A 60 percent scale model of the baseline 2021 Formula 1 car hit the windtunnel this week.
Pat Symonds, chief technical officer of Formula 1, says the proposed new aerodynamic regulations for 2021 onward are producing ‘exceptional’ results in wind tunnel testing.
Using a half-scale model based on current proposals for the future regulations, Formula 1 has been using the Sauber wind tunnel to test specifically the ‘dirty air’ left in the wake of the next-generation cars. Elements such as the sidepod areas and rear wing are expected to remain the same in the final iteration, but expect the front wing to evolve as they continue to develop it.
Currently, a car following closely to another can lose up to 50 percent of its front downforce, drastically effecting performance and preventing close racing. This is a problem the discipline has been trying to offset for some time but, with the reintroduction of ground-effect aerodynamics, downforce is set to improve drastically with the dirty air side effect significantly reduced.
“The wind tunnel testing we are doing is slightly different to what the teams might do,” said Symonds. “The teams concentrate solely on the forces on the car through a variety of attitudes as they move the car around.
“While we naturally have an interest in what those forces are and particularly how those forces change as the car moves, we’re even more interested in what is happening to the turbulent air behind the car.
“For that reason, although we are doing most of our development in CFD and that CFD is using some pretty advanced techniques — which aren’t commonly used by the teams — we want to back up the virtual simulations with a physical simulation.
“We also chose to use a 50 percent model rather than a 60 percent model, and we chose to run that model quite a long way forward in the wind tunnel, so this gave us the opportunity to best inspect the wake of the car.”
Symonds also added that the results were “exceptional” given what the league has to work with in testing.
The FIA’s head of single-seater technical matters, Nikolas Tombazis, was also positive about the initial testing.
“The fundamental point of all of this is that we are trying to reduce the losses that the following car would face. The simplification of the leading car’s aerodynamics also helps for wake performance because on the one hand, the front car doesn’t have as many methods to control its wake. On the other hand, the following car, not having all these little, very sensitive devices is less susceptible to disruption.”
Formula 1 and the FIA are working hand in hand on the research and development to finalize the 2021 regulations in time for the October deadline — but teams are being included in the process as well.
The FIA is allowing teams to test beyond the number of hours they have allocated for 2019 projects. Teams with the resources to do so have and those who don’t still reap the benefits of the information. It’s a true collaborative effort, at least as much as it can be in Formula 1.
“The teams have been very good. The teams that have had the resources to do it have worked on a number of projects for us, and they are all fully informed of what is going on,” Symonds said. “We have meetings every few months. We send our geometry to them; they then run that in their own CFD environments and they feedback results to us. They have been as involved as they want to be. Some can’t put the resources in. All teams’ results are shared until we get to the cutoff point, where from that point on, they have to operate within their declared rules.”
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