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Articles by Darren Galpin
| A Race of Aerodynamics - Sun 26th Jun 2005 |
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The French Grand Prix at Magny Cours, politics aside, showed all that was wrong with Formula 1 racing at the moment. It’s nothing that should detract from Renault’s achievement, as they have simply taken what they have been given and run with it, but the race was decided by aerodynamic efficiency. Put simply, the cars these days are too efficient, and at circuits where efficiency is at a premium, a lack of passing is the result. And that was what was seen at Magny Cours.
The Toyota is not quite amongst the top rung of F1 cars at the moment, but come qualifying, Jarno Trulli is able to wring its neck and extract a performance which is not really justified by the chassis, and as a result he was second on the grid. The car gets away from the startline well enough, but that is where the problems then come – it isn’t quite fast enough in race trim. Couple this with the excellent Renault start system, and what you have is a Renault scampering away at the front in clean air, its aerodynamics unencumbered, while the rest of the field is backed up by a mobile road block. All of the cars behind Trulli were all spaced roughly 0.8s apart, and none of them could do anything about the others in front of them. You had to have a far faster car to be capable of overtaking, or do it in a pit-stop. It is in danger of destroying racing as we know it.
The FIA seem to recognise this in their own inimitable way, but are only proposing a 10% cut in aerodynamic efficiency for next year. This isn’t enough – the teams are more than capable of gaining more than this over the course of a year. What is needed is a change in the regulations to completely remove the dependency on wing generated downforce. The FIA should hire its own wind-tunnel, and investigate under-car aerodynamics.
Under car aerodynamics work by accelerating the air underneath the car – the accelerated air lowers the air pressure, thus creating the downward force on the car as a partial vacuum is created between the bottom of the car and the road surface. This was notoriously exploited by the ground effect cars of the early 1980s, where sliding skirts were used to seal the sides of the car with the road, while the entire underbody of the car was shaped like a venturi tunnel to generate downforce. The amount of downforce generated was huge, so the FIA sensibly at the time ruled that the cars must have flat bottoms, to remove most of the venturi effect. The downforce being generated at the time was enough that in the corners, some of the drivers were on the verge of black-outs due to the g-forces being pulled. However, in removing the bottom of the car from the downforce equation, it made the wings more important. The problem is that wings need clean air to work at their most efficient, and clean air is what you don’t have when following another car.
The FIA should take a look at changing the rulebook to allow a limited degree of contouring beneath the car to generate more downforce. If this proves to allow too much freedom for the engineers, then the FIA could always mandate an exact shape of car bottom from the middle of the car backwards so that generated loads don’t get too high. What ever they decide, something has to be done about the wings, otherwise Grand Prix Racing is what we won’t see.
What was worthy of note in the Grand Prix was the performance of Kimi Räikkönen, who qualified 13th after being penalised 10 places on the grid after an engine blow-up in practice. His qualifying time was only 0.3s slower than Alonso’s, but he was carrying many laps more fuel, so it puts his performance into perspective. He bided his time, put in the laps during his clear air time, and worked his way up to second. And third, the only unlapped driver, was Michael Schumacher. Perhaps this grid was an omen – the three best drivers on the grid were on the podium, but note the order. This could be the sign of things to come, the defining moment of careers. But I’ve been plenty wrong before……
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