Vanja #66 wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2024 11:04 am
Diffuser and rear wing kick up the water high up no matter what, same as all closed-wheel cars.
True. But it seems to me that F1 is far worse than others. So I think it also picks up a lot more water.
And it seems to be "atomized" into a mist, for whatever reason,* seeing how bad it is even with the wheels covered.
Previously someone on this forum linked a good video from a sportscar driving on a very wet circuit and the water mist behind was barely an issue.
And I don't think there's a significant speed difference. F1 cars don't have that high top speeds compared to others with their huge drag.
*Maybe figuring this out is key. I don't see why the water sucked up by the floor should be inherently turned into a mist. Larger droplets would be of little concern. Would just fall back to the ground.
Vanja #66 wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2024 11:04 am
Perhaps what can be done is to introduce a pressure recovery zone in diffuser, 500mm long, ie mandatory flat roof and no vertical or lateral expansion and abolish beam wing. And then make the rear wing as wide as the whole car with a very short chord and AoA. Finally, reduce the front wing to balance all those loses out. In that case you basically end up with Indy 500 spec F1 cars and lose probably 10-15s of lap time from today.
F1 is F1 because of branding, tradition, marketing and the entailing attention. Because all the money and some of the best drivers are concentrated here.
Then you will get those cars too fast on straights, so PU power must be reduced to limit them to around 340-350kmh. Then you lose another 2-3s of lap time or even more...
I'm probably in the minority, but I wouldn't mind if F1 cars were slower, as long as they were more raceable. Even F2 delivered some decent action on Monaco, by the looks of the highlights video. F1 had pretty much nothing. Except Stroll boy sucking as usual and driving into the barrier, and subsequently overtaking a couple times with a huge grip advantage.