In the Netherlands we have suspiciously few proverbs and sayings with the word pudding – strange that you never hear anyone talk about it. In English they say ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’, by which they mean that experiencing is the best proof. That is why paint is smeared on the F1 cars during the test days.
Smart minds spend hours and hours on the aerodynamics of new F1 cars. First behind the computer and then in the wind tunnel. The teams therefore already have a reasonable idea of how their car is performing before they make the first real meters, but they also want extra data in practice.
The paint on F1 cars is called Flow-Vis
That is why the teams mess around with Flow-Vis (also known as Flow Visualization Paint) on test days. This looks like paint, but actually it is oil with pigment. Paint would dry too quickly. They lubricate this Flow-Vis in a place where they want to see the air currents. Regular viewers know that teams have been doing this for years.
If the gunk draws nice straight lines, then they know the air flows neatly along that part. If the lines are tangled and shaky, this indicates turbulence. If the stuff is missing in a certain place or if it accumulates somewhere, the team knows that the air is not flowing past that part. There is then a gap in the aerodynamics.
It’s not a precise science
The Flow-Vis is not a panacea. For example, you cannot clearly see at what speed the paint has started to run. If the aerodynamics are fine at high speed and not at low speed, you can’t tell from the paint on the F1 car. It is therefore not an exact science. The paint is there to broadly check whether the work in the wind tunnel was successful.
Plus, teams have even more precise ways to test track aerodynamics. For example, you regularly see F1 cars on test days with huge scaffolding. These constructions contain countless sensors to measure other data.
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