Blog Zbod
Podium Finisher
I think it would somewhat improve the problem of too little (non-artificial) overtaking if at least the front wing were required to be made from a non-frangible material. The most frequent cause of a yellow flag is the CF shards left on the circuit when a trailing car's CF front wing contacts a leading car's rear tyre. And the get together often ends in grief for one or both of the drivers specifically because they've released the puncture demons from the wing.
CF is the material of choice, not just because of weight, but also because it is imminently "tunable." Strength, rigidity and vibration damping all can be varied to suit the needs of the given component. And because each individual carbon fibre has unidirectional strength, all of those properties can be made directional, so [insert property here] can be different in the X plane than it is in the Y plane than it is in the Z plane. Which is why the end plates on the RB6's flexy front wing didn't constantly drag the tarmac but it quite obviously was flexing fore and aft.
FWIW, for several years, every bicycle in the Tour de France has had a CF frame. The UCI years ago set the minimum weight limit for a racing bicycle at 6.8 kilos (14 lb 15.86 oz) for fear of riders favouring stupid-light drilled out and filed down components. And now it's not just frames, it's also handlebars, bar stems, seat posts, rims, cranks, derailleur components, entire saddles (with no padding save the flex of the CF fabric), even individual gear cogs made from CF. So the sprinters' bikes mostly weigh around 14 pounds and the pipe cleaner men, less than 12 pounds, but they attach tungsten ballast weights to the underside of the bottom bracket or drop a tungsten a weight down the seat tube to bring them up to spec weight.
Aluminium-scandium alloy is one of the few materials that can approach weight of CF in a frame, but it lacks CF's tunability and almost limitless adaptability. So we're fair stuck with CF until the next big thing comes along, which could be Bucky balls or ultralight metallic microlatices.
CF is the material of choice, not just because of weight, but also because it is imminently "tunable." Strength, rigidity and vibration damping all can be varied to suit the needs of the given component. And because each individual carbon fibre has unidirectional strength, all of those properties can be made directional, so [insert property here] can be different in the X plane than it is in the Y plane than it is in the Z plane. Which is why the end plates on the RB6's flexy front wing didn't constantly drag the tarmac but it quite obviously was flexing fore and aft.
FWIW, for several years, every bicycle in the Tour de France has had a CF frame. The UCI years ago set the minimum weight limit for a racing bicycle at 6.8 kilos (14 lb 15.86 oz) for fear of riders favouring stupid-light drilled out and filed down components. And now it's not just frames, it's also handlebars, bar stems, seat posts, rims, cranks, derailleur components, entire saddles (with no padding save the flex of the CF fabric), even individual gear cogs made from CF. So the sprinters' bikes mostly weigh around 14 pounds and the pipe cleaner men, less than 12 pounds, but they attach tungsten ballast weights to the underside of the bottom bracket or drop a tungsten a weight down the seat tube to bring them up to spec weight.
Aluminium-scandium alloy is one of the few materials that can approach weight of CF in a frame, but it lacks CF's tunability and almost limitless adaptability. So we're fair stuck with CF until the next big thing comes along, which could be Bucky balls or ultralight metallic microlatices.
