advertisement


The 2022 Formula One Thread

Status
Not open for further replies.

Tony Lockhart

Avoiding Stress, at Every Opportunity
The 2022 Formula One Thread


Well, the incredible 2021 season is already behind us, and now all eyes and ears will be on next year. The 2022 cars will look very different, and early reports say they drive very differently too.


Here are the main differences:


1. It’s been designed specifically to promote better racing

The 2022 regulations, originally slated to arrive in 2021 but delayed by Covid-19, had one guiding principle: to allow closer racing – with the potential for more overtakes a happy, but secondary, benefit.


What’s preventing closer racing currently? The effect of the "catastrophic downforce loss" – to quote an engineer centrally involved with the project – resulting from the ‘dirty air’ being churned chaotically off a leading car currently.

To put some numbers on it, research shows that current F1 machines lose 35% of their downforce when running three car lengths behind a leading car (approximately 20 metres, measured from the lead car’s nose to the following car’s nose), while closing up to one car length (around 10 metres) results in a 47% loss.


2. The car will feature over-wheel winglets for the first time – and wheel covers are back!

Two of the striking features on the 2022 car are its over-wheel winglets and a return to a feature last seen in F1 in 2009 – wheel covers.

The inclusion of the latter is simple: sending airflow through the wheels might be an enormously potent way for teams to increase their downforce, but it also adds to that chaotic aerodynamic wake coming off the cars.


3. The car will feature 18” wheels with low-profile tyres for the first time

F1 fans will have recently seen lots of footage of teams testing Pirelli’s bigger 18” wheels in readiness for next year.

The new Pirelli compounds and constructions for these 18” wheels have been designed with the goal of reducing the amount the tyres overheat when they slide – a primary aspect that should help with closer racing.


4. The front wing and nose concept have been completely re-thought

Although front wings have been getting progressively simpler in recent seasons, the 2022 F1 car will feature a totally new front wing shape.

Keeping with the philosophy of the 2022 car, the new front wing’s job is to both generate consistent downforce when running closely behind another car, and ensure that the front wheel wake is well controlled and directed down the car in the least disruptive way.


That means not sending the wake dramatically outboard, as is done on the current cars, nor letting it spill under the floor and get ingested by the diffuser, but instead steering it narrowly down the side of the car as much as possible. Or as one engineer on the project put it, the 2022 car’s front wing is designed simply to be an "anti-outwash" front wing.


5. An aero feature from the 70s is back! (sort of)

F1’s Motorsports team began work on the 2022 car back in 2017 – and it soon became apparent that the key change required to ensure closer racing would be placing the aerodynamic emphasis on ground effect to create downforce.

Ground effect came to prominence in F1 in the late 1970s, with cars effectively designed in the shape of upside-down airplane wings, creating huge amounts of downforce as they were pushed into the track.


Full ground effect cars were subsequently outlawed at the end of 1982 – and the 2022 car is certainly not a return to that era (there are no side skirts for a start!). But the 2022 car does feature fully shaped underfloor tunnels, rather than the stepped floor used currently, which will allow teams to generate large amounts of efficient downforce through ground effect (the current floors also exploit ground effect, but not to the same extent).

The reason for the change is the benign quality of downforce generated in ground effect. Current cars’ barge boards and other bits of aerodynamic furniture are designed to send vortices under the floor to increase downforce. But when those vortices stop working – due, for example, to the influence of closely following another car – the performance drop-off is huge.


6. The rear wing features new ‘rolled tips’

That rather beautiful, art deco-looking rear wing on the 2022 car (an automotive stylist contributed to aspects of the 2022 car’s overall look, incidentally) actually has an important function – and it’s to do with mushrooms. Let us explain…

While current cars’ rear wings direct airflow upwards, they are also designed to send flow outwards, leaving the ‘dirty air’ sitting there for the following car to drive through. By contrast, the shape and position of the 2022 car’s rear wing creates a rotational airflow that collects the rear wheel wake and rolls it into the flow exiting the diffuser – forming an invisible ‘mushroom’-shaped wake.

This narrower wake is then thrown – thanks also to a steeper diffuser ramp – high up into the air, allowing a following car to drive through less disrupted ‘clean air’.

DRS remains on the rear wing, meanwhile, with the Motorsports team keen to study its effect in conjunction with the rule changes.


7. It will use the same power unit as 2021

Many, many things are new on the 2022 car – but the power unit is not one of them, with Formula 1 set to retain the current 1.6-litre turbo-hybrid units. This is no bad thing, given that they’re already the most advanced and most efficient engines on the planet.

There will, however, be some more standard components in the fuel system, as well as some additional sensors to allow the FIA to better monitor the power units.

The big change is actually what will be coursing through those 1.6-litre engines, namely…


8. Cars will run on more sustainable fuel

Current regulations see cars running on fuel containing 5.75% bio-components.

And while F1 is still working hard to introduce fully sustainable fuel in the near-future, 2022 will see the bio-component ratio rise to 10%. That will be achieved through a move to ‘E10 fuel’ – ‘E’ standing for ethanol, while ‘10’ refers to its percentage in the mixture.

Crucially, though, that ethanol must be a second generation biofuel made in a sustainable way, meaning it will have a near-zero carbon footprint – an “interim step”, in the words of Formula 1’s Chief Technical Officer Pat Symonds, which will also help the sport align with current road car fuel regulations.


9. Safety has been at the forefront of the design

It almost goes without saying that a new generation of Formula 1 cars comes with the opportunity to make the sport even safer – and that’s certainly the case with the 2022 car.

The chassis now need to absorb 48% and 15% more energy respectively in the front and rear impact tests, as well as greater forces in the static ‘squeeze’ tests required to homologate the chassis and certify their strength.

Lessons have been learned, too, from recent major crashes, including that of Romain Grosjean at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix – with the cars now designed in such a way that, in the event of a crash, the power unit will separate from the chassis in a safe manner without exposing the fuel tank.

DAVID TREMAYNE: Grosjean’s shocking accident will only spur efforts for even greater F1 safety

Meanwhile, learnings from the FIA’s investigation into Formula 2 racer Anthoine Hubert’s fatal accident at Spa in 2019 were also incorporated, principally a longer nose section to help dissipate energy in a crash, together with stronger chassis sides to resist T-bone incidents.

It’s also true that those safety improvements, as well as the heavier and more robust tyres, have seen a weight increase, with the minimum car weight having risen by around 5% from 752kg currently to 790kg.


10. The 2022 car has been put through over 7,500 simulations to get to this point

F1 is nothing if not a thorough sport – and as you can imagine, creating the 2022 car has not been a ‘finger in the air’ exercise.

Instead, F1’s Motorsports team have run approximately 7,500 simulations, creating around half a petabyte of data. That’s the equivalent of a third of the 10 billion photos on Facebook, or 10 million four-drawer filing cabinets full of text documents.


Those 7,500 simulations also took 16.5 million core hours to solve, meaning if they’d been done on a high-spec Intel i9 quad core laptop, it would have taken until the year 2492 – 471 years from now – to get the solutions.


For more: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/...-2022-says-vasseur.A61GzEbWqcdRUhPPlvPDC.html
 
I'm assuming that the FIA will once again interpret the rules to ensure a Red Bull victory.

Not really sure what point there is in anyone else racing.
 
The good thing is we're not that far away from 2022 testing. Hopefully the teams can come back refreshed and the FIA sort their shit out!
 
1. It’s been designed specifically to promote better racing

'Promote better racing' - LOL that statement sums up state of Formula 1!
Current F1 is not racing at all, just driving preserving tyres with lots of rules at the top of that, when leading driver needs to hope for a win.
 
Please. If you don’t like F1, don’t ‘contribute’ to a thread about it with poorly thought out statements such as that.

I am racing fan. I like ALL racing, I have similar to Lando's iracing rig at home.
Not sure what you mean saying 'If you don’t like F1'.
Are you asking about TV show, or just racing? Do I have to like something to discuss it? Do I have to be a fan of whatever they do to the sport to write here? No criticism?
 
I am racing fan. I like ALL racing, I have similar to Lando's iracing rig at home.
Not sure what you mean saying 'If you don’t like F1'.
Are you asking about TV show, or just racing? Do I have to like something to discuss it? Do I have to be a fan of whatever they do to the sport to write here? No criticism? This is what you are asking for?
Well, you said “current F1 is not racing at all” so, if you’re a racing fan, why would you watch it or post in an F1 thread?
 
Well, you said “current F1 is not racing at all” so, if you’re a racing fan, why would you watch it or post in an F1 thread?

Is a racing when drivers do laps to specific delta time, due to tires by FIA 'designed specifically to promote better racing'?

Is that racing for you?
 
Is a racing when drivers do laps to specific delta time, due to tires by FIA 'designed specifically to promote better racing'?

Is that racing for you?

Tyres have been discussed many times. Move on, I think is the best advice.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.


advertisement


Back
Top