New FIA wing for 2008
Written by Peter Gillespie · October 25, 2005
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Photo: FIA
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The FIA has released a proposal for a revolutionary new rear wing for 2008, said to address the problem of close following cars losing down force when attempting to draft & overtake
FIA.com: THE CDG WING
The second page of the story has a diagram comparing to two different airflows generated by the current wing design and the proposed one, so it seems logical enough. I don’t claim to be an expert on aero, but if the new wing creates what I understand to be “down wash” it will allow a car to draft the lead car & get a run on an overtaking maneuver then it could be a good thing. I must say it looks odd & the loss of prime advertising space won’t be popular. Is this the future or has Max screwed up again?
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Wow, ugly.
The idea of “downwash” scares me a little. If something goes down, something else is going up.
I think the wing looks like a high tech lawn mower, but that’s just me.
I’ve taken matters into my own hands and designed a wing of my own that can be seen over at my place.
I have one question for the FIA suits. Don’t you have to have your car close enough to the one in front to gain any slipstream effect?
Just who will be close enough to Renault or Mclaran to take advantage?
Okay, I have a bit of a problem with this myself. Remember the fiasco when Lotus first introduced what we have today as wings? Those broke into a billion pieces and caused some horrid wrecks. Well, I believe that we are looking at an entirely different issue here, but the end result may be the same.
This is my take: If you are creating a pocket of downforce behidn the car, in the chassis’s wake, won’t the amount of this artificial downforce be dependent on the speed of the car at that moment? The downforce is created as a product of the amount of air and the speed thereof as it is travelling over the chassis and going between the fins, projecting that pocket of downforce in a spot behind the car. So, if someone is travelling very close behind hoping to overtake, what happens when the car in front invariably reduces speed at a rapid rate?
In the split second of reaction time (or longer depending on the driver’s skill) that it takes for the other driver to slow down, will there be a sudden drop in downforce applied to the front wing of the pursuing vehicle? If that is the case, there is a possibility that the sudden drop of downforce would (at the extreme)launch the pursuing car, but at the very least cause a sudden fishtailing (McLaren style) as the wing instantly loses the downforce that the new wing was designed to provide.
I may be wrong… but we’ll see.
I watched a video of some late 80’s F1 action recently & I was stunned by the lack of elements on the rear wings.Maybe a reduction to a single element wing & ditch or reduce the diffuser.Is my idea to simple? I would really like to hear from the F1 teams re this split wing.
If they mounted a single wing, up high, around 4′-5′ above the pavement, turbulence would not be a problem. See pictures of the canam cars from the late sixties, early seventies.
Believe it or not I find this idea so inane as to leave me with nothing to say! And that hardly ever happens!!
i agree with WhollyMindless, it’s quite ugly. personally, i’m not sure if it’ll work. if you need overtaking, then you ought to have all the cars running on the same chasis, enginge, tyres, etc. just like a1. else, even with this new design, you’ll just see faster cars ahead of the slower ones, and the only overtaking you see is when the cars get lapped. btw, i didn’t see a (big) problem with overtaking three years ago. what happened?
Sure cccp I agree, we will always see faster cars lapping than slower ones, but we have a technical enviroment that restricts close racing. We need to find a regulation that does not allow this crucial aspect of the sport to be effectively removed.
My dad is so sick of things, he’s given up watching. He thinks they ought to open the engine formula, forbid wings and ground effects and put them on little skinny tires (again). Yeah, it was dangerous back then but there was passing, racing and bravery. (This might cut out the rent a ride guys that just don’t have the skillz to play in the big leagues - hopefully they’ll scare the hell out of themselves rather than die trying to keep up.)
Now, my thought is to require cars to have a hideously high drag coefficient (think advertising space) and open up the engine formula. This would slow machines down by making it aerodynamically impossible to move enough air out of the way to break say 170 MPH but the guy behind would have a huge advantage in being behind the guy in front. This would require pacing and tactics.
Just an insane idea, almost as insane as the “split wing” proposal.
Eddie Irvine was only joking when he suggested a 6 foot by 6 foot carbonfibre square mounted right behind air box.”Try find away around that he challenged”.I laughed at the time & marvelled at the extra ad space, but now I’m begining to wonder if we should take him seriously.
It’s certainly no worse than these new wings that will likely be found to be weakly mounted and fall off at the drop of a hat. Watch, someone will pass and it will stress the carbon fiber just wrong and “POP!” no more wing!
I agree, WhollyMindless. This new wing system is inherently unstable. As for the 4′ to 5′ tall single wing, that was a brilliant, innovative idea on the behalf of Lotus… BUT… it is a shame they couldn’t figure out how to keep them from breaking. Some amazing wrecks occurred when the wing took flight without its car attached.
I vaugely remember cars taking flight and in many cases continuing in a straight line….
High single wing; New era, new materials, better engineering, it should be feasible.
Go back and slowly re-read the atricle. no where does it say it produces “artificial downforce” it clearly is designed to allow cleaner air flow to the following car by removing the current center section of the wing. (The most inefficient part now, due to engine covers)
the only problem is the loss of downforce on the rear end and the resulting loss of adhesion, which it sounds like they’ll fix with wider wheels and tires, which mean shorter braking zones and less passing opportunities under braking..errrr, plus the added down force on the trailing cars nose from all the new found clean air will create more downforce which means more drag, making it slower, making it harder to pass on the straight….geeez guys…lol
Just a piece of insight for all:
If certain teams(Toyota,Honda)are having problems with passing that other teams(McLaren,Renault) are not, could this be a design problem in the car’s front wing? I cannot imagine more changes to a sport that has already gone way beyond it’s basic premise. Why don’t we just let the manufacturers decide whats approperiate and let the FIA just try(theres a word ron dennis needs to remember)to keep teams even.
Addition to slider’s take: Is the lack of passing due to detuned engines that have to last two races? McLaren risk reliability for horsepower and pass everything in sight. Yes they suffer failures, but they can pass. And with tire changes back in ‘06 were almost back where we should be, real racing.
So let’s get rid of the one engine-two race crap. One new engine per weekend, if you blow it up, 10 place penalty. With all the “poor” small teams gone from the grid, it’s no longer (never has been) about money, is it?
I couldn’t agree more. Why try to purposely handicap all of the cars with this new wing, whne it would be just simpler for the manufacturers with problems to FIX them. Yes, McLaren has done well with passing when it comes down to the teams that just don’t have the horsepower… but where do they fail in trying to pass the Ferraris and Renaults? The case in point for slider is Kimi R
I’ve been waiting to hear a expert opinion on this new wing & in this weeks copy of Auto Sport Gary Anderson basically takes Max’s idea apart, he went as far as saying it was like first year student had taken a look at the overtaking problem and come up with the CDG as an answer.
He cited four main conceptual flaws in Max’s concept.
1.The FIA did not take into account the effect of tyres on the car behind which compose one third of the wake or dirty air.
2.The wakes from the two wings behind the car will converge and the following car still have to pass through it.
3.The front wing is relatively unchanged, therefore even more of the cars downforce will have to be generated by the front wing, making it even more susceptible to dirty air.
4.The CDG wing produces an area of lower pressure behind the leading car which the air box of the following car will drive through.
I’m wondering if this is one of the red herrings Max likes to use as a smoke screen to get another piece of legislation through. On the other hand I thought that when Max first suggested grooved tyres.