Hey guys,
So I haven't posted for a long time now about Formula 1 and as the 2018 season has ended its kind of slow world here. But don't worry as I got some interesting stuff about the upcoming 2019 F1 season.
You might have heard that for 2019 several changes were made and also some of these changes will be reflected more as the FIA is planning more stuff about the 2021 F1 Season. Now specifically in this post I will explore the aerodynamic changes in the F1 cars, its effects, the problems that are resolved and what we can expect next year.
So lets start off with what are the changes, I will explain each of them one by one. But before that some stats from 2018. The past rule changes in the 2017 lead to some drastic effect in the F1 racing world, in other words I can say some what negative effects. I made up a graph to see in following 9 Grand Prix how the past changes resulted in the reduction of the overtakes in each race.
Now as you can see from the above the 2017 changes drastically reduced the no. of passes happening in each race. In some of the Grand Prix as much as 50% less overtakes as can be seen in the Chinese GP and the Abu Dhabi GP. The effects of this is the race became somewhat less thrilling to watch as there is no real fight going on between drivers to gain the pole position. So you may ask what were the reasons for these and how F1 made changes that can now resolve this problem.
What caused the reduction in number of overtakes?
The main reason for these issues were the "outwash", for those who don't know the meaning, it is generally defined as diverting the air around the car in the front with the use of the complex endplate attached to the front wing. After the 2017 changes what resulted is the outwash was much larger due to aggressive and complex front wing designs, which in turn produced a lot of wake at the back. Wake in simple terms is the disturbed air left behind the car. For more understanding see the picture below.
As we all know the Formula 1 cars are designed keeping in mind a smooth homogeneous flow from the front and passing the air around the car with lowest drag possible. But with the 2017 aerodynamic regulations what happened is it resulted in more wake at the back so the car trailing the car in the front was not able to get the best possible air stream and in turn the speed needed to successfully pass the car in front. So at the end the car behind mostly stays stuck behind trying to pass the car.
When the car at the back comes closer to the car in the front the wake disturbed air passes through the front wings of the back car. This result in the already disturbed air stream to get more disturb, which results in higher drag thereby resulting the car in the back slow down more and won't able to pass the car. Simplification picture is shown above.
What are the 2019 Aerodynamic regulation changes?
So you have seen what was wrong in the Formula 1 as explained above, so what we can do to resolve this issue. Explaining that further below are the three regulation changes to aerodynamics in an effort to make the car less complex, more faster and attain more overtakes and easy to pass.
- Simplified Front Wing with larger span and reducing the outwash:
- The front wing will now be much simpler. All the complex components like Cascade, Turning vanes will now be get rid off. Also the length of the front wing will now be increased from 1800 mm to 2000 mm and moving the wing forward by 25 mm ahead of what it is in 2018. The height of the front wing is now increased by 20 mm.
- Also the straights underneath the wing is now limited to just two on each side of the wing.
- Front wing now chops the air in less messy way and reduces the wake produced behind the car which the following driver has to deal with. In simpler words less wake production more chances of overtakes.
2. Simplified Brake Ducts and Removal of Winglets:
- The brake ducts channels the air coming from the front into the wheel and around it. It is used for channeling the air in order to reduce the temperature of the brake calipers and also produce somewhat downforce at the front.
- The components like the barge boards on the side of car and vanes at the side of the brake ducts further more increased the amount of disturbed air passing through the car. So apart from already disturbed air from the front wing it again gets more messed up by the brake duct components.
- In 2019 however, the brake ducts have to be made more simpler and there will be no winglets introduced this season. This means the brake duct won't be able to intercept the air flow coming from the front wing and it will thus reduce the amount of disturbed air and less wake at back.
3. Simpler and Wider Rear wings:
- The rear wing is the final stage where the air is channelized before leaving the car. In the 2018 season there were various components like the horizontal gills on the wing end-plates, further more add to drag at the back of the car in an effort to get that last drop of downforce juice.
- However in the 2019 Season, the end-plates will be made simpler, getting rid of the horizontal gills and other components is an effort to reduce wake.
- The DRS [Drag Reduction System] gap between the wings will be increased furthermore by 20 mm. Also the wings will now be more wider from 950 mm to 1050 mm. The height of the wing is also increased by 20 mm to adapt with the overall changes.
- This in general means, by keeping the amount of downforce generated almost the same and getting rid of the complex components, overall the wake behind the car is drastically reduced and done in an effort to give that extra edge to the car behind to make a successful pass.
So for those who are not much into techy world and just wanna know the overall result below is the simplified version.
- Simpler and wider front wings reduces air disturbance.
- Brake ducts made simpler and reduces further more air disturbance.
- Rear wings made simpler and wider, same downforce, less drag.
So these are the changes that are coming in the 2019 Formula 1 season. This according to me will result in more overtakes, easy catching of the lead car and thus in the end a fierce battle to achieve the pole position and have that amazing trophy in the hand.
So wrapping up this techy post, get ready to see some amazing battle in the Formula 1 world. Also if you liked my post keep following for more and if you will like to support me and my fellow team, vote for our witness @Rougebot you can see our Official Announcement post for more info. You can vote for witness at GuiltyParties.com, this site is completely safe as I always say and it NEVER stores your key. So go ahead and use it. Also join our "I Am Scorum" Community.
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