Formula 1 Quarter Mile?

[lukeh]

they raised the front wing to decrease downforce . same thing with the modified difuser and rear wing . they are trying to slow the cars .. they didn't quite got there but at least the cars arent much faster than last year .

what modified difuser and rear wing i dont understand

[Coventrysucks]

When the wing is positioned near to the ground the space that the air can move through is fairly small.

If the area an ammount of air can flow through halves the speed of that flow doubles.

Therefore if the wing is close to the ground the air under the wing is travelling faster.
As the speed increases the pressure decreases, as the pressure underneath the wing decreases it is pushed down upon by the air pressure above.

This is negative lift, or downforce.

By raising the wing the air flow beneath it is slower and therefore the ammount of downforce is lessened.

Similarly by making the diffuser smaller the volume of air moving through it is less and the aero effect is lessened.

Reducing the rear wing to a single element (wing) rather than two together also lessens the ammount of downforce.

[lukeh]

Thank you for that. But I have always wonderd why they put diffusers underneath the car, How does the rear diffuser create downforce/suction

[RacingManiac]

what your saying is ok but what i got told was from an engineer at the unerversity is that if there is less air going underneath the car there is a lower pressure. this creats suction to the ground hence downforce. The rear wing is also aided to reduce the air under neath the car the rear wing also helps suck air out from underneath the car and that also helps create a lower pressure. a perfect example of the oppisite of lower pressure underneath the car is when Mark Webber was racing at the 24 hour race. this is not exact word to word what he told me.

Both way will create downforce.....ground effect make use of the air passing under the car to create a venturi effect to create downforce. While something like an airdam is used to divert air away from going under the car. Both will create a pressure differential between the space under neither the car and atmospheric pressure. Thus creating a force acting on the car to balance it out. The taking air out from under the car idea takes to an extreme would be the fan car with fan to suck the air out from under the car.

[RacingManiac]

Thank you for that. But I have always wonderd why they put diffusers underneath the car, How does the rear diffuser create downforce/suction

Diffuser by itself does not create downforce, but it is used to aid the creation of downforce/reduce the drag generated . When there is mixing between the normal airflow and the accelerated flow, vortex will be created and parasitic drag is the result. A diffuser decelerate the flow coming out of the underside of the car(ie, the accelerated flow), by allowing it to gradually expand to bigger volume and thus slower speed, so when rejoining the regular flow, the speed differential is less and thus reducing the ill-effect of the drag...

[lukeh]

yes i have read about the fan sucking air out from underneath the car but it was banned in F1 i think. can anybody give me information on mark webbers crash on a 24h race. i cant remmember much but maybe some of the australians know about it

[RacingManiac]

Mark Webber actually crashed during practice and qualifying....after the 2nd crash MB withdrew that car. Then Peter Dumbrek's car crashed during the race....MB withdrew the team after that point...

www.mulsannescorner.com has good deals of info on that...

[Coventrysucks]

The Mercedes CLR had a pretty basic problem.

A small ammount of air got under the front of the car cresting the humps on the Mulsanne straight, as the bottom of the car was flat more and more air built up - pushing the nose up, which allowed more air under the car, which pushed the nose up some more...

Several cars at the time had the same problem, but it occured at slower circuits, so the air couldn't build up as quickly so the car could not take off fully.

[DasModell]

there's more than that . as Mike says on his site . this sort of problems only happen to close top cars .

[henk4]

Why would we bother about QM times? F1 cars are built for lap times. If Fleet500 would enter this discussion he might start asking for the skidpad results, and then come up with an obscure american car that produced higher g-values.

[onetoolfan]

Why would we bother about QM times? F1 cars are built for lap times.

Your right but F1 cars are so different from other cars it's hard to put them into a good frame of reference as to how fast they are. Saying a car can go from 0-120-0 in 8 seconds sounds very fast but it's hard to create a mental image of that. Most of us have seen a quarter mile drag race before and have a basic idea about what a normal car will do it in. I have a better understanding of F1 cars quickness now that I know their QM speed.

[DasModell]

ha ha ha ha .

[henk4]

Most of us have seen a quarter mile drag race before and have a basic idea about what a normal car will do it in.

Never seen a real one, only on TV. Always wandered what a driver was doing in there, if the purpose is to measure straight line speed. Tie the things to an iron guide line and launch and brake it using remote control

[onetoolfan]

Never seen a real one, only on TV. Always wandered what a driver was doing in there, if the purpose is to measure straight line speed. Tie the things to an iron guide line and launch and brake it using remote control

I've never seen a drag race at a track either. However if you've seen them before on tv and youve heard QM times talked about, then you can tell the difference in performance it suggests when a minivan does 18 seconds and a very very fast street car will do it half that dont you?
I've always thought it would be cool if top fuel dragsters had specially made toothed tracks and their rear tires could be gears so we can see the potention of their awesome engines.
One effect of using tires and a live driver is that it forces the engineers to operate within a certain amount of driveability requirements which helps keep it competitive.

[henk4]

I've never seen a drag race at a track either. However if you've seen them before on tv and youve heard QM times talked about, then you can tell the difference in performance it suggests when a minivan does 18 seconds and a very very fast street car will do it half that dont you?

Probably yes, but it is hardly the sort of performance I am interested in. For normal road cars for instance in-gear acceleration is for more important than departure from a standing start. It gives a much better picture how a car would perform in day-to-day traffic.