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Flying upside down 💸
I read that a car jumped off the ground while travelling in a straight line during testing in Spain. Everyone has been having some bounce but that's a bit extreme. There's a weird chain of cause and effect to get here.
- From the 1970s, teams tried using airflow under the car to suck it downwards (called the ground effect)
- It helps you take corners faster
- But if the airflow is disrupted, the downforce suddenly disappears, and you crash
- So (since the 80s) car undersides had to be flat
- So to get downforce you needed better wings
- But the wings needed smooth airflow to work properly
- And when you got close to another car, its turbulence reduced your downforce
- So you slid more and ruined your tyres
- So close racing was too difficult
- This year's rules are meant to fix this by reducing reliance on wings
- But they do it by allowing ground effect again
- And at high speed, the ground effect is more... effective
- So the car gets squished very close to the ground
- This disrupts the airflow and the downforce suddenly disappears
- The car bounces up, restoring airflow and downforce
- This pushes the car down again
- Rinse and repeat.
So cars are bouncing down the straights, sometimes a bit alarmingly. So far, no one has had a problem in a corner and had a big crash.
Some people are excited about how the cars differ from each other this year. I'm not so sure. There are some variations in body shape, but they're not spectacular. I wonder how different the undersides are. If someone flips, will we discover secrets?
#F1
#GroundEffect
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