The new flap tip twist plays to the tune of lateral flow that is the new normal for these wings. By twisting it towards the tip and extending the flap leading edge forward, that leading edge is aligned to the lateral direction of the local flow. Lateral flow can generate a substantial amount of downforce with a very small drag penalty.
I do so love being a prophet
Vanja #66 wrote: ↑14 Feb 2024, 22:41
For all the complaints of the launch car being simple, it's now clear why not going fully committed with a single type of inlet solution was the right thing to do. Every other Top 5 car features a different inlet philosophy and Alpine has a peculiar arch tunnel in the undercut, so now Ferrari can gather info and chose the best way for their future development direction. On top of that, their sidepods can likely be shrink wrapped a bit.
However, the S duct is not gone we should note, there is a separate edge inside the vertical slit now, so they might be scraping the boundary layer and feeding the air inside without an actual internal ducting. Hopefully we get a side view without bodywork soon
Xyz22 wrote: ↑16 May 2024, 12:30
Vanja why do you think Ferrari didn't make significant changes to the front wing despite changing a lot in the middle and rear areas of the car?
The launch wing obviously works fine, it's not a compromised base design like launch-23 wing was. After Austria, it also wasn't changed (other than required changes to flaps for extreme high/low-df tracks) last year. Front wing is not a differentiator if it works fine, it's there to add some efficient front downforce, condition the flow to the rear and provide stable balance at different speeds and corners. Not an easy task for those teams that keep changing it 3 years into a regulation cycle. Hint - I'm not thinking of McLaren, they kept using last year's wing until Miami, that's how good it worked for them
RB20 has the same wing philosophy as RB19 even if it was changed in terms of sidepod flow conditioning. Front wings have become red herrings with new rules, floor is King and obviously sidepods and engine cover are second biggest performance differentiators. Rear wings can be improved by using different flap tip trims as well. If there was no performance in these 3 areas, teams wouldn't be changing them.
A very substantial endplate and flap tip change actually, definitely improving the efficiency of the rear wing.
