ringo wrote: ↑21 May 2024, 15:36
I did not really consider it, but Oscar Piasti stated that with the upgrades the low speed perfromance improved, and the window is wider for the tyres, but he noticed a reduction in the high speed perfromance. Interesting observation by him. We wont really know why this is so as onlookers, but based on their upgrades could it be the floor or front wing causing this shifting of their capabilities?
I was suggesting that refining the engine cover could claw back some drag reduction allowing them to up downforce for the high speed corners.
I don't think it is to do with the abilities of the car to generate downforce per se. I would imagine it is more to do with how they are now able to set the car up based on the way the airflow is conditioned. In any corner they need to keep the floor flat and low to the ground as possible, but the demands in each of the corners are very different and the way they can get the car to work in those corners are now also different based on changes to the front wing, the floor and the sidepods.
I would assume that with these changes the car has a new range of settings that will work in low speed corners and another set in high speed corners. Each corner type will have its optimal setting and there's a window where these settings overlap. This window of potential and optimal settings across different corner types has moved slightly away from highspeed but greatly opened up what we can extract out of low speed.
If you were to set the car up for purely high speed, it'd be probably at least as good as before, as the ability to generate DF at high speed hasn't gone I don't think. So I don't think that the car isn't as good in high speed. It's just that it will be set up with different balance than before. But if you set it up purely for low speed, as we've seen, it will be nearly as good now as when we set it purely for high speed. But when we try and balance for these "non-isochronal" tracks, then we can overall extract more time but lose a little bit in high speed.