How F1's new cars satisfied their architect

After three days watching on site in Barcelona, in what was termed a shakedown rather than a test, and with all the caveats associated with pre-season testing, it was interesting to reflect on the true birth of Formula 1’s new era, what was unexpected and what bodes for the season ahead.

I write this before the season proper has started and, as I have written about before, the idea of analysing the lap times and determining the likely 2022 world champion is a flight of fancy only undertaken by those who don’t know how much they don’t know.

What we can comment on is what we see in the way of design clues and, to some extent, what we may surmise from the track running in terms of lap times and visual clues. Firstly, we perhaps should remind ourselves of the provenance of the rules that have led to this year’s contenders. In 2017, when the commercial rights to F1 were bought by Liberty Media, a root and branch analysis of the sport’s future was undertaken. Rapidly rising to prominence was the fact that F1, if it were to grow, needed to entertain and needed to be sustainable both economically and environmentally.

It didn’t take much market research to determine that entertainment was driven by unpredictability and close racing, and to achieve this a fundamental reset was needed in the direction of both how the teams were run and of the car design, particularly in the field of aerodynamics. This led to the introduction of the budget cap and a totally new set of regulations borne by the most intense research programme ever undertaken to determine a new set of rules.

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As the study developed and regulations were drafted and shared with teams, there was an element of doubt as to the outcome. Plenty said that over-regulation of the bodywork would lead to all cars looking the same, and many conjectured that because lap time performance, in simulation, was approaching parity with the previous generation of cars, the difficulty of overtaking would be similar. Both views failed to understand either the detail of the regulations or the fundamental physics associated with the previous generation of cars when it came to close following.

At Barcelona we saw the first iterations of the fertile minds of the designers and aerodynamicists who, in striving to find better solutions than their competitors, keep those fans with a technical bent focus constantly entertained.

New cars run lower, a change away from the high rake philosophy of recent years, to generate suction from the floor

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Certain trends were common. Gone were the high-rake cars of previous years which always looked as if they were entering corners on tiptoes. The trend now is very firmly to keep the rear ride height as low as possible and allow the shaping of the underfloor to create the suction necessary for downforce, rather than the somewhat crude expansion of a flat floor running at an exaggerated angle. 

This in turn led to a phenomenon unknown to a younger generation of engineers who had spent their entire careers in F1: porpoising. Porpoising is an unstable coupling of the aerodynamics of the car with the vertical stiffness of the suspension and tyre. As downforce is developed with increasing speed the chassis is sucked down toward the track surface until it experiences an aerodynamic stall, resulting in a loss of downforce and a subsequent release of the suction force, allowing the car to ‘bounce’ back up again. This will tend to happen at the natural bounce or pitch frequency of the chassis and can become extremely unstable.

Older engineers, and those with experience of modern Le Mans prototype sportscars are well aware of the phenomenon and how to correct it. It requires bodywork to be aero-elastically stiff and high-speed ride heights to be conservative, together with supple and well damped suspension. Subtle floor features, as seen on the McLaren, can also help. The teams will soon get on top of the problem and the measure of success will be to tame the oscillation without giving up too much performance.

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Bodywork has become ever more shrink wrapped around mechanical components, with even side impact structures now visible as protuberances into areas of carefully channelled air. The undercut sidepod is now de rigueur with Williams taking it to extremes at the rear and Red Bull at the front. Mercedes produced an even bigger surprise in this area, with the so-called ‘zero sidepod’ design it revealed in Bahrain.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a fair amount of variation of front wing design. There doesn’t appear to be a consensus of opinion yet about the span-wise loading of the wing, and the treatment and attachment of the four elements shows considerable variation along the pitlane.

I might be biased, but one thing I do see is that the cars look far more attractive with their simple lines and the timely disappearance of the intricate barge board areas of the previous generation of cars. Biased or not, I am pleased to say others I speak to seem to agree. I am ambivalent about the 18” wheels. I think they look more modern but the reason for going in this direction was much more about aerodynamic stability than aesthetics.

But what of the real drivers for these new regulations – reduced costs and closer following capability? A totally new design with minimal carryover will always initially cost more, but I think simplicity will soon dominate reduced costs.

Regarding close following, I was cheered by the comments of drivers who had experienced close proximity in the test. They were unanimous in their enthusiasm for the far more consistent balance and higher retained downforce in the wake of others. During testing cars try to keep away from each other so our sample will remain small until we get to race conditions, but this new generation of cars bodes well for many exciting seasons to come.

Symonds is satisfied with what he's seen so far

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images