Just curious...why isn't moving the wheels further outward to pre '98 levels ever talked about in regaurds to eliminating some of the turbulent air that hampers overtaking? Isn't alot of what the FIA where trying to do with its new rear wing essentially being negated by having the wheels so close to the chassis?

Wider track will give higher cornering speeds, I don't think they want to go further in that direction.

Also, to be banal, you can't fit as many fat cars across a track.

Not quanal at all, turn to moto racing for evidence of that.

And "stock cars" racertainment proves you can make 4 widetrack cars go wide, if the track is right.

Any way wider track makes large wake (did not say "more intense", i said wider).

So for the purpose of having less wake the answer is no, this is the opposite, it worsen the wake.

Have you seen the width of the new tracks?...they are excessively wide (to a fault.) I don't think there would be any issue, nor was it appreciably different pre-1998



Well, what I'm speculating is that right now we have a narrow 'wake' of turbulent air. Moving the wheels out, the situation is less volitaile/unpredicatable as far as managing the airflow off the chassis/rear wing in reguards to the following car.

Would it improve drafting though?

Stock cars aren't really all that wide.

Plus, you know, fenders.

Well, if a race track is wider, it should promote overtaking so turn that around, narrow cars are easy to overtake each other but they look like freaks.

Yeah..If the wake pattern doesn't change because of larger width. It supposed to be geometric flow similarity (meaning that under the same free stream conditions the flow patterns are the same regardless of the scale of a same geometry) but the problem is that a wider car is not definitely the same geometry as the narrower one as you'll always tweak the bodywork to use the greater space you have to house internals.



My 2 cents is that the problem with the wake is the signature. Let me explain:

When a car crosses free stream, the air is moved according to a pattern that depends on the front wing and all the cascade elements downstream it. I think we can see in the wake of the car some reversible bits of the inital displacement of air, i mean, if you'd take the wake you could partly reverse it to find the original geometry of the surfaces that created it.

That means that when the following car has the same or approaching geometry, it would be far less spoiled by the wake because the flows would in part "reverse" to a normal condition (at least, seperations would occur less). But if the car is of a completely different geometry and especially if the front wing distributes the flow differently then there's no reversability possible (or much less) and the car loses more downforce.

This bring two conclusions:

-The wake should be standard or at least there should be a common flow pattern.
-If the wake signature contains a lot of randomity (maybe done on purpose) then it's impossible to have good downforce preservation.

I bring those points because it is obvious that some spec series have no problems.
GP2 is notorious for that, but i was surprised to see superleague formula cars having quite a lot of overtakings while the car is pretty much based on the same formula as pre 2009 F1 cars (but well yes, it's 2 meters wide).

The second point is that in F1 some cars are harder to follow than others, and guess what drivers tend to quote different name (suggesting their cars flow patterns are really different) and some names come back often (toyota, which suggest quite a mess after that car for anybody to find it hard to follow).

The DDD in itself may not have played a role, but the fact that it's increasing importance re-conditionned the front geometry (to feed the diffuser) and that the diffuser gained much more importance preserving (and entertaining) rear wing turbulence definitely, IMHO, increase the randomity and differenciation of wake.


Solutions? Maybe so form of Pulsed jet and/or counter canceling trailing wortex would make the wake more stable and more standard at a certain distance.



Note that the probleme of intensity (related to the Coefficient of lift of aero surface and thus indirectly to level of downforce) doesn't appear in the mix.

Not to say it has no effect, but i think it is far less important and than the actual signature.

details, details....

They more then 1.8 meter wide.
Out some fenders, well on the rear wheel at least.

Yeah, the Superleague Formula races were quite good for overtaking. Also, I believe the car uses ground effect to get most of it's downforce. I might be wrong though.

1] The Superleague Formula Panoz DP09 is a hybrid between the Panoz DP01 Champcar and the 2008 cars.
It has chimneys, flip-ups, spoon front wing and a wide rear wing (all the things that were banned in F1 to improve the show) and it actually has a lot of passing.


2] I'd suggest turbulence sensors + active suspensions + active wings front and rear + active differentials + strategic/limited 100 hp+ push-to-pass + engines with a better torque curve.

It does use some ground-effect.
I don't know the extent but I had tunnels not diffusers in the back.

"Primarily designed to provide real spectacle, the Superleague Formula high-performance chassis is built on a two-metre wide track, with under-body aerodynamics to create increased overtaking opportunities."

Wow, I didn't realise that car had so many aerodynamic appendages on it. Reminds me of last year's BMW-Sauber.

What's the point of fussy aero appendages on a spec car where the L/D is essentially irrelevant? A spec car is a styling exercise moreso than an engineering one.

To seem modern and spec cars are build under a certain circuit lap time number.

Which is irrelevant plus or minus the performance advantage that comes from those trick aero parts.

With the bans from 94 onwards I wonder why GP cars don't just go back to 1906.

Yeah, indeed i was surprised, even more in the monza race where for some odd reason, organisers didn't allow to run low downforce trims (so the cars creating a lot of downforce+lot of drag).





I don't think that's the way to go. Because to do that you need to modifiy the car in itself. the goal would be a retain (who said "bring back"?) the design freedom of F1 cars while providing a standard, stable wake. To do that you have to alleviate the effets of flow patterns behind the cars.

The Nasa did test counter canceling trailing vortex on a 747 resulting in reduction of the wake length from 8km to 5km. Surely with a nimble car like an F1 car we could use it on much shorter distances. Pulse jets would reduce vortex bursts effects.

The goal would not to have zero downforce loss, but rather a very limited and even one, in fact so that the main downforce loss comes from the reduced pressure zone (which would allow slipstream).

After that you could add moveable wings to let the drivers play with less downforce/less drag, more downforce/more drag.

Put fans on the cars.
Then went the downforce is lost, they'll begin to compensate.

Yeah if we're a bit futuristic we can think of plasmas as they can re-attach the boundary layer..But again, until you do nothing for the wake itself you'll complicate the work of every downforce-regain system.

Now i've been really surprised by SL formula..overtaking takes place and from start to finish.

I would even say more than in GP2 which has more GE downforce.

Maybe they found the good mix.

I have never watched SL formula but I have read about it - are you sure they just haven't found a good mix of good and crap drivers?

Have no knowledge of SL, but mixing good and crap drivers produces a number of passes - good drivers overtaking crap. Real excitement in motor racing comes when driver A overtakes driver B - then later on, driver B overtakes driver A and so on.

Well that's a possibility of course but SL offers battles including in the top three (yes you have changes of leaders) for most of the races.

Look at recent races where Bourdais and soucek were overtaken by some others.


As to GE in SL formula, i think the car actually has a diffuser instead.

Just a quick one - what is the purpose of the narrower tyres for next year?

Not another attempt to slow them down? Finally we've got slicks back, so why can't they just leave alone??

If you're talking about F1...have you seen the torque curve of a modern F1 V8? It's a straight line!




To balance the mechanical grip. When they brought in the grooves they widened the fronts because they would lose more grip, percentage wise, by having the grooves on the front than the rear. When they removed the grooves, they kept the wide front tyres so they were unbalanced. The tyres are going back to 1997 sizes.

I beleive that some parameters should be flat left alone leaving the designer's freedom in some areas.

Front tires. They want move the optimal CoG rearwards reducing the amount of ballast needed at front which:

• Lessens the disadvantage heavier drivers have. Remember how BMW ran KERS only in Heidfeld's car as Kubica was too heavy so they couldn't add enough ballast to reach correct balance.
• Gives leeway when adding KERS devices, but it seems no car will have one.
• Makes it less likely a new team fails to get their car to the optimal bias.

I suppose you can say they want to slow the cars down, since the above could be achieved by widening rears instead. Narrower fronts will reduce drag and lift so there are positive effects to performance too.

Back in the day fronts used to be below regulation size. Early 70's cars would have as much as 66% rear weight bias. They didn't even use full diameter allowed. With lighter engines and other parts the bias has moved forwards. Until early 90's or so you were allowed to use a softer compound at front. Since then it has been a case of adapting the car to the available rubber.

Is that so. I know of being allowed the have left-right asymmetrical/different tire compounds.
If they allowed both front-rear and left-right different compounds, this just showcases why the overtaking got worse today, as the differences and resulting shuffling is gone.
With everybody running the same spec tires with the same setup in the same stint, it just sucks.

I'm so old that I can remember 4 3 4 starting grids at Mosport.

The cars were really tiny then!

Skinny tires and wheels
Narrow chassis
Short wishbones