[MVRC] Mantium Virtual Racecar Challenge 2024 (Grand Prix Cars)

[Ft5fTL]

Cooling .

Busy days did not allow me run a lot of sims for fine tuning. Congratz to G-raph for another win.

[yinlad]

Much better than I feared, I'm satisfied to have resolved the problems encountered in Monaco

I smell a good Monza result for you with that ludicrous drag number!

[yinlad]

Congrats to G-Raph for another win and establishing a lead that will be difficult to overturn now. As for myself, pretty much where I expected numbers wise. Happy to have kept a place on the podium and to have been in the ballpark on Cl compared to the top two.

My observations on the website post are that we're on similar wing levels but I suspect I am carrying extra drag on my beam wing this race and wheel drag. I've yet to make the front wheel covers work for me but I may need to look into if it can help with drag considering both GRaph and Variante are both running them.

Obviously work will continue on drag reduction heading into Monza next, this time I do expect to fall off the podium and to see CAE possibly take the win, or at least show very strongly. What I can say so far in the early stages is that I've been experimenting with the overbite style sidepod, more curious to look into what IRL teams are doing than to copy G-Raph or others here. But what I will say is that compared to the underbite it has allowed me to bring the rads even further forward again which I believe will create more potential at the rear of the car as I can begin working the downwash further forward.

Quite a while before the race so we'll see how it all pans out. Let's see what I can do about that 6 point gap to Variante in the final two races!

[G-raph]

Glad to see for once that my package correlated reasonably well! That's obviously a great result for me.

Congratulation to Panthera for another podium, at a standard efficiency track this time. Your progress this year has been very impressive. I agree you'll have to look at your massive beamwing first if you want to improve efficiency. You can see how much I had to trim mine just to match Variante's crazy efficiency.

CAE device also has a very impressive efficiency without using particularly small wings, so he will definitely be a podium or even victory contender at Monza.

Good luck everyone for the next one. Hopefully Typhoon dynamics can fix his STL export issues.

[variante]

Happy to have kept a place on the podium and to have been in the ballpark on Cl compared to the top two.

Mate, you're doing pretty damn well, but I tell you my numbers are not like they were supposed to be.
I should have won this race, and I would have won it if something hadn't gone very wrong.

[yinlad]

Happy to have kept a place on the podium and to have been in the ballpark on Cl compared to the top two.

Mate, you're doing pretty damn well, but I tell you my numbers are not like they were supposed to be.
I should have won this race, and I would have won it if something hadn't gone very wrong.

I'll be very interested to hear if something has gone wrong (like wing stall) or if it's similar to the issue I had in race 1 where I hemorrhaged Cl between fast Vs official for seemingly no reason.

It sucks so bad when either happens though,

[variante]

I'll be very interested to hear if something has gone wrong (like wing stall) or if it's similar to the issue I had in race 1 where I hemorrhaged Cl between fast Vs official for seemingly no reason.

It sucks so bad when either happens though,

I've downloaded the results, and there is nothing obvious.
The floor has lost the most performance, a massive -0.240 in CLA, but its flow structures are exactly as expected.

The only unexpected flow structure comes from the Rear Wing, which is suffering from a small stall. The wing itself only loses 0.040 in CLA, but it may the reason why the floor is under-performing. Still, that would be an absurdly large concatenation.

Ironically, I actually tested the car on Official mode just to be sure, except for that Rear Wing. I later decided to use such Monaco Rear Wing, without having the time to run another Official sim (takes me 2.5 days!). It was an already tested wing after all...

[LVDH]

Definitely not the numbers that I was expecting. André, did my Rear Wing stall like crazy maybe?

As you have now also seen, there is a small separation area in the center of the rear wing.
Are others also again questioning the results, or do they match what you expected?
If there are questions, please make your reports available to me, so I can compare.

I checked the cars for rule complaince today and think to have spotted issues regarding the rules around the floor. As I do not have someone responsible for the rules in the MVRC staff anymore, we will have to discuss here:

If you look at the rules regarding the floor, esp 12.5.1. What do you think about floors having more than 4 fences in the RV_FLOOR_FENCE_MVRC_2024_* volume?

[spacehead3]

If you look at the rules regarding the floor, esp 12.5.1. What do you think about floors having more than 4 fences in the RV_FLOOR_FENCE_MVRC_2024_* volume?

Ah, I've thought about trying this before...I think it is certainly against the spirit of the rules, even if there is a loophole in the actual wording. I suppose the issue is that we don't actually define what is a "floor fence". Because other than that, I think the rule is pretty clear that:

12.5.1 Up to four fences are permitted per side of the car.
12.5.3 The fences have to be a separate part.

So technically there is nothing stopping you from shaping the main floor body to act like a fence (for example, many of us have additional floor strakes near the diffuser, outside of the RV_FLOOR_FENCE. However, if the geometry is within RV_FLOOR_FENCE and clearly intended to be a fence, I think the rules above state that it must be a separate part and therefore one of the 4 permitted fences.

I haven't seen the geometry in question, but if it is a clear attempt to add a 5th fence I'd suggest maybe a warning for this round and a new rule to close the loophole going forward.

[LVDH]

To an extent, I agree with you. I have watched these fences growing from race to race and knew I had to do something but mainly, the issue was bad worded rules.
My question here was only an introduction to what I now see on the cars.
And I agree that the fifth fence in the floor fence volume can be interpreted as one being floor and the other four actual fences, because of the current wording.
So time for question 2:
What if the fifth fence was in the same part as the others and also part of high resolution parts? I think, it is clear that we are not using the loop hole and also with the better resolved mesh, we probably have an advantage that should maybe lead to more than just a warning.

[yinlad]

I've downloaded the results, and there is nothing obvious.
The floor has lost the most performance, a massive -0.240 in CLA, but its flow structures are exactly as expected.

Is it very clearly loss of load under the floor when comparing the Cl images, or more lift on the top side from interactions with other changes made this race? In race 1 the bad correlation I had when losing a bunch of Cl in official was more lift, rather than less load. Might be worth investigating if the flow structures are as expected.

Definitely not the numbers that I was expecting. André, did my Rear Wing stall like crazy maybe?

Are others also again questioning the results, or do they match what you expected?

All ok on my front. I wondered if I'd still be shooting vortices 1m out of the diffuser in the official results and indeed I am, but that's a story for another day.

[G-raph]

To an extent, I agree with you. I have watched these fences growing from race to race and knew I had to do something but mainly, the issue was bad worded rules.
My question here was only an introduction to what I now see on the cars.
And I agree that the fifth fence in the floor fence volume can be interpreted as one being floor and the other four actual fences, because of the current wording.
So time for question 2:
What if the fifth fence was in the same part as the others and also part of high resolution parts? I think, it is clear that we are not using the loop hole and also with the better resolved mesh, we probably have an advantage that should maybe lead to more than just a warning.

Here is my view regarding the extra fences :

- If the part is inside the RV_FLOOR_MAIN box, AND is not in the high_res folder, AND doesn't break the single-section rule in a Y-plane, then it is just a standard part of the floor, not a fence. It is not in the spirit of the F1 rules, but this is legal for MVRC. This is what I do.

- If the part is either outside the RV_FLOOR_MAIN box OR in the high_res folder, then you have to count it as a separate fence, and you can't have more than 4 of these per side of the car. That would be illegal.

- Having said that, there is a loophole that allows an infinite amount of fences, if you connect all of them using surfaces hidden inside the main floor. HOWEVER to exploit this loophole you can no longer use rounded leading edges and thin trailing edges, they just have to be constant 10mm thick.



Although you may need to give us more details, as I understand it, my answer to your "question 2" is that it is illegal.

[variante]

Is it very clearly loss of load under the floor when comparing the Cl images, or more lift on the top side from interactions with other changes made this race? In race 1 the bad correlation I had when losing a bunch of Cl in official was more lift, rather than less load. Might be worth investigating if the flow structures are as expected.

It's the bottom that lost suction, even though all vortices behave as expected.
Here's the little stall that conditioned floor performance and costed me like 0.8s in laptime (if that's even the cause...)

[CAEdevice]

To an extent, I agree with you. I have watched these fences growing from race to race and knew I had to do something but mainly, the issue was bad worded rules.
My question here was only an introduction to what I now see on the cars.
And I agree that the fifth fence in the floor fence volume can be interpreted as one being floor and the other four actual fences, because of the current wording.
So time for question 2:
What if the fifth fence was in the same part as the others and also part of high resolution parts? I think, it is clear that we are not using the loop hole and also with the better resolved mesh, we probably have an advantage that should maybe lead to more than just a warning.

Here is my view regarding the extra fences :

- If the part is inside the RV_FLOOR_MAIN box, AND is not in the high_res folder, AND doesn't break the single-section rule in a Y-plane, then it is just a standard part of the floor, not a fence. It is not in the spirit of the F1 rules, but this is legal for MVRC. This is what I do.

- If the part is either outside the RV_FLOOR_MAIN box OR in the high_res folder, then you have to count it as a separate fence, and you can't have more than 4 of these per side of the car. That would be illegal.

- Having said that, there is a loophole that allows an infinite amount of fences, if you connect all of them using surfaces hidden inside the main floor. HOWEVER to exploit this loophole you can no longer use rounded leading edges and thin trailing edges, they just have to be constant 10mm thick.



Although you may need to give us more details, as I understand it, my answer to your "question 2" is that it is illegal.

I think GRaph's observations are correct.

In my opinion the only way to solve the ambiguity of the underfloor strakes would be to introduce the minimum radius rule for the floor (I think it's 25mm or something like that in F1), leaving freedom in the volumes of the side edges where discontinuities are currently allowed. I think my car would be singificantly penalized because I have been developing underground strakes for two years, but I could accept the principle of uniformity with the FIA F1 regulations, however, extending the criterion also to the front and (sometimes) rear wings, especially for Monza.

[spacehead3]

In my opinion the only way to solve the ambiguity of the underfloor strakes would be to introduce the minimum radius rule

Perhaps, but I don't think we should be making a big rule change 2/3rds of the way thru the season. I would vote to just leave as is for this season with the following 2 clarifications:

1) No more than 4 strakes per side in the high-res folder.
2) You cannot use Graph's "infinite strake" loophole. (Each strake must have only 1 closed section in any X-plane?)