WILL THE NEW REGULATIONS WORK?
Simpler front wings are part of the changes aimed at making overtaking in Formula 1 easier, but how much is likely to change?
In some corners, the change in technical regulations for 2019 represents the biggest change in Formula 1’s aerodynamic formula since ’09. That rules set produced a sea change in the pecking order, but didn’t exactly prove to be the silver bullet in addressing F1’s on-track shortcomings.
The 2019 regulations have been designed and developed by FOM and the FIA’S in-house technical research teams, and are selected elements taken from FOM’S research ahead of the ’21 season, when bigger changes are planned. Together, their respective engineers have seen tangible merit in their respective simulations, otherwise the changes in dimensions simply wouldn’t have been included.
Of the field so far, only Williams and Force India have trialled 2019-spec front wings on track, at the mid-season test in Hungary. Although the concepts seen this year will undoubtedly be more refined with an extra half-year of development, Williams technical director Paddy Lowe expressed some surprise that no other teams had joined in.
“It was a good test and, given that the rule is quite simple and the wing that you can design with the rules is quite simple, the wing we had was not a million miles off what people will end up running,” says Lowe. “So it was certainly useful, and we were surprised that so few other teams did the same.
“We were already stretched with our resources, but managed to prioritise the project. I think that Force India was the only other team – and maybe Red Bull [with a simplified 2018 wing] – to do some work in that area. We saw Ferrari doing something [in Abu Dhabi], so I think there was a bit of a late realisation from some of the teams that they’d missed a trick!”
A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
It’s important to take the new cars for what they are. The redefined rules aren’t proclaimed to be F1’s saviour, but rather a concerted step forward to where FOM and Liberty Media aim to take the category – essentially a precursor to the much-vaunted overhaul pencilled in for 2021.
The feeling in the paddock is that F1’s on-track product regressed after the redefinition of the cars in 2017, and the FIA moved forward certain elements of FOM’S ’21 concepts to address that. These include the front wing being extended and simplified to mitigate the downforce lost at the front when following another car.
“The main reason [for the new regulations] is that the outwash off the front-tyre wake is the most dominant factor in whether we improve overtaking or not,” explains Lowe. “From the knowledge that we have – and not only from recent research but research over the last decade in these areas – [the new rules are] going to be directionally correct to improve following, just as much as the rules we made for 2017 were directionally incorrect.
“We said it at the time, and it proved to be so. What we don’t know is by how much. We know for certain that the more downforce you have, the more you suffer with the wake because you’ve got more to lose. That’s just basic physics.”
With the change in rear wing size too, the collective impact should be to reduce the dreaded outwash factor credited with making the act of overtaking difficult.
CAN THE RULES CREATE A 2009ESQUE SHAKEUP?
“I think so,” answers Lowe. “It’s not a minor change – it’s quite substantial. A lot depends on the degree of innovation and what solutions people come up with. And that brings a lot of unexpected directions, so you may see some change in the pecking order.”
Of course, even if one of the smaller teams on the grid produces a passable Brawn impression and steals a march on the rest of the field, the better-funded squads will undoubtedly have the resources to catch back up.
“The underlying capability and performance of the teams remains in place,” continues Lowe (above). “Even as we see innovations that bring brief disturbances, as we saw last year it took only months or at most a year for the bigger teams to catch up. It’s difficult to say, because sometimes people can come up with something difficult to copy quickly.”
TEAMS WORKING TO RECOVER LOST DOWNFORCE
Without the outwashing capabilities around the front wing, combined with the various other pieces of accompanying furniture, there’s been plenty of head-scratching across each team’s design department as they seek to recover the downforce lost around the rest of the car.
“It’s a big change to the aerodynamics, but it’s a relatively small change to the regulations,” explains Force India technical director Andy Green. “On the surface, you’d say that’s not going
“THE MORE DOWNFORCE YOU HAVE, THE MORE YOU SUFFER WITH THE WAKE. THAT’S JUST BASIC PHYSICS”
to do a lot, but in reality it’s affected the car’s performance a lot – overall performance and balance as well.
“It’s been a big hit. When we first put it in the tunnel a few months ago, we’re talking a few seconds of lap time, and a poorly balanced car as well. It was the worst possible outcome.
“Hopefully, it has some positives with respect to closer racing. Like everyone else, we’ve been trying to crawl our way out of the hole that we jumped into with these new regulations. It’s significant – not quite a complete change of car, but it’s pretty close.
“When you make those substantial changes, it has a profound effect on everything else – it’s starting again, really, with a new concept in 2019. The development curve is really steep again, and all of a sudden we’re into bringing updates all the time to try to keep on top of the change in performance of the model.”
WILL IT HAVE AS BIG AN EFFECT AS EXPECTED?
Although Lowe talks about the potential for shaking up the order, Green is less effusive about the new rules’ ability to provide better racing. “There is a small change to the outwash on the car,” he confirms, “but it’s relatively small, so if you flinch you miss it. I think it came about as part of a round of work that Formula 1 was doing on the 2021 car, and they plucked it out at a very early stage to go into ’19. I think now they’ve done more work on the
’21, it’s probably quite a small modifier in the whole equation.
“We’ll see, but it’s a relatively small change. You might struggle to see a significant difference. It’s made the cars a lot slower. It’s going to make the wings less complicated, that’s for sure. The wings are a lot bigger – front wings are huge now – so they’re going to be prone to damage so we’ve got to take that into account. We’re going to be losing a few quite regularly.
“[There’s] less [dirty air] in the respect that the performance of the car has deteriorated because it’s less output for sure. But when you go back behind the rear wing, and look at the actual effect right behind the car, it’s massively diluted.
“We’re talking about a very small change – you can hardly see it. I think we’ll struggle to see a big difference following another car. I hope I’m wrong; I hope all this work will result in some positives, but for the analysis we’ve seen it looks relatively small.
“It’s in the right direction, but I think now there are bigger parts to play with to get it where they want to go. It’s a shame because it costs an awful lot of money to do all these changes, and I’m not sure it’s going to close the field up.”
ANY EARLY INDICATIONS OF LOOPHOLES?
There was, but the FIA quickly picked up on one loophole. Teams were using the front-wing-flap adjuster to guide some of the airflow outwards. Having been explored by some of the teams, the scope to use it in recovering the lost outwash was quickly extinguished by the FIA in its latest update to the regulations.
“We’ve lost a lot of material for what we use to achieve outwash, particularly around the front-wing endplates and front-brake-duct furniture, as we call it,” says Lowe. “But we’re doing everything we can and trying every trick we can dream up to get back to where we were.
“Because there are so few tricks left to manage outwash, some people got onto the idea of the front-wing adjuster as an aerodynamic device in itself! You’ll see in the rules that the size of the adjuster and where it’s positioned has now been pinned down, which sort of gives you a flavour of what’s been going on.”
WHAT’S THE SCORE?
Our only true metric of whether or not the new cars produce any significant strides in improving the on-track product will be once the season starts. Sure, pre-season testing might offer some indication – and will certainly underline whether the slash in downforce is as large as the teams have feared – but we’ll have to wait until the opening races to find out if it helps the racing.
“I know that I’ve seen a lot of quotes that it’s not going to make any difference,” Lowe contends, “but I’m not so sceptical.
“If we didn’t change the rules, overtaking in 2019 would be worse than this year, because we’ll have developed one or two seconds a lap more from downforce, which is what we do year on year. We’d have had disproportionate degradation in following distances, and that’s unquestionable in my mind.”