gain down force. If you freeze the other side of the equation the gains are still there to be made it will still cost the same amount of money you will simply see cornering speeds remain the same while strait line speed improves.

I find all parts of the car interesting I find the Inerter just as impressive as F-duct. The flexi wings are just as cool as the beryllium engines. I feel know need to press what I think F1 should be upon everyone else. IMO they should open up all of the regs. As F1 stands now the teams that are better at politics matter more than how well they build race cars. This is the problem in my opinion.


But alas we will never agree so there is really no point in building up our post counts.

That the first step toward a solution for F1's "problems" these days always seems to be a call for something to be standardized is troublesome to me. If aerodynamic dependence is too high, it's only because the engines, ECUs, KERS and tires are all effectively standardized, leaving no other avenue for teams to improve their cars. One could even make a convincing argument that the aero is already standardized; the cars all look basically the same, and their performance is so close that the sport has resorted to the gimmickry of DRS to provide (temporary) performance differentiation.

I just don't see how standardizing anything in F1 is a viable answer. (Then again, I'm not exactly convinced there's a problem, either.)

bhallg2k wrote:That the first step toward a solution for F1's "problems" these days always seems to be a call for something to be standardized is troublesome to me.

Nobody is calling for standardization. The issue is about rule stability combined with a massive liberalization of aero rules and combined with a downforce limit.

flynfrog wrote:rules open or not a standard amount of downforce would have little to no effect on making the other parts of the car more important teams are already doing what you propose. Downforce is limited by engine power the goal is keep the same drag level and gain down force. If you freeze the other side of the equation the gains are still there to be made it will still cost the same amount of money you will simply see cornering speeds remain the same while strait line speed improves.

I totally disagree with that opinion. In fact I find it contradicted by the technical history of F1. Even when engine power was relatively static during the engine freeze the teams have always tried to generate more downforce. The reasons are nicely explained in the post I applauded. Keep the rules and the power static and you will have a monotone increase of the downforce. This is the reason why historically big changes had to be made to aero configs, tyre contact patches and the wheel tracks. All of these changes have been extremely expensive and ultimately useless. This endless waste of money will only be stopped by going to a liberated aero config combined with a physical downforce limit. In order to keep performance comparable the downforce limit should be set individually for each circuit. A constant downforce for all circuits would damage the differentiation of the tracks and possibly ruin the racing.

That strategy aiming at diminishing aero research returns will work because the big differentiator of downforce will be eliminated. That will strengthen the competitive impact of other areas of research. Money will be shifted to other areas. All teams will have the same downforce per track although with different drag. I agree that cornering speeds will remain the same, which is desirable. That is extremely important because the circuits will not be faced with ever increasing costs for making the corners safe. A critical rise of strait line speed is not very probable for a medium time frame. If there is concern after some years of development the fuel limit can be adjusted. The cars would be differentiated by different strait line speed which would improve overtaking. So all is well except for the aerodynamicists loosing the budget domination that they currently enjoy.

If a codified downforce limit isn't standardization, then. . .

Achieving downforce is the easy part, which is why I don't quite understand why it's necessary to cap downforce levels. Anyone with even superficial knowledge of aerodynamics could, right now, under current regulations, probably devise a car with double the downforce of any other car on the grid. It would just be really, really slow.

The development race is already about finding the most efficient way to produce downforce; it's about quick downforce rather than raw downforce. When a driver or team complains about a lack of downforce, they're really saying that they lack the ability to use as much downforce as they'd like without running the risk of being run over by all the other cars.

Moreover, I think if you give teams a benchmark such as the limits you've proposed, it would only be a matter of time before the teams converge on virtually identical solutions. Within two years, every car would look almost exactly alike save for the liveries.

bhallg2k wrote:If a codified downforce limit isn't standardization, then. . .

It isn't. If you require standard parts that is standardization. To regulate downforce instead of hundreds of geometric restrictions is intelligent rule making. Deregulation usually leads to more competition and different approaches in the real world. That is why I believe your predictions will not materialize.

My predictions will not materialize because your proposal has less than a snowball's chance in hell of being adopted.

Moreover, the cars' fixed weight distribution doesn't require standard parts, but I don't think anyone would hesitate to call weight distribution standardized, because the net result is. The effect of the rules is just as important as the words used to define them.

And not to burst your bubble or anything: F1 is about as far away from the "real world" as can be. Originality accounts for nothing unless it wins races. Otherwise, F1 teams are never shy about feasting upon their rivals' innovations if they think it will make them quicker. Specifying exact downforce levels would do nothing but make that task easier.

I've to say I'm bit perplexed because, while Whiteblue applauds my post and says to agree with what I said, he then says some things I don't really agree with indicating a position that is quite distant from my take of things...

I've to assume that presumably I didn't make my position clear enough, possibly trying to put too much stuff while contemporarily limiting length of post (not succeeding much...) it came out in words differently from how it was in my mind.

To make it clear, my position is lot more similar to flynfrog's, in that rules on bodywork should be made more open.
The only thing I don't agree with him is that generating downforce is easy. I don't think teams can, with current rules, easily generate as much total downforce as it would be optimal for the current tracks and with current power level.
In some tracks certainly that's the case (Monza, Suzuka, UK, Spa) but they are more like the exception, for most, almost all the others, optimal downforce is not easily reachable and for that reason for the most part the work done on aerodynamics is aimed at getting more downforce, being distant from optimal level the sensitivity of laptime reduction to downforce increment is just too high for teams to ignore it.

The analysis of speed data was aimed at that, showing with real data and in a way as easily readable as possible, which characteristics the current tracks have, and consequently on which direction teams work is naturally focused on, independently by bodywork rules.

Hardly the result is surprising though, one has just to look at the cars, in most of tracks the rear wing is maxed out or close to it, and that's not a coincidence; besides, I think that the fact the cars that, in term of performance, virtually dominated the last few years are typically also been the ones that universally were rated as generating highest downforce level, especially in the low/medium speed range (which is incidentally also the speed range where EBD was making most of difference) often at expense of peak speed, should be rather conclusive already.

So, in that sense my position is that, if one (not necessarily including me, but apparently FIA and many others) is unhappy about the state of things, and wants to move away the focus from pure downforce generation and induce teams to work also on how the downforce is generated (less drag, smoother reaction to variations of conditions like ride height thus allowing more freedom on mechanical setup, reduced sensitivity to external disturbances so to better work in the wake etc), the approach of constantly trying to directly limit downforce to a level lower than what teams would like to have is totally wrong and will bring nothing.

That applies to a limitation done via changes of bodywork rules (that just make teams focus on recovering df no matter the way, accepting more critical designs working right in a very limited range of conditions), and even more to the idea of putting an arbitrary limit of downforce as Whiteblue proposes (let alone one kept fixed for years...).
The latter actually would be IMO the most stupid approach, for a start because it really is not enforceable, for a variety of reasons; even assuming downforce could be measurable real time with the required accuracy, which probably is not, how would that limit work? Certainly can't be a single peak value as it's too dependent from speed, attitude and a quantity of other factors so already the ruling becomes a mess, go figure the application (and considering FIA's record...).
Then, even if such limit could be introduced it would just lead to teams wanting to beat it in any possible way and in a matter of weeks we would be submerged in an amount of controversies that would make the sum of all the various "-gates" of recent years look like nothing.
Last but not least, would certainly not make cars less sensitive to wake (likely more actually) thus wouldn't improve ability of cars to stay close each other, thus wouldn't improve racing.

IMO approach should be opposite, rules on bodywork should be made more open so to allow teams to easily be able to reach the downforce level optimal for most of tracks, that way the main focus would naturally move on other aspects of performance as the low hanging fruit (downforce) would be taken more easily and getting more would add nothing.
If then the downforce level is felt too high and speeds have to be controlled, then work has to be done on boundary conditions, engine power mainly, and track's layout then, which are the basic parameters defining the design philosophy of the cars.

xpensive wrote:

WhiteBlue wrote: Sorry, but Reca's analysis seems to contradict your thesis.
...

And what made this analysis the truth of the day, perhaps you subscribe to it but that doesn't give you the right to patronize on other people's opinions? I don't agree with Reca, but I respect another position, you should try that WB.

I certainly don't pretend to represent the truth of the day (if anything I would be the truth since years as it's lot of time that I maintain these ideas, you can check my old posts in this same forum, I repeated a few times already that limiting downforce is a wrong approach IMO), and what I posted is nothing but putting together a few real data and couple of basic laws of physics.
If you don't agree with me, or these data, I'd like to know on which parts exactly, so maybe we can discuss them in detail.

WhiteBlue wrote:

bhallg2k wrote:If a codified downforce limit isn't standardization, then. . .

It isn't. If you require standard parts that is standardization. To regulate downforce instead of hundreds of geometric restrictions is intelligent rule making. Deregulation usually leads to more competition and different approaches in the real world. That is why I believe your predictions will not materialize.

WB, it's not because you think it's the way to go that it is "intelligent rule making". Intelligent rule making to me is conducted by the overtaking working group, by experts in the field based on real windtunnel and track tests.
I find it quite disturbing that you think your idea is only good approach.

Now for my personal opinion, I do believe that freeing up the ruleset and limiting downforce will likely improve creativity, and would be a very interesting formula. But the lack of possibilities for the FIA to actually foresee what will happen under these regs is likely what holds them back on doing that. And of course, as ever, if that is not enough, some safety reason will surely be found to underline that this would be a bad approach.

Of course I'm not aerodynamicist, so I don't have much to prove why this or that would be a good approach, but it's certainly a possiblity to get more difference between car designs, without them being hugely different in performance compared to other designs.

@ Reca. What I mean when I say DF is easy is that is always easier to bolt more wing on the car or more AoA. The problem is doing that without the added drag. Think running the Monaco wings at every track.

flynfrog wrote:@ Reca. What I mean when I say DF is easy is that is always easier to bolt more wing on the car or more AoA. The problem is doing that without the added drag. Think running the Monaco wings at every track.

This is so very true. Alas, this basic and fundamental reality seems to evade many!

n smikle wrote:

flynfrog wrote:@ Reca. What I mean when I say DF is easy is that is always easier to bolt more wing on the car or more AoA. The problem is doing that without the added drag. Think running the Monaco wings at every track.

This is so very true. Alas, this basic and fundamental reality seems to evade many!

I disagree. Current regulation make it very difficult to get more downforce from wings: this was pointed out by a mclaren engineer sying that Canada is not a low downforce track anymore (even in 2010).

@frog and smikle: Reca's point is more subtle: he is not overlooking "basic reality". Maybe you have misinterpreted his post

Tomba wrote:WB, it's not because you think it's the way to go that it is "intelligent rule making". Intelligent rule making to me is conducted by the overtaking working group, by experts in the field based on real windtunnel and track tests. I find it quite disturbing that you think your idea is only good approach.

The overtaking working group got it seriously wrong the last time they had a go at the problem. They created the double diffusor loop hole and the aim of reducing DF was totally missed.

I'm not saying that my proposal is the only intelligent. I'm far from that. There have been interesting proposals in the past to change the current system of geometric restrictions to deal with DF created performance problems. It is not possible to reign in cornering performance by power cutting only as Reca seems to think. Pretty soon you come to a horse power figure that gives marketing problems for the pinnacle of motor sport. There is no way around the need to limit performance from the DF side as well. They tried to do it from the tyre side and failed.

Some people may not be prepared to talk about the necessity of performance curbing but those who are observing F1 for the last 20 years know that there is a real need to do so.

Regarding Reca's concerns that downforce would be selected arbitrarily there is a simple solution. You just pick the peak downforce of the best car on every circuit immediately before you change the rule. I assume that there would be an index track like Barcelona where everybody tests. The other tracks would derive their DF levels by a factor which would be determined before the rule is introduced.


Btw, he also had a misunderstanding about the freezing of the rules. I only want the aerodynamical configuration (of a minimum set of geometrical restrictions) frozen for some time. The downforce can certainly be adjusted in a scientifically suitable way if there is a need. Such a need may actually be caused by tyre or wheel changes. If they make a change to those parameters you would have to do some serious testing to find how the index DF needs to be adjusted. The peak DF for the other tracks would be set by applying their original factor.

His other concern is the measuring of the actual peak downforce on the tracks in real time. This is an almost trivial problem for the massive computing power of an F1 car. The vertical forces balance of a car is composed from aerodynamic, inertial and weight components. The balance can be measured at all four wheels. The weight can be integrated by tracking the fuel consumption via the controlled fuel injection. The inertial forces can be tracked by systems that have been used in commercial and military aviation for ages. So the real time DF is always available to computation. Teams will have practise sessions to dial in the right level of DF for qualifying and the race. If there are over runs there can be pre determined penalties for the size of the violation. F1 has attempted much more complex things than that in the past. Teams have to manage their car weight, petrol consumption, petrol temperature, fuel composition, tyres, pit stop impact on track position and many more items. Getting DF right for the race would be no big deal compared to the other jobs. They actually do a DF optimization now for every track, but obviously with different goals.

The Overtaking Working Group wasn't specifically tasked with reducing downforce; they were tasked with with making overtaking easier. Those two goals aren't necessarily one and the same. I imagine a Downforce Reduction Working Group would devise an entirely different solution.

But, no one ever talks about merely reducing downforce as the solution to any problem. Discussions about F1's aero dependency are centered around the fact that it's only through aerodynamics that teams can improve performance, because everything else is locked up. Freezing any aspect of the rules inherently creates a disproportional dependence on that which is not frozen. In this case, a downforce freeze would just shift F1's performance emphasis back to areas that are now frozen for cost reasons. To an extent, I share your desire to see those areas opened up again. I just don't know how viable it is economically.

Put another way: this thing that you "want," as you've said, "solves" one problem by creating a host of others. I think the only intelligent rules in that regard are the geometric ones you so deride. Such rules are the only way to give engineers the latitude to devise completely unique solutions rather than solutions devised to overcome a codified bias.

I would prefer to see a much simpler body rule. something like the car must fit in a box this size.

I have called for this for more years than many members have been alive.
Instead of so many restrictive rules we should have opened things up.