The era of new F1 rules this season has resulted in a shift towards a ground effect concept, with much more downforce than the car generated by the flow of air flowing beneath the bottom.
The new cars have large Venturi tunnels on the underside to help direct the air, and the design changes have prompted a rethink of finding new areas for performance advantages.
As the teams have better understood this new generation of cars, they have quickly realized that a big advantage can be obtained by maximizing the flows under the bottom.
This has led to the acceptance that in 2022 there will be a need for a much stiffer suspension set-up, but now it is feared that teams may start using tricks to flex the bottom edges down for even more performance.
This flex could help better seal the airflow under the car, which would produce much more of the downforce phenomenon to increase downforce.
The FIA is aware that this is a path that some teams may follow in 2022, but says it will be vigilant about what will be done and respond immediately if it sees anything unfortunate.
Nikolas Tombazis, the head of the FIA’s single-seater sector, said: “Regarding the deflection of the diffuser or the edges of the bottom, we will always keep an eye on any flexibility and we will impose, when necessary, tests to reduce these effects and so on.” .
“With the new regulation, it is inevitable that there may be some areas that have not been foreseen correctly in terms of flexibility, and this may require improvements in progress.”
“We will not hesitate to do so. The rules allow us to intervene if we believe that abuses are taking place in some areas.”
F1 chief executive Ross Brawn said teams are unlikely to get away with these tricks, as rivals take a close look at every odd flex in the bodywork – as happened with the rear wings in 2021.
“I think the issue of aerodynamic elasticity is something we cannot avoid in F1,” he explained. “It’s been there ever since engineers began to appreciate the performance gains that could come from making flexible parts.”
“It’s something the FIA has always had to keep under control, but the regulations allow for a quick response from the FIA. And, with all the analysis that is possible, it is possible to gather pretty quickly what the teams are doing.”
“With the level of photography and video analysis of these, the teams are really holding each other’s breath away. We remember all the hustle and bustle about the rear wings last season, so they are almost self-checking each other.”
“The moment there is a problem, they start raising their objections. So the FIA will know very quickly about any area of concern, and I’m sure they have the ability to deal with them very quickly overnight.”
One of the other consequences of the set-up direction required by ground-effect cars is that teams will be forced to use much stiffer suspension in an effort to ensure ride height remains as stable as possible.
This has raised some concerns about the possibility that these cars could be “brutal” to drivers, as was the case in the last era of F1 ground effect in the early 1980s.
Tombazis isn’t too worried about the situation, though, and thinks it’s good that the F1 2022 cars will be tougher for the drivers.
“We are aware that in order to achieve performance, cars need to be lower and closer to the ground,” he said. “As a result, they need to be held a little more rigid than the previous cars. Some of the previous cars ran with huge rake and this is probably a thing of the past now.”
“We want the drivers to make a difference and we want the cars to be difficult to drive too, not easy. It’s never easy, but you know what I mean. I think certain aspects of making cars a little more aggressive to drive are quite important. “.
“It is a situation that we will monitor, but I do not think it is a particularly significant cause for concern.”
The set-up changes triggered by the new ground-effect cars
F1 teams will work on configuring their car in a different way than in previous years and this is not only due to the return to classic suspension, with complex systems such as hydraulics and inverters that have been used and now outlawed.
Teams now also need to consider how this suspension change is affected by the switch to 18-inch wheels and shallower sidewall tires.
As a result of this and the new aerodynamic concept, teams have to reevaluate the overall ride height and incline. It is improbable that the nose-down rake attitude offers the same benefit it did in the previous single-seater era. Instead we might see squares trying to turn with a much stiffer attitude and close to the ground, so that the flow through the bottom tunnels is more stable.
The FIA has realized that this could lead to some interesting tricks related to aerodynamic elasticity distributed on the bottom of the floor, with the aim of making the edges of the same flex downwards.
There is clearly a performance benefit to doing this. Even doing it in small quantities, the swirls created by such solutions can be equivalent to creating a physically sealed edge between the car and the track.
Should such solutions arise, it will be a question of how quickly the FIA will be able to react to these attempts to make the fund flex.
But, as it did in 2021, when it added and strengthened pre-existing tests related to rear wing flexibility, it showed that it was willing to intervene when it felt teams were pushing the limits too much.
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