2022 Aerodynamic Regulations Thread

[vorticism]

Newey gave an insight into what it might look like with the X2010 cars. A closed wheel car, that still looked like an open wheel car.

Is this the RB X2010 retextured to many liveries?

I think the front wheels could be enhanced. Since the covering are not part of, or connected to the chassis, it should cover the wheels from the outer side as well similarly to the rear, and it would rotate with the wheel.

Yes. Yamauchi asked Newey (probably incl. some RB staff) to conceptualize the fastest circuit racer a driver could handle, using existing technology. Interesting because this was an established F1 engineering director essentially given a loosened rulebook. Had FIA steered a different course, had the formula been freer during its history, something like this may have resulted. This is an automotive sculpture drawn from scratch, by someone who well understands motorsport engineering. The shapes we see are not mandated angles, curvatures, nor lengths, as with the current F1 and FE cars.

What would Brawn, Todt, Toet, etc, produce with a similarly blank slate? By the same token: What sort of 'spec' look would contemporary F1 cars have had Newey been at the helm of the FIA?

[Stu]

The interview in the latest Racecar Engineering suggests, smaller, lighter, more agile race cars (less/no batteries).

[vorticism]

Thanks, Stu. RB of course in recent years pushed for a switch to standard turbocharging away from the MGUH (twin turbo iirc). Any more details? I only read part of that interview, where he studiously averts answering how to solve porpoising.

[Stu]

There is a bit about the budget cap, but I think that he is deliberately being vague regarding the porpoising, although his points about wind tunnel & CFD modelling being static snapshots of what is happening show just how difficult decent correlation is.

It is far easier for commentators (professional or armchair!) to berate and belittle a lack of correlation than to make a decent prediction based on a small number of ‘estimated model’ tests.

[JordanMugen]

Newey gave an insight into what it might look like with the X2010 cars. A closed wheel car, that still looked like an open wheel car.

I'd hesitate to say that looks like an open-wheel car, it looks like an LMP car to me!



Such bodywork regulations for Formula One would be quite the change. It has been since the 70's (?) that bodywork has been expressly excluded around the tyres, no?

There is a reason that LMP regulations prohibit aero fairings over the rear tyres and require the cutouts above the wheels too. It would seem unwise to unlearn those lessons.



Apart from the X2010 having more open floor area, unenclosed front wishbones, and a one-person-wide rather than two-person-wide cockpit, I don't see how the X2010 is more similar to an open-wheel car than a LMP car? The X2010 seems far more similar to an LMP car than a Grand Prix or F2 or F3 car to me.

I'm not sure regulations that make Grand Prix cars look substantially the same as LMP cars is desirable IMO. Hasn't the regulators' intention (mostly) been for sportscar prototype racing and Grand Prix car prototype racing to be distinct, and hence the two types of prototype racing (and I suppose Grand Prix motorcycle prototype racing too, though those will never look like cars!) have generally had very different car shapes?

[JordanMugen]

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.

I disagree, it seems trivial to throw 13 vanes at the problem when you are allowed to do so. It's just brute force. So why allow it?!



They are unrestricted there and want to work the air as hard as possible in that tiny span. So they do it and go to town with a level of detail that would be basically impossible for a DIY race car builder making a Formula Libre hillclimb car in their shed. It would even be unthinkable in the 1980's when the bodywork drawings for the entire F1 car (both the wind tunnel model and the actual one) were done by less than five people.

So OK, fine, they do it now because they have well over a hundred people working on it and they can. But it doesn't mean that what they are doing is genuinely anything sophisticated IMO.

IMO, it is not desirable that the whole car look like that!



IMO, details like the above are not "clever" but instead are "silly" and show that Grand Prix teams have way too much money to spend on infinitesimal gains! [Interestingly, whether by regulation or because it's just as good, most teams seem to use a simple ducktail spoiler flick-up or Gurney on the crash structure nowadays rather than a separate aerofoil.]

I wonder if the engineers evaluated a two- or three-element flapped arrangement on the crash structure to see if it was better...

On closer inspection, the Williams does have a little bit of a ducktail leading into the aerofoil, so it is indeed something of a flapped arrangement!

[browney]

I think that the new rules seem to have been an improvement but, especially after seeing the cars at the track, the thing that sticks out is the car length.

This seems to be something that we hear commentators talk about but I haven't heard much from the technical people at F1. Is this something they want to reduce, maybe with the upcoming changes in engine rules?

[JordanMugen]

This seems to be something that we hear commentators talk about but I haven't heard much from the technical people at F1. Is this something they want to reduce, maybe with the upcoming changes in engine rules?

IIRC the FIA wanted a 3400mm maximum wheelbase, but the teams agreed to a 3600mm maximum wheelbase. So the 2022 cars are about 100-150mm shorter in wheelbase than the typical car in 2021, but not the 350mm reduction which the FIA technical group wanted... I think the front overhang has been increased a little bit for 2022 though.

[mzso]

The interview in the latest Racecar Engineering suggests, smaller, lighter, more agile race cars (less/no batteries).

I'm assuming you mean for 2026 with the new formula. But how is lighter and smaller in particular is suggested to be accomplished? (I'm expecting something limited and compromised from the start...)

[mzso]

There is a reason that LMP regulations prohibit aero fairings over the rear tyres and require the cutouts above the wheels too. It would seem unwise to unlearn those lessons.

Which would be?

[mzso]

Apart from the X2010 having more open floor area, unenclosed front wishbones, and a one-person-wide rather than two-person-wide cockpit, I don't see how the X2010 is more similar to an open-wheel car than a LMP car?

It's much smaller and lighter?

I'm not sure regulations that make Grand Prix cars look substantially the same as LMP cars is desirable IMO. Hasn't the regulators' intention (mostly) been for sportscar prototype racing and Grand Prix car prototype racing to be distinct, and hence the two types of prototype racing have generally had very different car shapes?

I fail to see what looks have to do with anything. Closed wheels or not the two still will be very distinct. I think the engine penalties in F1 made them more similar than looks ever could.

The reason to cover wheels is that leaving them bare is insane, it creates turbulence/vortices, drag, and gives exactly zero performance benefit.
Even more so now that there's an explicit intention to decrease effects for the following car.

[JordanMugen]

The reason to cover wheels is that leaving them bare is insane, it creates turbulence/vortices, drag, and gives exactly zero performance benefit.
Even more so now that there's an explicit intention to decrease effects for the following car.

Putting aside open wheels in general, with respect to the X2010's rear wheel fairings, even most road cars don't have rear wheel fairings... Be it full or partial. So rear wheel fairings can't be that great can they?

The Honda Insight had them 20 years ago, but they are quite rare:
https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/711x ... ?width=960

I'm not sure what the reason is, but there must be a reason the ACO banned fully enclosed rear wheels (seen here on the Silk Cut Jaguar!).

[mzso]

Putting aside open wheels in general, with respect to the X2010's rear wheel fairings, even most road cars don't have rear wheel fairings... Be it full or partial. So rear wheel fairings can't be that great can they?

The Honda Insight had them 20 years ago, but they are quite rare:
https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/711x ... ?width=960

Harder to change a flat tire on the side of a road. Plus probably a similar shallow thinking, where people prefer seeing the whole wheel. (Or at least that is what the designers think)
Actually they're pretty good. The Ford Probe V prototype needed them to get the Cd down to 0.137.
And decreasing drag is of course highly relevant to efficiency and racing performance in turn.

I'm not sure what the reason is, but there must be a reason the ACO banned fully enclosed rear wheels (seen here on the Silk Cut Jaguar!).

Well, if you don't have a reason you don't have point. Maybe some rulemaker liked big holes...
You rather pretended that it's important, and that we shouldn't "unlearn the lesson". But there's no lesson to be seen...

[Tommy Cookers]

... Such bodywork regulations for Formula One would be quite the change. It has been since the 70's (?) that bodywork has been expressly excluded around the tyres, no?

mandatory open wheels were introduced with the 1961 F1 1.5 litre rules

(plus minimum weight limits/wheelbase/engine size, rollover bars, starters, reverse gear, and (my guess) seat belts)

there had been in the 1950s F1 streamliners by M-B, Maserati, Connaught, and Vanwall

but cockpits over the head apparently remained legal (Prost tested such in 1985)

[mzso]

mandatory open wheels were introduced with the 1961 F1 1.5 litre rules

Where do you get this from? I find no trace of it.