Nealio wrote:I would like to weigh in on this subject. Some of the new rules made to 'save money' do anything but. F1 cars are not spacecraft and yet the testing and development of these vehicles is increasingly mimicking aerospace practices. It seem to me that the sensors and monitors that can be mounted to the actual cars are quite sophisticated and can interface with the engineers computers very well. logic would suggest that testing the actual cars in the actual environment in which they must achieve optimum performance would be the way to go. Additionally, the personnel (race teams and drivers) would increase their experience working in the racing environment. What we see today is the move toward seven and nine post test rigs, moving-floor wind tunnels (currently 60% models, for the most part), computational fluid dynamics software run on super computers and simulators for driver development. These things are very, very expensive and I imagine cost far more than an efficient test team. I would suggest that this trend is due to the team's engineering staff. The purpose being to justify their salaries and increase their job security while padding their CV's with expertise in the areas I've mentioned. You may applaud their initiative or brand them as scrubs but it drives up the costs of F1 in a very grand manner.
I think that is a little unfair. You can't run a 24 hour test program on circuit. You need safety crews, standby helicopters and marshalls. There are noise restrictions at a lot of test tracks, limiting their hours of use. Most test tracks are in other countries adding to delay in getting parts to them plus you must add the cost of transporting everything out to those locations. Then there is the time aspect, it's quicker to do a CFD model than to build a mock up and test in the wind tunnel, which in turn is quicker than to build a full scale part and test on track.
You also have to consider that aerodynamically it's much easier to gain an understanding of how parts are interacting in a non-turbulent and clean airflow than it is in the real world. As the first step would always be to understand the simple interactions before the complex you are better off starting with a new part in the wind tunnel.
I'm sure there are 100 other things to consider but when all is said and done it's like most other things in life - it's better to use a variety of tools and solutions, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, than it is to focus on one and one alone.
