The 2023 Formula One Season

[tones]

IanW -- realise that this is a very specialised subject -- perhaps only Mr Newey and his aero team fully understand it.
Regards,
Steve

It has always struck me as a particularly difficult subject, insofar as aeronautical engineers don't have to contend with four dirty great wheels mucking up their ideal airflow. To me, it almost seems that there comes a point at which mathematical certainty ends and inspired guesswork begins. Perhaps this is Newey's secret, his guesswork is more inspired than anyone else's.

 

[tones]

I am not so sure that Max has matured that much. There have been a few ‘rants’ when things haven’t gone his way more recently. I suspect that if racing becomes close he will become petulant again and drive in a way that is bound to end up in big shunts, I cant see the younger ‘better’ drivers taking any crap from him where they have a genuine chance of beating him.

Some drivers do seem to have their share of petulance - one thinks of Senna and Mansell, in which it seems that, in their view anyway, if you weren't 100% for them, you were 100% against them.

 

[Enfield boy]

It has always struck me as a particularly difficult subject, insofar as aeronautical engineers don't have to contend with four dirty great wheels mucking up their ideal airflow. To me, it almost seems that there comes a point at which mathematical certainty ends and inspired guesswork begins. Perhaps this is Newey's secret, his guesswork is more inspired than anyone else's.

Newey was growing up during the first ground effect era. It seems amazing to me that as porpoising was an issue then until teams were able engineer it out, only one team hit the ground (sic) running during the second coming of ground effect. Mercedes really dropped the ball and appear to have been incredibly arrogant for the last couple of years.

The university project that Newey’s F1 rivals should not forget

www.autosport.com

 

[cutting42]

No disrespect, but Verstappen's bullying is no worse than that dished out by Senna or Schumacher and if he really was 'bullying' I think the stewards would be a lot more interested. Yes, he drives to the very edge of acceptability, but so what? It's not a kindergarten egg and spoon race is it?

While I take your point about longer seasons and more reliable cars etc. this can be tempered with the fact that drivers these days do not get to jump in a spare car if theirs does go wrong (or take over their teammate's car as it was in days of yore). Grids are a lot closer than they were 30 years ago etc. etc. It's swings and roundabouts. As for weak teammates yeah maybe a bit, but I also think Verstappen has just got to the point where just about anyone would end up well beaten... it's just the level he's at right now.

One thing that does set him apart from just about any other driver I have seen is there is never a single session he doesn't want to win, be it practice, quali, sprints, the race or whatever. When Hamilton or Schumacher or even Senna won a title they would ease off just a little... Verstappen doesn't... he just wants to keep on winning. At the end of 2015 Hamilton having won the title relaxed and Nico won the last 3 races of the season... that gave him the impetus to hit the ground running in 2016 and we all know what happened then... Max would simply not do that... IMO anyway. It's impressive.

Anyway let's hope Ferrari or Merc can find some magic over winter, but I'm not holding my breath.

Re MSC and Senna, totally agree, Senna started the give way or we crash mentality, MSC developed it and now we have VER; still don't like it and whilst it is not an egg and spoon race, I consider it unnecessary and other very successful drivers don't feel the need to do it. HAM, ALO, VET, HAK to name just 4 multiple WDC.

I don't deny VER desire to win all the time, it is part of his psyche but I have always preferred the Prost approach, to win at the slowest pace possible as a concept.

 

[Cav]

Silverstone 2021 suggests otherwise.

 

[tones]

...I have always preferred the Prost approach, to win at the slowest pace possible as a concept.

The original here was Jack Brabham, whose mantra was "to finish first, you must first finish", so no placing undue strain on the machinery, no going after lap records for the sake of it, being first across the line, even if by a few cm.

 

[cutting42]

The original here was Jack Brabham, whose mantra was "to finish first, you must first finish", so no placing undue strain on the machinery, no going after lap records for the sake of it, being first across the line, even if by a few cm.

He predated me by a few years but a lot of the early years drivers had enviable characters.

 

[tones]

He predated me by a few years but a lot of the early years drivers had enviable characters.

As John Surtees will almost certainly be the only man ever to win world championships on two wheels and four, so Jack will almost certainly be the only man ever to win the world championship in a car of his own making.

 

[cutting42]

Silverstone 2021 suggests otherwise.

It really doesn't and even if it did, one instance does not define the overall style.

HAM could have made more space at Silverstone but he was nowhere close to running VER out of road.

 

[narabdela]

...a lot of the early years drivers had enviable characters.

Times have changed.

 

[TalYWaun]

It has always struck me as a particularly difficult subject, insofar as aeronautical engineers don't have to contend with four dirty great wheels mucking up their ideal airflow. To me, it almost seems that there comes a point at which mathematical certainty ends and inspired guesswork begins. Perhaps this is Newey's secret, his guesswork is more inspired than anyone else's.

With aircraft they are (mostly) operating in a clean, laminar airflow. When Mercedes porpoising problem became apparent at the start of the season, I wondered if they were hitting a Chaos (non-linear mathematics) problem. What may have seemed a solution in the the laminar air flow of an wind tunnel didn't necessarily hold up in the real world of bumpy tracks, turbulence and cross winds. Perhaps Mercedes solution was just too close to a boundary, and the other teams just happened to be further away.

 

[gez]

Hmmmm, if you look at percentage of races won in a season Max is still way ahead of the previous record holder… Alberto Ascari. I don’t think you could ever say that his domination this year has been anything other than extraordinary.

I was making a general statement, not specifically talking about Max's acheivement this year. I agree though what Max has done this year is extraordinary.

 

[gez]

I remember many "extraordinary" seasons from Senna, MSC, VET and HAM. They have been plenty or truly outstanding drives and seasons in the past as well all for different reasons but they can only really be judged in context of that era. Therefore all the GOAT and best ever, most this or that are generally irrelevant.

In the era of super reliable cars, much higher points scoring than ever before, sprint races increasing the points differential, penalties for not wearing your safety glasses and a generational talent with the rest of the teams and a team mate not even close to competitive over the season the stats will be very skewed and unlikely to be bettered. So yes extraordinary, but in the same way as a MSC or VET season with no competition from anywhere, interest is low for all who are not VER and RB fans..

I still think there are questions over VER racecraft, the past two years he has had such a good car he has not had to try that hard wheel to wheel as he knows he had very efficient aero to use DRS with enormous effect. He also bullies other drivers, usually getting away with it. His use of the block pass is overly aggressive and cynical IMO. However, I think he is maturing a little and with a few WDC in his backpack now maybe when he is next competing on a level playing field he will moderate but I have doubts.

So yes celebrate a pretty much perfect season I hope we never see another - well except if it is with NOR of course

Same can be said of Senna, MSC and also can be said of HAM in his early years. To the point where it became obvious that a lot of people didn't actually challenge or attempt to block his overtakes as in the past he had either barrelled in to other drivers or literally run them off the road on to the grass on the straight. I've never had much time for all the statements about how great an overtaker he is, when in reality very few drivers dared to even challenge his overtakes during the era of Mercedes dominance. Alonso was one of the few that did, and look at how effective he was at being able to keep HAM behind at times.

I think the sport in general is far too quick to jump to the GOAT claim. HAM is a classic case in point, IMO the vast majority of his career achievements are entirely due to the fact that he was in by far the most dominant car on the grid for an extraordinary length of time. Not even Ferrari's dominance back in the day lasted 7 years. Obviously he's a very good driver, and certainly one of the best on the grid, but 7 WDC in any other time, in any other car but that Merc at that time? nope, never. 4 at best IMO.

As for NOR, I can't abide him. I know the Netflix series highlighted things for entertainment value, but he came across as extremly immature in it. He's shown similar me me me behaviour in interviews and races too. Sorry, really don't like the guy.

 

[gez]

Ferrari should be ashamed.

Agree, they absolutely threw it away.

 

[gez]

Re MSC and Senna, totally agree, Senna started the give way or we crash mentality, MSC developed it and now we have VER; still don't like it and whilst it is not an egg and spoon race, I consider it unnecessary and other very successful drivers don't feel the need to do it. HAM, ALO, VET, HAK to name just 4 multiple WDC.

I don't deny VER desire to win all the time, it is part of his psyche but I have always preferred the Prost approach, to win at the slowest pace possible as a concept.

I do agree that the "leave space at all times" rule seems to have gone out the window, and the sport is worse for it absolutely.

 

[IanW]

With aircraft they are (mostly) operating in a clean, laminar airflow. When Mercedes porpoising problem became apparent at the start of the season, I wondered if they were hitting a Chaos (non-linear mathematics) problem. What may have seemed a solution in the the laminar air flow of an wind tunnel didn't necessarily hold up in the real world of bumpy tracks, turbulence and cross winds. Perhaps Mercedes solution was just too close to a boundary, and the other teams just happened to be further away.

All good points. The track surface roughness is measured every year and a choice made for wind tunnel moving road belt roughness based on this. This is another compromise that has to be made in terms of the development tools vs the range of tracks that the race cars will run at.

I explained what happened in last year's thread in terms of porpoising, but should be able to do a better job 2nd time round, plus I have more knowledge of cars this year.

With ground effect, to get it to work, you need to run the car close to the ground. The closer to the ground you run the car, the greater the increase in downforce (for a constant speed). I.e. there is a non linear increase in downforce (for a constant speed which is made worse by the car speed increasing) that pulls the floor towards the road. Hence a situation can easily be reached where there is enough energy in the flow to compress the suspension and the tyres such that it pulls the floor onto the tarmac. The subsequent stall as you have restricted flow then reduces the downforce, the flow then re-attaches once the ride height has increased (i.e. the floor rises above the tarmac) and then again forces the floor into the tarmac. This is why all the teams will have had porpoising at some point. But for some teams, e.g. Merc, these problems are worse than for others.

You cannot test this directly in the wind tunnel as you cannot run the model low enough to the moving road as you risk damaging the belt and or the model. So you have to look at downforce vs ride height derivatives and set limits on what you think that you can get away with.

Aston had done a very good job in this area at the start of the season but they then decided that they did not need to worry about this anymore as they had a fast car and so could push the boundaries with upgrades. Then the new stiffer tyres to account for the downforce being greater than expected were introduced in Austria. That is when Aston started to slip down the grid. That was also the point at which McLaren started to perform better. They were introducing their upgrade at the same time and maybe got lucky that it all worked in a positive way for them.

I mentioned earlier in the season why the stiffer tyres would complicate the situation but will give a quick summary here. The flows around the suspension, tyres, brakes and bodywork are complicated. And the wind tunnel has fixed shape tyres and so the compressed tyre shape (i.e. under load and rotation) does not represent the tyre that well whilst cornering. The wind tunnel tyre model is supplied by Pirelli and is the same for everyone (not allowed to use or develop your own solution) and so there is an element of luck regarding the shape of the tyre during the wind tunnel run, the layout of the suspension and what will happen when the floor is closer to the tarmac. I.e. what I am saying is that this is hard to model in the wind tunnel.

I hope that this explains porpoising and the difficulties that the teams have trying to avoid it during the race car development phase.

 

[gez]

All good points. The track surface roughness is measured every year and a choice made for wind tunnel moving road belt roughness based on this. This is another compromise that has to be made in terms of the development tools vs the range of tracks that the race cars will run at.

I explained what happened in last year's thread in terms of porpoising, but should be able to do a better job 2nd time round, plus I have more knowledge of cars this year.

With ground effect, to get it to work, you need to run the car close to the ground. The closer to the ground you run the car, the greater the increase in downforce (for a constant speed). I.e. there is a non linear increase in downforce (for a constant speed which is made worse by the car speed increasing) that pulls the floor towards the road. Hence a situation can easily be reached where there is enough energy in the flow to compress the suspension and the tyres such that it pulls the floor onto the tarmac. The subsequent stall as you have restricted flow then reduces the downforce, the flow then re-attaches once the ride height has increased (i.e. the floor rises above the tarmac) and then again forces the floor into the tarmac. This is why all the teams will have had porpoising at some point. But for some teams, e.g. Merc, these problems are worse than for others.

You cannot test this directly in the wind tunnel as you cannot run the model low enough to the moving road as you risk damaging the belt and or the model. So you have to look at downforce vs ride height derivatives and set limits on what you think that you can get away with.

Aston had done a very good job in this area at the start of the season but they then decided that they did not need to worry about this anymore as they had a fast car and so could push the boundaries with upgrades. Then the new stiffer tyres to account for the downforce being greater than expected were introduced in Austria. That is when Aston started to slip down the grid. That was also the point at which McLaren started to perform better. They were introducing their upgrade at the same time and maybe got lucky that it all worked in a positive way for them.

I mentioned earlier in the season why the stiffer tyres would complicate the situation but will give a quick summary here. The flows around the suspension, tyres, brakes and bodywork are complicated. And the wind tunnel has fixed shape tyres and so the compressed tyre shape (i.e. under load and rotation) does not represent the tyre that well whilst cornering. The wind tunnel tyre model is supplied by Pirelli and is the same for everyone (not allowed to use or develop your own solution) and so there is an element of luck regarding the shape of the tyre during the wind tunnel run, the layout of the suspension and what will happen when the floor is closer to the tarmac. I.e. what I am saying is that this is hard to model in the wind tunnel.

I hope that this explains porpoising and the difficulties that the teams have trying to avoid it during the race car development phase.

Very illumiating! Thanks for posting.

 

[cutting42]

Same can be said of Senna, MSC and also can be said of HAM in his early years. To the point where it became obvious that a lot of people didn't actually challenge or attempt to block his overtakes as in the past he had either barrelled in to other drivers or literally run them off the road on to the grass on the straight. I've never had much time for all the statements about how great an overtaker he is, when in reality very few drivers dared to even challenge his overtakes during the era of Mercedes dominance. Alonso was one of the few that did, and look at how effective he was at being able to keep HAM behind at times.

I think the sport in general is far too quick to jump to the GOAT claim. HAM is a classic case in point, IMO the vast majority of his career achievements are entirely due to the fact that he was in by far the most dominant car on the grid for an extraordinary length of time. Not even Ferrari's dominance back in the day lasted 7 years. Obviously he's a very good driver, and certainly one of the best on the grid, but 7 WDC in any other time, in any other car but that Merc at that time? nope, never. 4 at best IMO.

As for NOR, I can't abide him. I know the Netflix series highlighted things for entertainment value, but he came across as extremly immature in it. He's shown similar me me me behaviour in interviews and races too. Sorry, really don't like the guy.

I'd need to go back to HAM early years to double check, he had the usual impetuosity of a young driver but my recall and generally the feeling throughout that he was a very fair racer. I am sure over such a long career that we can find several incidents and close calls but generally he has been regarded as fair and that has been generally accepted in the F1 fora for years. Plenty of HAM haters out there so there are always some pedaling an agenda but my preference is for fair racers over nationality.

The GOAT stuff I already said I am not a fan of but HAM did go up against great drivers, lets not forget ROS had thrashed MSC on his return to F1, ALO and BUT were no slouches either. The Merc was "only" truly dominant for three years and HAM had ROS pushing him hard all the way so there was a race and they both had to dig deep. If HAM had never sat in a front running car he probably have won nothing just like VER or VET or Senna would not have either for that matter. They are all in the best cars because people with far more insight than us think they are the best and pay them handsomely to be in their cars.

 

[tiggers]

I'd need to go back to HAM early years to double check, he had the usual impetuosity of a young driver but my recall and generally the feeling throughout that he was a very fair racer. I am sure over such a long career that we can find several incidents and close calls but generally he has been regarded as fair and that has been generally accepted in the F1 fora for years. Plenty of HAM haters out there so there are always some pedaling an agenda but my preference is for fair racers over nationality.

Hamilton is definitely a cleaner racer than most multiple WCs, but I think you have to temper the performances in his early seasons with the fact that he was in a very good car. Verstappen's early F1 years are punctuated by some mistakes and some overly aggressive moves, but some of this was his relative youth and some of it the fact that his car was not as good as the front runners. That said I think overall Hamilton is the fairer of the two of them, but Verstappen is not as bad as many make him out to be when compared to other great drivers in the history of the sport.

 

[tuga]

Are they that much more "notably" absent than the other seven?

At least a few whole team driver rosters are present - Alpha Tauri, Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, and Mercedes. Red Bull and Haas are not represented.

Is the empty chair the photographer? If so, perhaps one more was present. If any more had shown, they would have needed a larger table.

Should you not have written ATAU, AROM, FERR and MERC? RBUL and HAAS? (TBF you did write HAAS)