2022 Aerodynamic Regulations Thread

[Hoffman900]

re: Mick Schumacher crash. If porpoising is related to ride height, how does this relate riding raised kerbs? Sudden loss of downforce from lifting the floor off the track.

That looked like classic grip differential from curbing v asphalt.

Edit: Yeah, outside rear over the curb unloaded it.

[vorticism]

I'm sure that played a part. But generally with all the ride height sensitivity talk, riding curbs must have consequences.

[Sevach]

re: Mick Schumacher crash. If porpoising is related to ride height, how does this relate riding raised kerbs? Sudden loss of downforce from lifting the floor off the track.

High curbs might need reconsidering with the new cars.

[Stu]

re: Mick Schumacher crash. If porpoising is related to ride height, how does this relate riding raised kerbs? Sudden loss of downforce from lifting the floor off the track.

High curbs might need reconsidering with the new cars.

Both Ocon & Perez gave that curb a good hammering as well! Ocon was very lucky to save his moment!!!

That curb does not look particularly high, but is high enough that when the cars are loaded up the floor hits it; the curb looks as though it has been placed/designed to discourage abuse of track limits (corner-cutting).

[Mchamilton]

re: Mick Schumacher crash. If porpoising is related to ride height, how does this relate riding raised kerbs? Sudden loss of downforce from lifting the floor off the track.

That looked like classic grip differential from curbing v asphalt.

Edit: Yeah, outside rear over the curb unloaded it.

Mick had oversteer in the 2 turns before he crashed, and he had an oversteer moment before he went on the kerb. Then mounted the kerb, likely different grip as you say, and surely a loss of floor suction at the worst possible time.

[Mchamilton]

re: Mick Schumacher crash. If porpoising is related to ride height, how does this relate riding raised kerbs? Sudden loss of downforce from lifting the floor off the track.

High curbs might need reconsidering with the new cars.

This one for sure seems a little dangerous, especially the way the inside wall come back towards the trajectory of the cars if they do have a spin. Not at all forgiving

[Sevach]

re: Mick Schumacher crash. If porpoising is related to ride height, how does this relate riding raised kerbs? Sudden loss of downforce from lifting the floor off the track.

High curbs might need reconsidering with the new cars.

This one for sure seems a little dangerous, especially the way the inside wall come back towards the trajectory of the cars if they do have a spin. Not at all forgiving

High curbs might in general affect the car more, this one is particularly dangerous because it potentially launches the car right at a wall and on to the path of oncoming traffic.

Both Ocon & Perez gave that curb a good hammering as well! Ocon was very lucky to save his moment!!!

That curb does not look particularly high, but is high enough that when the cars are loaded up the floor hits it; the curb looks as though it has been placed/designed to discourage abuse of track limits (corner-cutting).

Ocon in particular might've saved because he steered into escape zone instead trying to keep the car between the lines.

It's fairly high i would say, it might be taller than a sausage when you look at it.
It's a gradual ramp so if you just touch it with your outside wheels it's fine, but when you overshoot it... your floor/plank will be skating that thing.

And yeah it's tall so drivers don't push the boundaries... but the road hell is paved with good intentions.

[vorticism]

Are the round dots on the rear wings for observing deflection by the FIA?

[Just_a_fan]

Are the round dots on the rear wings for observing deflection by the FIA?

Yes.

[vorticism]

Raked floors with maximized topside exposure was initiated by RB 2009 and all teams followed suite in the twelve seasons after.

I'll add it's worth noting that RB have somewhat abandoned this philosophy for 2022 by flaring out their sidepods over top the rear floor, whereas Merc did not. Even Ferrari are still somewhat using it by exposing their rear floor in the same area..

[vorticism]

They look slow and I don’t think these cars hold a candle aesthetically to the racecars from generations before; totally underwhelmed. Rant over

Todt and Brawn et al trying to play car stylist while being bureaucrats. The maturing of the formula til 2008 gave us some of the best looking cars imo, since then they look either more boring (2009 on) or more contrived with the 2018(?) mandated swooping angles, and the 2022 mandated MORE swoopy angles. Well, we had swoopy angles once before, and it didn't arrive from a downloadable FIA spec swoopy angles database.

2008, which means they essentially made this with a Pentium 2 running DOS. Respect for that.

[JordanMugen]

The maturing of the formula til 2008 gave us some of the best looking cars imo, since then they look either more boring (2009 on)

I strongly disagree. The minimum radius rule was a very welcome and very important change IMO. Restoring the rear wing to full height was good, making the rear wing look comical and narrow was not good, but it was what it was.

The FIA had no obligation to provide the unrestricted bargeboard legality box they did up to 2021, and TBH that bargeboard zone should probably have been a strict bodywork exclusion zone in the regulations.

Where is the skill in slapping a ridiculous number of shedding edges / vanes into an unregulated (aside from needing a flat floor) bargeboard legality box through a brute force iterative process?! RB16B example [With no minimum radius rule (and unlimited numbers of front and rear wing elements) one suspects the whole car would look like that, which would just be absurd!]

Getting rid of that outwashing bodywork would have done wonders to make sure all the cars ingest their own front tyre wakes, and therefore were less affected when driving in turbulence of other cars too.

Make the aerodynamicists sweat and try to achieve more with less vanes I say!

With the restricted number of vanes and elements in the 2022, the designers actually need to put some thought into how they are going to use the allocated number of front wing elements, "how are we going to use the allocated number of inlet strakes, and get the most benefit within the allowed geometry" etc. It's much better.

Also, the bodywork rules up to 1992 (unintentionally) had a more elegant solution to front tyre wakes: the front tyres were narrower and located further out at the maximum 2150mm total width, so that would have also been an important rule to adopt, from (for example) 2017 too. Newey was calling for the 91/92-spec front tyre spats from the front wing endplates, so those could have been a neat, elegant solution too.

The 2008 monstrosities, some of the ugliest Grand Prix cars of all time, are the last thing to aspire too! Silly narrow track (only by regulation), silly grooved tyres (only by regulation), silly narrow rear tyres (only by regulation), covered in appendages (the X-wings were of course banned almost immediately, but the minimum radius rule needed to come along to get rid of the rest of them). Sure they had V8 engines, but those were not as entertaining as the V10 engines (though at least when they initially revved to the full 19,500+rpm before the rev limit was introduced, the V8s still sounded pretty good).

The 2008 cars were abominations quite frankly:


This was much better, the minimum radius rule has been a very, very, very welcome regulation in Formula One:


As you can see the 2008 car already has the bigger rear wing endplates. I think they were increased in size in 2006, for the reasons of advertising space, and not for technical reasons. Alonso did the demo with the 2005 V10 car with small rear wing endplate overhang (which made the car seem smaller), but the next 2006 V8 Renault already had the bigger rear wing endplates and therefore larger rear overhang. [Obviously they still have enormous rear wing endplates to this day, which explains part of the large rear overhang (not withstanding rear crash structures being increased in length etc).]

[vorticism]

I don't think we'll see eye to eye on it but I know some think that era was polarizing. You didn't like all the mid wings? There were almost no flat surface left on the cars so I can imagine sponsors were asking for some billboard space and got it with endplates. But that gets into the sponsorship problem and imo the cars always look better de-liveried.

Make the aerodynamicists sweat and try to achieve more with less vanes I say!

They sweat when there are more variables, not fewer. That's what drives some of the bodywork regs; the teams know they can spend fewer hours on conceptualizing and validation if you're only allowed to shape something like an egg rather than a chicken.


Imagine these with 14 more seasons of unrestricted development. Would have been interesting. The 2021 bargeboards except as the entire car. I'd trade that cost for the V6 development costs.

[jjn9128]

I'm with Jordan, cleaner cars are better.

[mzso]

Before this year (when the cars are cleanish) the last time was late nineties and early 2000s. (And in the first half of nineties they looked actually pleasant.)
In my impression the aero complexity came hand-in-hand with reductions of racing quality. I also think they didn't do enough for this years there are still to many winglets, craplets on the car. Like the nonsense with the mirrors and floor edges.

The other suspect enemies of racing in my opinion are the long and clumsy cars, and the massive amounts of data collection and on- and off-site simulations.