Emag wrote: ↑20 Sep 2024, 14:24
venkyhere wrote: ↑20 Sep 2024, 07:23
I believe the prime benefit of flexi front wings is not 'reduced drag'. Reduced drag in a straight line at high speed, is a secondary benefit that. The prime benefit, according to me is in high speed corners. The FW flexes, reduce the front downforce, shifts the center of pressure rearwards in the car "automatically" and introduces understeer. That's what the driver wants in a long radius high speed corner. In slower corners, no FW flex, high downforce in the nose => helps rotate the car faster. This 'dynamic balance change to suit different types of corners' is the real benefit of a flexi FW.
There is no scenario where any driver would want to induce understeer mid corner, except to counteract snap oversteer. Understeer is especially hurtful on a long radius corner that you take as an example here.
The benefit of flexing wings comes from the fact that you can run with a lot more load at the front, without a drag penalty which would otherwise nullify the advantages in (certain) corners with losses on the straights.
Probably the word 'understeer' was the culprit. And I didn't mean that the car would suddenly become understeery mid-corner, after entering with neutral balance. I mean 'introduce a bit of understeer by removing a bit of DF from front => shift the balance more towards rear' - didn't mean the car has understeer w.r.t a neutrally balanced car. No.
For slow and medium corners, a fast F1 car has to be sharp on it's nose, especially for small radius corners, because you want the car to 'rotate' quickly.
For fast long radious corners, if the car has the same front wing level, due to the extreme speed, the front DF will grow to become too much, so much that snap oversteer is highly likely. So if there is a way to 'on the fly' reduce the front wing level, the front DF wont grow to monstrous levels so as to make the car highly sensitive to yaw (a slight noise input from driver's hand muscles, a slight gust of wind etc). The total front DF would still be higher than the slow and medium corners, when the front wing 'reduces' ; but the 'balance' of the car would shift rearwards, reducing the sensitivity of the car to snap. The 'balance shift' would start even before corner entry as the entry is happening at high speed. So no 'mid-corner' change as you mentioned.
