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There's tonnes of talk about the importance of rear aero aspects of this years cars, more coming as the diffuser and "t" wing variants appear. I have been wondering why we don't really see aero rakes fitted behind cars. There has been plenty of flow vis on rear wings, diffusers and floors but rarely rakes.

Does the flow vis provide enough information to the teams or would it be beneficial for validating aero, eg. Mercedes "t" wing validation and redbull under floor aero)?

A decent amount of searching resulted in only a tiny amount of examples, this 2016 Ferrari being the most comprehensive.

dandfx wrote:I have been wondering why we don't really see aero rakes fitted behind cars.

Usually the teams try to understand/validate the aero starting from front to back. I do not wonder, that we see more rakes on the front at the moment. At the end of this week most teams should have had the rake also behind the car...if they understand the data from the front rake

dandfx wrote:There has been plenty of flow vis on rear wings, diffusers and floors but rarely rakes.
Does the flow vis provide enough information to the teams

The flow viz is showing the flow separation from the surfaces, while the rakes give pressure data (correlation with CFD) away from the surfaces. They show different things, both are necessary.

Makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for the info.

I believe the rake is more because of the wish to run softer suspension than that it is aerodynamics.
Thus, there is no reason to run such equipment.

wesley123 wrote:I believe the rake is more because of the wish to run softer suspension than that it is aerodynamics.
Thus, there is no reason to run such equipment.

Please explain this comment - you've lost me completely

I've got no clue what there is to explain.

Teams run the rake because they want to run softer suspension.

That testing equipment is to measure pressure/airspeed, which is pointless when the reason is mechanical and not aerodynamic

wesley123 wrote:I've got no clue what there is to explain.

Teams run the rake because they want to run softer suspension.

That testing equipment is to measure pressure/airspeed, which is pointless when the reason is mechanical and not aerodynamic

Then you mean the wrong rake - the poster meant the construction with the pitot tubes, which is used to measure pressure and therefore the aero - and looks like a rake used in a garden. You mean the angle of the car front to rear [which can only be for aero purposes, since comfort has no place in F1 and we can't discuss in this thread].