F1 car questions

[atommo]

There are a few questions I would like to ask:
1. Why are there vents? [The one above the driver's head, the side vents] as surely getting rid of the vents and replacing them with fins [little slits on the side and on the top] on the body would reduce the amount of drag produced.

2. Why are the body regulations so strict? As long as the cars have a limited selection of engines to choose from the rest should be more free to experiment with. Of course there are some things that may want to be controlled- external mechanics like fans and stuff but the rules of things like nose height just seem really really strict and I haven't heard a reason why they did that but for the time being the nose height rule doesn't seem justified along with a few other rules.

And here is a quick rant about the tyres this season: Why did they make them on purposely degrade??? They say it would make the races more close but all its done is mean the cars have to stop more and the pieces of tyre that fall off get on the track so if cars dont go on the racing line they might get a puncture from tyre debris... It just restricts the racing even more since the drivers are less likely to want to try any risky overtakes and so on

[andrew]

There are a few questions I would like to ask:
1. Why are there vents? [The one above the driver's head, the side vents] as surely getting rid of the vents and replacing them with fins [little slits on the side and on the top] on the body would reduce the amount of drag produced.

Air intakes for the engine.

2. Why are the body regulations so strict? As long as the cars have a limited selection of engines to choose from the rest should be more free to experiment with. Of course there are some things that may want to be controlled- external mechanics like fans and stuff but the rules of things like nose height just seem really really strict and I haven't heard a reason why they did that but for the time being the nose height rule doesn't seem justified along with a few other rules.

Of late I think it is to try and avoid the situation where some teams could afford to have extremely complex aero devices which were restictive to overtaking. The more standard the bodywork, the cheaper it is to develop a car, the easier it is for the smaller teams - in theory.

And here is a quick rant about the tyres this season: Why did they make them on purposely degrade??? They say it would make the races more close but all its done is mean the cars have to stop more and the pieces of tyre that fall off get on the track so if cars dont go on the racing line they might get a puncture from tyre debris... It just restricts the racing even more since the drivers are less likely to want to try any risky overtakes and so on

Agree with you on the tyres. They are far too fragile and combined with DRS and KERS it is over the top. I guess the tyre situation is very much a learning process which is still taking some fine tuning.

[LRW]

Just a couple of things I'll pick up on.

Nose height was a safety thing. Any higher and in the event of a Tbone crash, they could decapitate a driver!

I've never heard a car get a puncture from TYRE debris - it's only rubber compound. In fact at the end of the race, they purposefully drive over it to pick up weight.

[vaptin]

There are a few questions I would like to ask:
1. Why are there vents? [The one above the driver's head, the side vents] as surely getting rid of the vents and replacing them with fins [little slits on the side and on the top] on the body would reduce the amount of drag produced.

They're there for cooling, and I think the teams are quite restricted on fins and small intricate areo parts as a means of cutting costs.

2. Why are the body regulations so strict? As long as the cars have a limited selection of engines to choose from the rest should be more free to experiment with. Of course there are some things that may want to be controlled- external mechanics like fans and stuff but the rules of things like nose height just seem really really strict and I haven't heard a reason why they did that but for the time being the nose height rule doesn't seem justified along with a few other rules.
The low nose is for safety, to reduce the chances of a car riding up on another in a collision, see Luzzi into Shumacher Abu Dhabi 2010.
The regulations are so strict to cut costs, and keep the grid tight.

And here is a quick rant about the tyres this season: Why did they make them on purposely degrade??? They say it would make the races more close but all its done is mean the cars have to stop more and the pieces of tyre that fall off get on the track so if cars dont go on the racing line they might get a puncture from tyre debris... It just restricts the racing even more since the drivers are less likely to want to try any risky overtakes and so on :

It's because fans called for them, as a means to make the race more interesting, the old tyres were only being changed because the FIA insisted on using both compounds, they weren't really wear limited at all, so there was no advantage from having a car easy on its tyres or to pit for fresh tyres.

[Jabberwocky]

1. The air intake above the drivers head is the air intake for the engine. Some years ago the drivers worked out that if they moved their heads slightly the engine got more air. In 2006 when the V10 engines where banned, and STR had to restrict the V10's they could continue using so they pluged that air intake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toro_Rosso_STR1




2. The Aero fins are because things got a bit silly. Cars ended up looking like this








The rant, I like the tyres, however I agree that the marbles are a bit annoying.

[atommo]

2. The Aero fins are because things got a bit silly.

With the fins I didn't mean protruding fins, I meant instead of vents they could have gill type things like on this:



On the body there are gill like features so the heat gets blown out instead of cool air getting pushed in.

I've never heard a car get a puncture from TYRE debris - it's only rubber compound. In fact at the end of the race, they purposefully drive over it to pick up weight.

I haven't either but I heard some people commenting on it saying something like that. To an extend it is a possibility since if the tyre disintegrates with huge chunks of the rubber compound coming off it could do some damage to tyres going over it very fast with lots of downforce.

[Jabberwocky]

it was all part of the same rule package, the bodywork had to be of single face (para phrasing)
Now adays I would imagine that there would be a big second scoop that would direct the air over the diffuser

[What's Burning?]

Then again that's not an open wheeled race car.

[stonemonkey]

Then again that's not an open wheeled race car.

Also, isn't that a fan car? although fictional maybe the idea is to use the air taken out by the fan for cooling.

[atommo]

Also, isn't that a fan car? although fictional maybe the idea is to use the air taken out by the fan for cooling.

I guess thats one way of looking at it. I imagined that the fan had nothing to do with cooling, since the fan takes air from underneath the car to increase downforce and pushes it out the back.

Then again that's not an open wheeled race car.

I was just using it as an example of how the gill feature could be used instead of having protruding vents.

[What's Burning?]

I understand, it's just that F1 is not only aero centric with the wings since they still bring in the lion's share of downforce, but they also minimize the frontal area and try to get as must of the air flowing around the chassis and into the rear wing and diffuser. There is precious little room anywhere.

[atommo]

However, according to wikipedia there is no maximum length so the body could be made a little longer to include extra things or alternatively things such as vents could be replaced. Anyway, around the late 1980s there was no vent above the driver's head- like here:

Compared to this:

[Jabberwocky]

a longer car will cause issues with weight distribution amongst other things.

[stonemonkey]

I thought one of the reasons for having the airbox above the drivers head was to reduce the amount of debris getting in and blocking the filter. I think the flap on the back of drivers helmets is to help the airflow into the engine too.

[madbrad]

2. The Aero fins are because things got a bit silly.

With the fins I didn't mean protruding fins, I meant instead of vents they could have gill type things like on this:



On the body there are gill like features so the heat gets blown out instead of cool air getting pushed in.

You have to understand every car needs a way for air to come in AND to go out. An F1 car needs a lot of air because there is a lot of heat. Those extraction vents in your picture let air out. The way IN is some other hole we can't see in the pic. It's fictional so maybe that issue isn't resolved in that example. Or maybe on the front of the sidepods just like an F1 car. The overhead view hides that. On a current F1 car the opening above the head is engine air intake(as does the opening in your car's intake pipe, usually the end of a 4" or so pipe which may be hidden behind sheetmetal, but it's upstream of the air filter), and the ones on the front of the sidepods feed air to the radiators(just like the grille on the front of your car). On a current F1 car, the exit for that intake air is the exhaust, and the exit for the radiator air is aft of the radiators, into a cavity in the undertray where it gets used for aero. On your road car it just goes out through the bottom of your engine compartment.
Your proposal is unfeasible. How do you propose to get the needed air in? If you hide the intake and cooling openings underneath you would not have control of aero in the underbody the way you do now, you would be inviolation of the technical regs, and introduce a number of logistical and engineering nightmares and headaches.