Everybody has been told about the ability to flex the skid blocks of the board under the F1 cars to avoid wear (the regulation allows the consumption of 1 mm compared to 10 mm thickness) and allow the cars to adopt height from the ground minors in search of a greater aerodynamic load that allows a significant increase in performance.
The British spoke of polyurethane foam capable of compressing itself with adaptive shapes, someone else of real springs mounted under the skid blocks capable of absorbing the roughness of the ground without wearing out the board. If this were the case, it is strange that the technical commissioners of the FIA did not intervene by declaring certain illegal solutions, banning those who would have used concepts totally outside the technical rules.
The board protecting the bottom and the contested skid blocks
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
The feeling is that we have reached such sophistication that they are difficult to find and it becomes logical to ask ourselves if we will see important changes in the values of the single-seaters starting from the Belgian GP, when the implementation of the latest rewrite of the TD39-2022 comes into force.
The FIA has set itself two objectives: first to reduce the risk of porpoising with an algorithm that will control the vertical hopping of the chassis with the accelerometer placed in the body near the center of gravity. It is a sensor that was previously used to determine the forces that acted on a pilot during a crash and which will now be more sensitive and will have to indicate who will pass the Aerodynamic Oscillation Metric (AOM).
In that case the car will have to be raised from the ground to turn off the phenomenon and report the values in the data established by the FIA: the telemetry channel that was reserved for Federation technicians, already from Paul Ricard will be open and visible to all teams, so that the technicians can evaluate the behavior of their car and make any corrections in time for Spa-Francorchamps.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13, in battle with Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
But the big goal is to stop the skid block bending, with the clear intention of slowing down Ferrari and Red Bull to bring back the third top team, namely Mercedes, to the contest. Toto Wolff showed total bewilderment and amazement when the FIA in the F1 Commission made official some data that had been collected, concealing that the Star itself inspired these regulatory changes that have nothing to do with safety.
A great expectation has therefore been created for Belgium as if it could become a new beginning: it is reasonable to think that Ferrari and Red Bull will have to concede something to the most stringent checks, but how much performance they will have to lose and, above all, Mercedes will be able to get back into the fight to win at least one Grand Prix, after collecting gaps in the race that averaged half a minute?
The question for now is unanswered, but already at Paul Ricard we will see some adaptations that could indicate what the orientation will be in the near future. But according to the rumors we have gathered, there are already those who work on the flexibility of materials to re-propose certain regulatory concepts at the limit in a different way. And, after all, this is the essence of Formula 1: to push every idea, every component that makes up the car towards interpreting all the gray areas of the rules. The challenge, therefore, is only at the beginning …
#Ferrari #Red #Bull #lose #performance #Spa