F1 Turbulence: Dumbing It Down

My young Bleacher colleague Michael Griffin recently published an interesting article on F1 aerodynamics in which he considered the airflow over, under, and around the car.

The nett effect of the aero design features is of course that the car completes a lap quicker. This is very evident when you compare lap times on the same circuit between F1 cars and other vehicles with a similar top speed but little or no aero downforce.

OK, racing is about speed, but one man's meat is another man's poison.

When the low-pressure high-speed and high-pressure low-speed airflows so well explained by Michael come together behind the car, a region of extremely turbulent air is created.

The following car is badly affected by that turbulence because there is no clean air to flow in a smooth laminar fashion over its aero surfaces, so it loses downforce. It cannot put power down as effectively, and it loses track adhesion, so overtaking becomes almost impossible.

Turbulent wake is also a lethal problem in aviation. Aircraft have crashed when the turbulent wake of a preceding plane has robbed their wings of uplift. Only laminar flow over the wings keeps you aloft when flying, without it you are shattered bones and torn flesh, only the teddy bear will survive intact.

The FIA came up with a proposal to address the turbulent wake issue back in 2005, this was the Centreline Downwash Generating Wing as shown below.

Below is a graphic showing the predicted effect of the CDG wing as visualised by the computing power of AMD.

In the above graphic, red is good wholesome air, yellow is not so good, green is fairly useless for aero purposes, and blue is the bad-arsed air that is no good to man or beast.

The teams agreed to consider the CDG wing, but then rejected it. For the large rear wings we are so familiar with don't only generate downforce, they generated big-time sponsorship money.

If you are putting your company's money into F1, that rear wing is the prime place to have your advertising, it is the Times Square of F1. Your company's name will not have the same impact when split across the two parts of a CDG wing.

With the CDG concept scrapped, a Overtaking Working Group was set up. A group of engineers was supposed to consider means of improving overtaking opportunities in F1, but as there was no possibility they would be allowed to scrap the advertising hoarding fastened to the back of every car, the whole thing was really a farce.

The engineers sat around and said "blah blah blah" quite a lot, then they agreed to make some minor changes that would not improve overtaking opportunities and would not threaten advertising opportunities.

And that is where we are.

Racing without overtaking is a procession, a dull and pitiful thing. F1 is styled as the pinnacle of motor sport, and certainly it is the most expensive.

I contend, however, that F1 is far from being the pinnacle of motor sport entertainment, and I am sure any NASCAR, Superbikes, WTCC, MotoGP etc fan will agree with me on that point.

No minor tweaks can rescue F1, and no changes of personnel at the top. What is needed is a root-and-branch clear-out, transforming Formula Bore into Formula Scott.

Formula Scott

• Aerofoils to be banned from F1.
• Team income from TV rights to be increased, current commercial deal scrapped.
• Refuelling banned, yes I know that's already scheduled.
• Races to be 60 minutes maximum.
• Free choice of tyre supplier.
• Electronic aids such as traction control allowed.
• Circuits given percentage of TV money.
• Venues extended to include USA and Canada.
• Lapped cars to be black flagged.
• Hermann Tilke declared persona non grata.

That'll do to start with. What do you think of it so far?