Indeed I'm referring to the inability to copy the front lower part of the RB concept permitting more air to pass bettween the upper surface of th floor and the scaloped area of the sidepods and then over the diffuser.Vanja #66 wrote: ↑13 Apr 2023, 12:51There are a couple of question that need be asked and answered and I can't get an answer on the most important one - what exactly is the benefit and advantage of downwash sidepods of RB, ATR and Alpine since early 2022 vs the inwash concept of Ferrari and Haas? Can you tell me this? Or is it really just about other teams adopting this solution? If it's that, I'll repeat myselfXwang wrote: ↑13 Apr 2023, 11:57The first negative that I see is that they cannot move to use the redbull sidepods concept even if it gives better results because they would have the sis fully exposed to the air (so a big aero blockage where the redbull expect to have nothing).
It is strange to me that every F1 team is moving to that approach except ferrari (and sister car haas).
Did McLaren, Sauber or Williams make a huge performance jump after they adopted RB sides? Not really, AMR did between seasons but not because of sides (since they have their own design there and their outwash undercut is actually like Ferrari, not like RB) - it's because of the floor performance and systematic suspension-floor integration. Sauber went backwards this year in fact...Vanja #66 wrote: ↑10 Mar 2023, 11:00The reason 7 teams went towards downwash style is not the same for all of them. RB, ATR and Alpine started with it in 2022, while AMR had the B spec in WT in November or December 2021 from what I recall (that's also a reference to your other comment about AMR, original idea was scrapped for good even in 2021). McLaren and Sauber have a lot of centerline cooling and they wouldn't be able to make Ferrari concept work without big drag penalty, Williams too plus they already went to RB-Ferrari hybrid last year.
If any team right now tried to copy Ferrari sides, they would suffer from a drag penalty because they have bigger airboxes and centreline cooling. AMR does infact suffer from this, even if most of their drag comes from bigger rear wing, their sides are also very wide and not as streamlined as Ferrari or RB - hence the small drag penalty AMR accepted.
It's understandable that people still believe sidepods are the magic bullet since they are the only design-free area visible to us viewers. However, the other design-free area is the actual performance differentiator - the floor (and it's integration with suspension).
Sidepods, like suspension (not sure if this is an appropriate comparison, but I like to make it) are an area where you can loose a lot of performance with poor design, but you can't gain much if your basic design is already good. Mercees made a huge mistake with sidepod design last year - evident by reoccurrence of bouncing even when they redesigned the floor for Barcelona and gave up on some of the raw floor downforce. Neither RB nor Ferrari gained a lot with 2022-2023 sidepod refinement, they simply shed a bit more drag each by tightening the bodywork in the manner applicable to their designs.
As a lot of reports and a few of us suggested since the end of Bahrain testing - the core problem of SF-23 as a chassis is suspension setup (maybe even design, but improvements in Australia do not support this) and getting the right operating window for optimal floor performance. Reliability and team performance are responsible the most for poor overall results, but on the chassis side the aero (sidepods included) isn't the problem.