People will moan when the racing is slightly worse next year, as the field spread will be much greater due to lots of new regulations. They'll cough and moan, and splutter that the ugliness hasn't done anything good.
The clever fans, however, will wait for 2010, when a year of adaption will see the cars much closer together, although standard KERS etc might ruin that too as everyone has to readapt. So wait til 2011. Or possibly 12. And in 2013 there'll be new rules to spice the show up again, which will cause a year of relative dullness (though still exciting - I always find F1 exciting, edge-of-the-seat stuff).
A lot of it was also due to the relative stability in the rules over the last few years. This allowed the small teams to catch up to the big ones in terms of development and close the field up with respect to laptimes. That's why I'm not convinced these huge rule changes will necessarily have the desired effect (closer racing).
I hadn't, but thanks for checking!
Seriously, it was a response to the person writing that F1 cars are designed for speed. They're not, they're designed to be as fast as regulations allow. I was simply demonstrating that the new rear wings are not there because they make the cars quicker.
As for improving overtaking, it remains to be seen. I tend to agree with ever-cynical Tristan. The chances that we will see a tightly bunched field in the first race, with overtaking in places we've never seen it before throughout the duration, are slim. I'd love to be proven wrong, and will watch the season avidly, regardless, but I bet it's going to be same-old, same-old, only with kers and ungainly looking cars.
I thought F1 was supposed to all classy and upscale and chivalrious and stuff, no? This and KERS just brings it down to trashy reality tv style trashy trash garbage.
Nose sections and front splitters were also used by many, even the Porsche 956 which didnt have a proper front 'splitter' did generate a lot of downforce through the swept nose section, and different designs were used for varying drag/downforce amounts.
The point is that ground effects will always be sensitive to changes in ride height/ pitc etc, no matter how well they are designed, if it was possible to design aerodynamics that could handle any kind of situation (e.g running in turbulent air behind another car), then F1 cars would be passing eachother easily.
Perhaps if active suspension was allowed, then some of these problems would be eliminated.
Plus no amount of development will allow you to gain downforce from round effect at low speed, unless you find some way of accelerating the airflow through the ground effect veturis, perhaps using some kind of ramjet idea thingy.
it doesnt... playing safe has become a lot more attractive for drivers ever since the switch from 10/6 to 10/8 any way of making winning more important again is a good thing
Ive seen the piping exhaust gas into the venturis before, are the effects actually significant? Also, could this potentially increse the pressure in the diffusers causing a loss of df, I read somewhere that the original cooling exits on the Porsche 956 were out the bottom of the car, and when others privateer teams such as Richard Llloyd covered these up, they expierienced an increase in downforce.
Overall, ground effect would still be a bit on the dodgy side as surely it will still be a little bit sensitive, perhaps to things such as stupidly high kerbs.
A combination of ground effects and wings is fair enough, sadly safety and money concerns mean that things like this cannot be developed further, I would imagine incredible amounts of downforce could be produced for little drag.
I would like to see some more freedom aerodunamically, I hate these tightly regulated, stunted wings (especially those on LMP cars), but perhaps having a car that relies entirely on a source of downforce that can go from full to nothing in a split second is perhaps a little risky, wings can only do that if they fall off or stall somehow.
I'm not sure about this one, I like the idea that it might lead to races being a bit more 'frantic' perhaps, with drivers pushing the limits and not sandbagging, on the other hand, it may deter the lower half of the grid from even turning up and it may also lead to more Lewis Hamilton style driving and whinging team bosses. The FIA will most likely have a fit over the amount of close, agressive racing going on.
About Ground Effects: GP2 works with it since the beginning and they do just fine, as do Prototypes around the world... So it's far away from "being dodgy"...
And if you really are concerned about a bottoming car: minimum ride height rings a bell?
would they bother to do it if they didnt? the lift:drag ratios quoted for the nissan in that pic are some of the best ive seen so far
doubt it... im not at all an expert on this but from how i understand their workings thats neither the intent nor the case
as i said prototype racing has been relying a whole lot on ground effects for over 25 years now on track that are a whole lot more bumpy than anything f1 races on
non- confirmed news: F2008K was shut down the engine after the last coner, go thorgh the stright way with no sound, & turn on the engine againe before T1.
If it is real, Ferrira should be testing their KERS: drive the car only by KERS & let the KERS be a starter.
