Red Bull and Ferrari front wings

[sportsman]

Yeah, sorry sportsman, I wasn't referring to the out and out ground effect that was used in the 80's, but you still gain some benefit from that effect with a lower running car, even without the skirts.

Don't apologise for gods sake.No need for that.Sometimes its difficult to get your exact meaning across in a post.

Its always amused me that the FIA monitor the cars ride height by the very high tech method of bolting a plank under the car and measure how much it has worn.

Great to meet you.

 

[MajorDanby]

Don't apologise for gods sake.No need for that.Sometimes its difficult to get your exact meaning across in a post.

Sorry mate (pun intended) I've just been living with my misses for too long

Its always amused me that the FIA monitor the cars ride height by the very high tech method of bolting a plank under the car and measure how much it has worn.

Great to meet you.

And you sir

 

[Chad Stewarthill]

MajorDanby said:However, as shown above, new tests are only brought in if they believe that 3.15 has been broken. The thing is, 3.15 has not been broken

I would argue that 3.15 might be being broken, on two counts:

1.
"Any device or construction that is designed to bridge the gap between the sprung part of the car and the
ground is prohibited under all circumstances" (my italics)

The wing, when the car is in motion, could be construed as bridging (at least partially) the gap between the sprung part of the car and the track.

2.
"No part having an aerodynamic influence and no part of the bodywork, with the exception of the skid block in 3.13 above, may under any circumstances be located below the reference plane"

Part of the wing, when the car is in motion, is clearly below the reference plane.

I would take the phrase, "Under any circumstance" to include the circumstance of the car being in motion. It is only that the 500N load test and measurements that are carried out when the car is sationary. Therefore, the rules should be obeyed when the car is moving, and they clearly are not. The scrutineers, if they suspect that the regulations are being breached in this way, ought to carry out further tests as allowed for in 3.17.8.

 

[sportsman]

Its a fair point.I agree with your interpretation of the rules.
Be interesting to see if if the FIA do indeed subject the wing to further testing.

 

[MajorDanby]

Yeah I see your point Chadders, not necessarily point 1, but definitely point 2

 

[Flood1]

I was thinking (oh No!): in scrutineering suppose instead of putting dead weight on the ends of the wing, we put force in the middle, on the bridge section, and push up instead of down. Do you suppose that the ends of the wing may go down while the middle of the wing goes up? Sort of like carrying a long stick of lumber. Up in the middle and down on the ends.

And, if when in that position a specific weave of the carbon fibre allows a twist of the ends. The front wing does not cause a lot of drag, but those pesky front tires certainly do. Perhaps when this flexing occurs we move some air outside of the tires and we move other air under the car. The air outside the tires reduces drag, the air under the car aids the difusser, and then we can reduce the rear wing load for less drag.

Sorry, I haven't yet read the testing procedure carefully, but I don't think there is a static test up or down on the center section of the wing.

And I'm just being speculative, I have no idea either. Apparently neither does Paddy!

 

[Chad Stewarthill]

As something of an aside, are Paddy Lowe and his Mclaren colleagues really as confused about this issue as they are making out, or does anyone else here think that he 'doth protest too loudly'?

 

[snowy]

The FIA certainly need to be more creative with their test rigs, with all the materials, composites and loopholes available to the teams today the spirit of any rule is easily circumvented. Over at F1Technical they've come up with half a dozen ways to get round the test in just a few days of idle chat.

As something of an aside, are Paddy Lowe and his Mclaren colleagues really as confused about this issue as they are making out, or does anyone else here think that he 'doth protest too loudly'?

They are completely flummoxed and should actually be ashamed of themselves for not having spotted what RBR were up to.

They had to be told what was going on by a photographer, when a look at an onboard shot should have alerted even a novice aerodynamicist that the wing was flexing.

 

[Flood1]

I must apologize. I hadn't read the entire post history, but now I have. 500n is about 51kg if I am correct. The forces employed at high speed must be well more than 51kg. If I remember correctly the flexi floor static test values were quadrupled after that issue came up, and about 6 or 7 teams had to modify their floors between races.

 

[Brogan]

That's right Flood, approximately 51Kg is the load they use which is nothing compared to the load the wing is under at speed.

If I was a cynic I would say the rules were written in such a way to allow someone to bypass them just as Red Bull have.

If I was a cynic...

 

[Flood1]

If you were a cynic....hum? Well, I tend to deal with facts, but I do suspect that the rules allow some wiggle room. I think that the scrutineering rules are either idiotic or they are constructed to allow some unconsidered innovation.

I believe that absolute scrutineering procedures should be determined and codified pre-season. If the rules say the procedure 1 requires "X" static load here, so be it. If then the tricky things happen during dynamic load, on track, so be it. I prefer smart engineers finding innovative ways around the regs, and I prefer static tests that cannot spot the innovation.

So, establish the tests pre-season, promulgate via regulation, and just live with any team who has outsmarted the regs. And, never change the procedures or requirements if the team engineers outsmart the regulators. They can fix their mistakes next year.

And so it goes.

 

[sportsman]

I don't think that the regulations were written to allow wriggle room, intentionally.
But whoever wrote the specific rules forgot to add one condition.

And that condition was that Adrian Newey should be banned.

The man is incredibly clever and I believe that he could even make a brick aerodynamically fast.
Brilliant innovation.
The end result is that these innovations are driving force of F1 technology and reponsible for what F1 is today.

McLaren went one way with their F duct which took everyone by suprise.RBR went another way with suspension and aerodynamics.
End result for us is better racing.

 

[Galahad]

It's not an easy thing to conduct high-energy impact or deflection tests in a scrutineers' garage environment. I'm sure it can be done, though.

As far as I'm concerned, if the car passes the tests, it's legal. Whether or not the car is running in a legal condition out on the track is very hard to determine, or (importantly) prove.

The only occasion I can think of is the Michelin tyres controversy of 2003, when Ferrari successfully protested their rivals' tyres for being too wide based on photographic evidence from cars out on track (the tyres were of legal width when new). There are photos out there of Red Bull and Ferrari front wings apparently flexing, so one wonders what the difference is this time, to be honest.

Personally, I'd sooner the 2003 unpleasantness was not considered to be the precedent here. Rely on the tests to give you a definitive answer, then if the tests are shown not to be adequate, agree a timetable for bringing in a tougher test (next season would generally seem to be sensible).

 

[KekeTheKing]

When Vettel was out doing a high-fuel run late in FP2 today, there was a good shot of the front wing endplate actually scraping the ground. It was right around the 11:00 minute mark, if somebody wanted to check right now, I won't have the video for a little while.

I've also heard a pretty good hypothesis on why the McLaren's have been able to stay fairly close to the Red Bull's at the start of the race. It's not very shocking, and I guess it should be fairly obvious, but with the added weight of fuel the McLaren front wing will be as close to the ground as it ever will be. So for the opening stint, the McLaren front wing downforce will be as close to the Red Bull's front wing downforce as it will be at any other time throughout the entire Grand Prix.

As far as Ferrari goes, they've certainly made a huge step forward, but I don't think it's all due to a flexible front wing. I don't see nearly as much flexing going on in the Ferrari wing as I do with the Red Bull.

 

[Brogan]

As far as Ferrari goes, they've certainly made a huge step forward, but I don't think it's all due to a flexible front wing. I don't see nearly as much flexing going on in the Ferrari wing as I do with the Red Bull.

Absolutely.
The video today showed the Red Bull wing scraping the ground, the McLaren wing at a constant height and the Ferrari wing somewhere between the two.

 

[Boyle]

I don't think that the regulations were written to allow wriggle room, intentionally.
But whoever wrote the specific rules forgot to add one condition.

And that condition was that Adrian Newey should be banned.

That would certainly level out the playing field!

 

[rufus_mcdufus]

Interesting & slightly puzzling tweet from Darren Heath (http://twitter.com/F1Photographer) a few hours ago -

"Suggestion by some at Hungaroring is that the RB6 wing pitches forward under aero load,combined with flex.Very clever..... Legal?"

Not 100% sure what is meant here as I can't see how 'pitching forward' in a horizontal plane could affect vertical height of the wing, unless it's pitching forward and at an angle to the horizontal plane. If it's moveable though, then surely that's illegal.

 

[Chad Stewarthill]

Rufus:

I would have thought that with the greatest force on the front wing at speed being on the bigger, more angled rearmost vanes, the wing should pitch backwards under load; I don't see how they could pitch forwards (if that means the leading edge bending down more than the trailing edge). Very baffling, no wonder Paddy Lowe doesn't understand it.

I suppose though, if 'pitching forwards' means the outer front corner of the wing moving forward, this might just be possible by having a very cleverly angled 'hinging' axis near the support post so that as the wing flexes downwards it also hinges slightly forwards (rather like a bird's wing). What the benefit would be I have no idea.

 

[Brogan]

I would have thought that with the greatest force on the front wing at speed being on the bigger, more angled rearmost vanes, the wing should pitch backwards under load; I don't see how they could pitch forwards (if that means the leading edge bending down more than the trailing edge). Very baffling, no wonder Paddy Lowe doesn't understand it.

Well if the angle of the wing is such that the leading edge is lower and the profile of the wing is created in just the right way, then it would be possible to make it pitch forward under load.

What's more baffling is the FIA's stance on it; surely they can see as everyone else can that when in use the wing is illegal with regards to clearances from the ground, etc?

 

[snowy]

Gary Anderson writes in Autosport:

"The Red Bull wing does appear to move around a bit more than some of the others, and has done since Monaco, but all bodywork flexes to some extent."

!!!

"It's a sour grapes thing. If other teams haven't maximised the flexibility allowances as effectively, that's not RB's or Ferrari's fault."

God give me strength...

"...by having some kind of preloaded spring that will allow the wing to pass the FIA load tests but once it gets put under higher loads on track it will move... ...A preloaded spring is outright cheating but Charlie Whiting is clever enough to pick that up."

There are not enough expletives to express just how wrong that last sentence is!