[Rules] How about....

[luke g28]

Originally Posted by Marbot

What happened to all of that mechanical grip that you wanted? And why it is that 'ground effect' allows the cars to follow each other at a closer distance?

The reason for the rejection of ground effects is exactly as quoted in the crash.net article.

"It's quite a big departure. If you were going to go down that route and have a very different set of drag and lift coefficients that you couldn't achieve with the current rules, fine, that's different. But the teams saw it as a massive amount of investment and work for something we don't really understand. We're not scared of that but, if you do spend all that money, why do that and not something you can get to very quickly and cheaply with the current floor. The FIA understood that in the end."

I don't think that it could be made any clearer.

This makes interesting reading. Particularly the 'Stepped noses' and 'Aerodynamics' sections.

http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre...Charlie-PC.pdf

Less when there is too much, and more when there is not enough.

As I said, if the aero targets were ones that could not be achieved under the current rules the teams would have changed. However as they were supposed to spend all that money on a redesign for no advantage. They chose not to.

and again typically trucks have a c.d of less than 0.6. With the newer trucks being a fair bit lower than that now they have more interest in fuel saving.

The reason a truck has so much drag is due to its large surface area. An f1 car has a very small surface area and therefore does not create as much drag as a truck. Stating otherwise is purely misleading.

The reason cars cannot follow each other at the moment is because the wings above the car are very sensitive to a clean air flow. By generating the downforce beneath the car, dirty air is a much smaller problem because all you really need is the air to go under the car at a high velocity.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by luke g28

The reason cars cannot follow each other at the moment is because the wings above the car are very sensitive to a clean air flow. By generating the downforce beneath the car, dirty air is a much smaller problem because all you really need is the air to go under the car at a high velocity.

Why not adopt Swift Engineering's 'Mushroom Buster'?

[Marbot]

Why would it not be possible for an F1 car to have a Cd of 0.3 or about the Cd of your average road car?

The reason is that it is far more advantageous for an F1 car to be fuelled up to compensate for the huge amount of drag created by the need to go faster around the corners, than it is to vastly reduce downforce and start the race with much less fuel.

MotoGP bikes can easily beat an F1 car for top speed, but they lose so much around the corners because they don't have downforce, but they have lower drag, which gives them the better top speed.

"But the teams saw it as a massive amount of investment and work for something we don't really understand."

Precisely.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Marbot

MotoGP bikes can easily beat an F1 car for top speed, but they lose so much around the corners because they don't have downforce, but they have lower drag, which gives them the better top speed.

I would have thought Moto GP bikes have a better power to weight ratio than an F1 car.

[luke g28]

I dont think weight really affects top speed once you are above 150mph, it depends on power / drag as air resistance is by far the largest resistance.

The reason F1 cars dont have low drag is because they are not allowed to go fast enough to take advantage of it. As I said previously the rules push towards a car that can do its average speed over the whole circuit. If we had powerful enough cars that could do 250+ mph down the straights then you would be able to chose whether to go for top speed or cornering speed. At the moment there is no choice.

I would welcome a mushroom buster or anything else to get rid of the stupid wake we have now. Im pretty sure the ground effect cars made the same levels as downforce as we currently have in F1 yet the racing was far closer. Have seen ~2,500kg in a few articles recently as an approximate downforce level. The 09 regs were supposed to limit it to 1,250kg.

[S14]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

Why not adopt Swift Engineering's 'Mushroom Buster'?

The what?

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by luke g28

I dont think weight really affects top speed once you are above 150mph, it depends on power / drag as air resistance is by far the largest resistance.

Maybe not but power to weight it does affect acceleration.

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by luke g28

The reason F1 cars dont have low drag is because they are not allowed to go fast enough to take advantage of it.

That statement is nonsensical. Are you suggesting that the current F1 cars are too slow?!

Originally Posted by luke g28

As I said previously the rules push towards a car that can do its average speed over the whole circuit.

When did an F1 car, or any other car, not have an average speed around a circuit?

Why wouldn't you use any extra power to gain more lap time around the corners, rather than the shorter time and distance that they spend on the straights?

All you would have by adding more power is cars piling on the downforce at faster circuits. The straights just aren't long enough, even at Monza, to give a higher top speed any advantage. So you would just be increasing corner speeds, and those are fast enough already.

Originally Posted by luke g28

If we had powerful enough cars that could do 250+ mph down the straights then you would be able to chose whether to go for top speed or cornering speed.

TBH, you're going to have to have a ridiculously high top speed for it to ever make up for the time lost ruining your tyres in the corners, even at circuits like Monza.

Are we still using a fixed amount of fuel here? Is it going to be in line with the 35% reduction that the FIA has planned for 2014? Because if you can have any amount of any fuel, then you're missing the point of using different fuels.

You also seem to have forgotten that when F1 cars recently had near enough 1000bhp, they traded the extra power for more downforce and therefore, drag. So they weren't any faster than the current cars are in a straight line, but they were much less of a handful than the current cars are around the corners.

Originally Posted by luke g28

At the moment there is no choice.

When was there ever a 'choice' other than to do what everyone one else was doing (if you could afford to), because it made their car faster?

[Armco Bender]

Bring back the 1976 rules.....and Ford DFV's...and flaired jeans.....and sideburns...

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by Armco Bender

Bring back the 1976 rules.....and Ford DFV's...and flaired jeans.....and sideburns...

That was a great summer.

But even back in 76, the governing body checked each teams petrol to see if its octane content wasn't over a certain limit. Cars had to be a certain width, etc. Each of those things were to play a part in the championship that year, so don't go thinking that protests never happened back then, because they did.

[Mixer]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

If they had gone for ground effect, like they were gong to do, the car itself would have generated the downforce and would have been less reliant on the wings, the wings could then have been smaller.

Don't forget though that ground effect is pretty amazing but there are also significant safety issues with it, if you clip a kerb at high speed or experience significant yaw you can lose all the ground effect and have a VERY big accident.

I don't really know that the teams want cars flying or flipping...

[wolfhound]

Originally Posted by Mixer

Don't forget though that ground effect is pretty amazing but there are also significant safety issues with it, if you clip a kerb at high speed or experience significant yaw you can lose all the ground effect and have a VERY big accident.

I don't really know that the teams want cars flying or flipping...

Yes but the rules were going to limit ground effect to down force levels to something around what is currently available or a bit less.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Mixer

Don't forget though that ground effect is pretty amazing but there are also significant safety issues with it, if you clip a kerb at high speed or experience significant yaw you can lose all the ground effect and have a VERY big accident.

I don't really know that the teams want cars flying or flipping...

If the cars are using skirts, hitting a curb or rumble strip can have terrible consequences. The yaw was due to cars, particularly under breaking, causing the ride height to suddenly change, thus effecting the air-flow under the car. However, after ground effect was banned in F1 after 1982, it was still used in IndyCar. A very young Adrian Newey worked for MARCH in the mid '80s, on their IndyCar project and they succesfully developed ground effect without the need for skirts. Up until the demise of CART, the cars were using a combination of veins and Venturi tunnels to duct the air under the car.

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

Up until the demise of CART, the cars were using a combination of veins and Venturi tunnels to duct the air under the car.

It was about a 50/50 split between ground effects and wings, depending on the track.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Marbot

It was about a 50/50 split between ground effects and wings, depending on the track.

That would be about right, with the car underwing producing more on ovals and the wings producing more on road and street courses.

[luke g28]

The same thing was said about DRS being able to be opened as a car excited a corner. I think there has been one crash from DRS being opened? Was it petrov into the pit wall?

[Mixer]

Originally Posted by luke g28

The same thing was said about DRS being able to be opened as a car excited a corner. I think there has been one crash from DRS being opened? Was it petrov into the pit wall?

Apples and Oranges, DRS you can control, if you damage your skirt, or get the car off the ground, you're in the wall, HARD. When so much of your downforce comes from under the car, you have no hope of controlling a car that gets out of control.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Mixer

Apples and Oranges, DRS you can control, if you damage your skirt, or get the car off the ground, you're in the wall, HARD. When so much of your downforce comes from under the car, you have no hope of controlling a car that gets out of control.

Based on ground effect development during the CART era, I would presume skirts wouldn't have been used in 2014 in F1, if ground effect had gone ahead.

[Marbot]

I think that ground effects was seen has something that the FIA may have found to be difficult to regulate. Certainly the teams thought that they may have been getting into something that they had no real control over.

Sam Michael:

" There's the budget effect of doing the tunnelled floor, a shaped undertray, but there's also the fact that it's unknown."

But what we will have:

* a front wing of reduced width, down from from 1800mm to 1650mm

* a much shallower rear wing, similar to those used at the high-speed Monza track

* significantly lower noses on the cars to improve safety, although the exact maximum height has still to be determined

* the retention of the moveable rear wing - or drag-reduction system (DRS) - that was introduced this season to make overtaking a little easier

* a restriction on all the extra pieces of bodywork that have sprouted in front of the sidepods of the cars

* a restriction on the design of front-wing endplates, to limit the intricate designs seen today

* a plan to increase wheel diameter from 13 inches to 18 inches has been delayed until at least 2014

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Marbot

I think that ground effects was seen has something that the FIA may have found to be difficult to regulate. Certainly the teams thought that they may have been getting into something that they had no real control over.

CART managed to regulate ground effect quite effectively, allowing enough variation in aero design, within the formula, especially in the '90s.

[ptclaus98]

Originally Posted by wheelsportaddict

... A return to the days of relying more on mechanical grip than on downforce? You will remember the days (well most of you will) when we had F1 cars with huge rear tyres.

A return to that sort of racing would sort the men out from the boys wouldn't it? I much prefer those cars to the cars of today. Today's F1 cars all look the same. If you lined them up and sprayed them all white would you be able to tell which was which? No, neither would I!

Also, while I'm on it, lets have cars where you have to take your hand off the wheel to change gear as well.

I could, and I think that is the most ridiculous argument.

[Mixer]

Originally Posted by Marbot

* a restriction on all the extra pieces of bodywork that have sprouted in front of the sidepods of the cars
* a restriction on the design of front-wing endplates, to limit the intricate designs seen today

Cheer!

[luke g28]

Originally Posted by Marbot

I think that ground effects was seen has something that the FIA may have found to be difficult to regulate. Certainly the teams thought that they may have been getting into something that they had no real control over.

Sam Michael:

" There's the budget effect of doing the tunnelled floor, a shaped undertray, but there's also the fact that it's unknown."

But what we will have:

* a front wing of reduced width, down from from 1800mm to 1650mm

* a much shallower rear wing, similar to those used at the high-speed Monza track

* significantly lower noses on the cars to improve safety, although the exact maximum height has still to be determined

* the retention of the moveable rear wing - or drag-reduction system (DRS) - that was introduced this season to make overtaking a little easier

* a restriction on all the extra pieces of bodywork that have sprouted in front of the sidepods of the cars

* a restriction on the design of front-wing endplates, to limit the intricate designs seen today

* a plan to increase wheel diameter from 13 inches to 18 inches has been delayed until at least 2014

There isnt much there though really is there.

Slightly narrower front wing... woo. Dare say that will set the teams back about a season in front downforce levels.

The Monza rear wing, again woo because there is so much more overtaking at Monza. Im sure that will make a huge difference.

Lower noses..well at least we lose the step I guess.

DRS stays, I think on balance that is a good thing.

Extra bodywork pieces is a good one but will probably be more aesthetic that anything else.

Simpler end plates..cant see it being a huge effect.

And no extra mechanical grip.

Hmmm more of the same then?

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

CART managed to regulate ground effect quite effectively, allowing enough variation in aero design, within the formula, especially in the '90s.

CART ended up just using one chassis in the end (Lola since 2004, then Panoz from 2007)), and the differences between the chassis were very small, even when there was more than just one chassis (Reynard, Lola, Swift, March, etc), so it wasn't difficult to regulate the cars aero performance. The chassis were made by outside sources (except Penske and Eagle) which were very limited in the things that they could do to the chassis to up the performance.

http://photos.speedtv.com/gallery/1280206009822

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Marbot

CART ended up just using one chassis in the end (Lola since 2004, then Panoz from 2007)), and the differences between the chassis were very small, even when there was more than just one chassis (Reynard, Lola, Swift, March, etc), so it wasn't difficult to regulate the cars aero performance. The chassis were made by outside sources (except Penske and Eagle) which were very limited in the things that they could do to the chassis to up the performance.

http://photos.speedtv.com/gallery/1280206009822

I'm well aware of CART/Champcar's history. I used to love going to Laguna Seca. Penske had his factory in Poole, Dorset.

The differences were small as they were written into the rule book but there were variations, which allowed some flexibility within the rules.

This interview with Tony Cotman is interesting:

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/artic...otman-2012-qa/