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The 2022 Formula One Thread

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JensenHealey said:
Hmm..his death was very well reported and at the time and there were plenty of obits and leading commentaries regarding various aspects of his life. On the one hand a prominent sand successful safety campaigner, a brilliant mind - and yet,on the other hand - by many accounts, a thoroughly unpleasant man who was very good at maintaining and acting upon grudges over long periods of time.
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You are correct, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57232681

We even had a little topic on it last year and I even commented, getting old sucks.

The 2021 F1 Season.
 
peter bj said:
Firstly I do not have any preference for any driver and am happy for there to be as many race winners as possible from any team . However although Max is a brilliant driver I feel he should be happy with his victory and not need to make any further comments , I do not think anyone else raised his issues .
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Why? What did he say after the race?
 
For much of last year there was much talk of how Mercedes had used their dominance to get a head start on engineering the 2022 car. If that is the case I would expect heads to roll there pretty soon given their exceptionally poor performance so far this season.
 
sean99 said:
For much of last year there was much talk of how Mercedes had used their dominance to get a head start on engineering the 2022 car. If that is the case I would expect heads to roll there pretty soon given their exceptionally poor performance so far this season.
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My understanding is that there is a lot of very good work in the car and what is holding it back is stuff that you cannot predict ahead of actual on track testing. The real test comes when they find the suspension problems that are stopping the car working as designed and it's true pace relative to Red Bull and Ferrari is apparent.

Also this stuff is so specialised and Merc already have some of the very best in the world, so it's not like you can just sack a bunch of people and bring some others in. Although if you are reading Toto I am available and have top Excel skills (can do pivot tables and everything).
 
sean99 said:
For much of last year there was much talk of how Mercedes had used their dominance to get a head start on engineering the 2022 car. If that is the case I would expect heads to roll there pretty soon given their exceptionally poor performance so far this season.
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The evidence suggests that the car itself actually has performance that is close to the Ferrari and RBR, but they are not able to access it because of the porpoising.

The porpoising is an aero effect (can be reduced with the suspension, but the core problem is an aero driving force) that is likely to be missed unless you were specifically looking for symptoms that could cause it. As I have already mentioned on here, Ferrari and Haas were fortunate to have access to Rory Birne, who worked on aero developments in F1 in the ground effect days. Sauber have Willem Toet, who worked on F1 aero in the ground effect days and RBR have Adrian Newey who worked on aero in F1 in the ground effect days. Mercedes have noone in aero from that era and have had big problems with porpoising.

Also whilst Merc had the very big advantage of switching their aero team to working on the 2021 rules (that became the 2022 rules), earlier than other teams and with more resource (before the budget cap), they did as I mentioned on here, start to handle the downsizing badly. With the team losing a lot of expertise as the team leaders were pushed out, whilst the leaderships kept their jobs. This created a lot of resentment across the team.

Having said all that, it is an aero problem and they have one of the best wind tunnels and many very experienced aerodynamicists, and so I expect them to find solutions in the near future.
 
Do the rest of the Teams in the paddock resent Mercedes somewhat because of their dominance? That's the impression i get. Perhaps when you loose sight of what's important in a team, or making money becomes more important than "The Team" Mercedes present predicament is the outcome.

So how does this work Ian, does the drag on the car cause the porpoising?

Does the Aero change the geometry/rake of the car at speed... and because down-force is coming from ground effects, the floor of the car and not so much from a plethora of visible wings, is it more difficult to manage the distance between the track and the car to make the ground effect work effectively when the geometry of the car is changing due to braking/speed changes etc?

I'm guessing the way to make this disappear is active damping and control of the ride height? Or does that count as active suspension? Is it just electronic control of the suspension that's banned? Or is a whole new floor the answer!? Hope you don't mind me asking :)

Didn't an F1 team in the past do exactly this (when active suspension was banned), until they got found out?
 
I found this clip to be quite helpful to explain what was actually happening-
How you stop it is another question.
 
Space is the Place said:
Do the rest of the Teams in the paddock resent Mercedes somewhat because of their dominance? That's the impression i get. Perhaps when you loose sight of what's important in a team, or making money becomes more important than "The Team" Mercedes present predicament is the outcome.
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Ferrari and RBR have been working for many years with the FIA to change the rules to make it more difficult for Merc to win (seen as bad for the sport for any team to keep on winning). The only rule (until the current set came into force) that really affected Merc negatively was the aero rule designed to impact cars running low rake (i.e. Merc), more than teams running higher rake (the rest except for Aston who had copied Merc). This was brought in for the start of the 2021 season and did have more of a negative on the Merc and in particular the Aston Martin performance.

So how does this work Ian, does the drag on the car cause the porpoising?
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No, porpoising is caused by the ground effect. I.e. the closer that you run the car to the ground the more downforce you have. I.e. as the ride height, in particular the rear decreases, the rear gets more and more downforce until the airflow is stalled as the floor gets to close to the ground. So the floor comes back up as there is not enough downforce to keep it there. Then there is more downforce and so the floor is pushed closer to the ground. This works dynamically at about 2 Hz. To see this in the wind tunnel requires that you look at rate effects (downforce gain vs ride height vs stall ride height) and look at what would happen with a non rigid floor.

Does the Aero change the geometry/rake of the car at speed... and because down-force is coming from ground effects, the floor of the car and not so much from a plethora of visible wings, is it more difficult to manage the distance between the track and the car to make the ground effect work effectively when the geometry of the car is changing due to braking/speed changes etc?
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It is purely an aero effect due to ground effect being so powerful.

I'm guessing the way to make this disappear is active damping and control of the ride height? Or does that count as active suspension? Is it just electronic control of the suspension that's banned? Or is a whole new floor the answer!? Hope you don't mind me asking :)
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Active suspension was made illegal after the 1993 season. The porpoising can be tuned out a bit by changing damping levels and stiffnesses. The simplest fix is to increase the ride height, which is what Merc have mostly done, but that reduces aero efficiency and the car will be slower (up to a second a lap). See below for alternative approach which is also illegal.

Didn't an F1 team in the past do exactly this (when active suspension was banned), until they got found out?
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Not really. Renault ran a mass damper in 2006, but this was soon banned (the other tams knew about it and waited for the FIA to decide that it could not be used anymore). To stop / reduce porpoising, the mass damper would be tuned to the resonant frequency and be used to take out the porpoising energy and is often used in wind tunnels to do this. But not legal on a race track.

So Merc needs to be, and I am sure are, working hard in the wind tunnel to fix the porpoising, just like other teams have been able to do.
 
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