First big red flag for red bull. Just pulled over but I'd say everyone wants a hoist out there to get a look.
The end plates are they to prevent a lot of bad air for following cars? The fiat have been hard in saying they had to be just so for all cars.
My main thing is none of these cars are going to be much good going over a kerb fast so the ground effect really will be affected by bumpy tracks and going round fast corners and over kerbing.
With new rules come new problems, and one that has emerged very quickly at this test is of the cars “bouncing” on the straights. This is to do with the way aerodynamics work under F1’s new rules, which have reintroduced a phenomenon called “ground effect”, by using shaped tunnels called “venturis” under the car to create the majority of the downforce. Downforce increases as the car speeds up. This pushes the car lower and lower to the ground. Eventually, there comes a point where the airflow under the floor cannot stay attached to the underbody. This creates a phenomenon called “stalling”, where the airflow is disrupted and downforce rapidly decreases. That leads to the car jumping up, before the airflow reattaches and the car starts to be sucked down again, until it reaches the point of stall again, and so on. All the teams are struggling with this to a greater or lesser extent. Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto said: “Most of us underestimated the problem and we are bouncing more than expected. We knew it was a learning process. How long it takes to address or solve? Solving it can be straightforward but optimising the performance could be a less easy exercise. I am pretty sure each team will get to a solution and the ones that get there sooner will have an advantage.” Solving the bouncing can be done simply by raising the ride height - but that reduces performance as the closer the car can run to the ground for more of the time, the more downforce it creates and the faster they corner. So teams do not want to raise the ride height too much. ........ Interesting comments. If you see a car bouncing along on a straight its losing downforce. Azerbaijan this year will be interesting. The Saudi race becomes even more lethal. The least bound as you change direction and you die
Very interesting, thanks for posting that. On a long straight losing downforce might not be too bad, but increasing and decreasing downforce might be interesting. Although maybe I am thinking about trying to lose drag on the straight and not really downforce? I also wonder if we are going to see much less use of curbs this year as they tyres are much lower profile so wont absorb the curbs as much as they did. Then again the less sidewall flex added to redesigned suspension might make cornering faster? All great fun speculating.....
Seems like the floor is bottoming out at the rear which causes loss of 'suction' causing rear to rise and thus whole car rises. I wonder if they could just add 'bump stops' to rear so it can't get too low? Can't imagine it's that simple though
The car is becoming so loaded its bottoming out and the new suspension can't cope. It looks from the vid the track is being ripped to **** there. It's rise the car up and compromise the slower sections or whatever. It's actually the opposite issue that merc designed last year with collapsing suspension. You want the suspension to stiffen up and resist the loads. I fancy seeing some gearbox failures at various tracks
I think it's something to do with the car getting sucked so low to the ground that the effects of the floor no longer work as efficiently, so the car rises again until the ground effects begin to take effect again fully, and then the cycle repeats. It seems pretty severe on the Ferrari on some of the footage I saw from today.
Nice view of the new “gills” that LH tested on Thursday afternoon. Mercedes just starting to ramp it up.
Everyone on the pitlane seems to have stolen the merc wing mirrors I supposes its only fair everyone steals the Aston slots given they showed them 2 weeks before. They are all at it
Wouldn’t they have known about this issue from Apologies, but I called him Graham by mistake. It would be quite fun to have Brian design a F1 car. .
i dont know if its the "same" or not given the ground effect cars of the past had moving skirts and these cars are relying on fixed body staying in the certain position above the ground. This is why i am wondering how they will deal with tracks with bumps like Azerbaijan or death traps like saudi arabia. If i was rely on that air under the car to not vanish suddenly going through that last section in saudi wall of death track and then relying on there not being a car slowed up with same issue right in fornt as i come round a bend at 190mph.....well.. I just have a very very bad feeling about this. han solo bad. someone is going to die.
No expert here, but it's never stopped me before... Yep, back in the old days, the skirts were there to reduce the ingress of air into the underfloor venturi. If I understand correctly, 2022 designs try to do a similar job using vortices to ‘seal’ the venturi. I think that's one reason why they’re concerned about loss of downforce in yaw – it disrupts those vortices. I think that, in a straight line, bumps become troublesome for a slightly different reason. Underfloor downforce partly comes from the 'inverted wing' effect - basically the same as the lift generated by an aeroplane wing, but 'upside down’. This relies on airflow remaining ‘attached’ to the underbody aerodynamic surface (as with an aeroplane wing). When that airflow becomes 'detached', it results in loss of lift. In an aeroplane wing it's called stalling. For an F1 car is called loss of downforce, but it's basically the same thing. Bumps cause problems because they cause sharp disturbances in pressure, and the turbulence can cause the airflow to become detached. And when the underfloor hits the track, that's clearly going to detach the airflow. When that happens, the loss of downforce is sudden and significant. The cars are designed to attach those airflows and keep them attached as reliably as possible. So they do re-attach quickly when the car is moving at speed. But, as you say, if you're a driver pushing your car to the max and relying on the downforce to be there, a bump in the road can be a big deal.
So, the first part done. Anyone got a pecking order feel? For me it’s too early as I believe Bahrain will see massively updated cars which will obviously either improve or destroy performance. Get the impression that McLaren has a good base concept and looks like they haven’t encountered major issues with suspension. Ferrari, Red Bull and Merc all shown speed flashes with more to come. Alpine looked surprisingly basic to me at this stage and I wonder if they will really bring some new things to Bahrain having been testing out their PU in Barca?
Way too early to try read anything in to it for me. Where we are at right now will be completely different come the next test, which again will likely be different come the first qualy session. Just hope that Ferrari is stinking fast.
