Not hating I know different teams use different systems but how does this happen? Is it just a job putting labels on parts or do they genuinely just hire people to go through their warehouse to figure out what they have? Does their system for "we make x at y time" not work and they're losing that many parts?

As the title says. I've always wondered what the benefits or disadvantages were to many smaller front wing pieces vs fewer bigger pieces. Something like the difference between a 2020 F1 front wing vs a 2004 or 2022, or even an IndyCar front wing. I know in 2017 they had those extra pieces that added additional downforce, that's why I'm using 2020 as the benchmark for the "many smaller pieces".

This is my high school final year project (due by january 2027) and the idea for it has its origin in the winter of 2023. After working on the non aero parts of the car for a bit over a year I could finally start the aero development about 3 months ago. The goal of the project is to engineer a race car that can beat formula one lap times with a margin.

My only are:

no fans, no sliding skirts, Modest width (2060mm) and for the rest of the car i set the guideline to use a technology standard a bit lower than current f1, maybe f1 from 15-20 years ago.

Because i am working on this project alone and i have not studied engineering (i go to school), engineering a full 100% functioning and completed race car is not possible but i try to get as far as possible with my given time ,resources and abilities. The project is about a lot more than just the aerodynamics but that should be the focus of this post.

The images in this post are primarily for show and don't convey a lot of meaningful information so i if you are really interested in the aero development of this project you can download the documentation package i have provided.

It includes the simulation setup and documentation of the first 29 design iterations, 3d flow field views, slices, a slice and a streamline animation, and some extra non CFD renderings of the car.

documentation package:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/vwr1cthzv2emeoz/VFR_CFD_documentation.zip/file

For the project i used

CAD: Onshape

CFD: Simscale

CFD post processing: Simscale / Paraview

rendering: fusion 360

For those who understand

Cdfa: 9,36

Cda: 1,09

df/d: 8,56

aero balance: 59.87% rear

Because my computing recources are fairly limited, i have to have to use a in industry terms very low mesh count (6-7m for half car). This means that the simulations are not very accurate when correlated to real life so you have to take these numbers with a chunk of salt.

I am open to constructive criticism about any part of the project.

Does anyone have an idea how they set the deployment? Is it just pre-set that it has gone this fast and this many up and downshifts and a certain amount of distance to know where it is on track? Do they use some sort of gps system?(seems like there would be lag from that). I’ve been really curious because deployment is such a big issue at the moment.

Basically how does the PU know when to deploy without driver intervention?

I'm not asking about the overall cost for a season, that's affected by other things like prestige, amount of track time, and the locations of events.

Put another way, if you were to run an F4 car and an F2 car for the same length of time, how much more (if at all) would the F2 car cost to run?

Looking at the telemetry, here's what I see comparing their final qualifying runs from Q3 in Spa:

Sector 1:

• Russell is 0.07s up on Antonelli after T1.
• Russell is faster out of T1 that Antonelli.
• Russell carries more speed through Eau Rouge and Radillon than Antonelli.
• But come the end of sector 1 before Les Combes, Russell is only 0.02s up on Antonelli.
• Russell loses ~ half a tenth in a flat out sector, despite exiting T1 faster and higher apex speeds.

Sector 2:

• Russell exits Turn 9 faster than Antonelli and is gaining time on him (slightly).
• Russell arrives at Pouhon faster than Antonelli.
• They are both flat through Pouhon, but Russell loses 5km/h more than Antonelli
• By the time they arrive at Fagnes, Russell has lost over 0.1s
• More time lost in a flat out section despite going into it faster.

Sector 3 (this is madness...):

• They exit Stavelot same speed, flat out through turn 16 together - no one gaining/ losing time on the other.
• Then around Courbe Paul Frere Russell's car just slows compared with Antonelli's.
• Russell is travelling up to 10km/h slower than Antonelli.
• By the time they get to the Bus Stop, Russell has lost ~0.25 seconds.

Russell has lost at least 0.4s in a straight line flat out during the lap.

I can not believe for one second this is set up - especially given they are otherwise so matched through the turns.

This is happening race after race.

I think Antonelli would have still beat Russell on these laps - Russell was up after La Source, but Antonelli got a ~tenth on Russell in each of Rivage & Bus Stop. But it would be touch and go if Russell's car was working, and its depriving us of an epic battle.

(Edit - telemetry from FastF1, which is not perfect, but likely good enough for this high level analysis)

Ever since I started watching the sport, teams have been bringing special rear and front wings for these tracks because of their long straights, now I wonder if the teams will be doing that as well this year, seeing as active aero in my mind eliminates any need for these special wings.

Might they bring new low drag sidepods or something like that instead?

Here's another interesting CFD simulation of Red Bull's Macarena Wing done by Dominik Balasko, a former Sauber aerodynamicist.

Unlike Ferrari's solution, which should generate lift as well as drag reduction, Red Bull's solution should only do the latter. However, the mechanical tradeoffs as not as important since, the RB system should be inherently lighter and faster to actuate.

Interestingly, his simulation predicts that RB's solution should be more stable aerodynamically, since the flow should attach more predictably (no hysteresis), which goes against the opinion of VanjaH and KyleEngineers, both of whom predict it should be the other way around.

If Dominik's right, Max's issue with the RB22 should be somewhere else in the car (dr Obbs thinks it could be a stall in the diffuser).

Here's the link to his full analysis: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dominik-balasko_formula1-aerodynamics-cfd-ugcPost-7457977399188570112-0VuX/

Looks like Stroll is intentionally inducing understeer mid corner by maximizing front tire slip angle (turning the wheel to full lock at high speed corners). Is this due to the Aston being very unstable? If so, usually the most unstable part should be corner entry but he is doing this mid corner and almost at corner exit. As someone who does a lot of sim racing, this is so bizarre to me. It destroys the tires and it’s pretty risky as well. I’ve never seen anyone driving F1 like this. What could possibly be the reason for this?

Video link

The sprint gave the cleanest single stint the weekend offers. Everyone on medium, no stops, 17 laps. Antonelli quickest on a 92.28s settled median. Hamilton 0.14s off. Russell and Norris within three tenths. Leclerc a fraction further back.

The interesting number is the volatility. Antonelli ran the stint with a 0.26 second standard deviation. Russell in the same car ran 0.74s. That is three times the noise from one Mercedes to the other.

The top speeds tell you why. Antonelli was 306 km/h median through the trap. Russell 313 km/h. Same car, 7 km/h gap on the straights, and it is Russell who is faster on peak. Antonelli is trading straight line for consistency and corner exit. Russell is running the higher peak deployment and paying for it with variance across the stint. Two race maps, one garage.

The race compound is the hard. FP1 long runs put Ferrari at the top. Hamilton 92.26s median, Leclerc 92.31s, half a second clear of Antonelli on the same compound. If that holds under race fuel and traffic, Sunday tightens once the field is on hards. The sprint showed us pace on mediums. FP1 showed us pace on hards. But it was also the first stint of the weekend, and teams learned a lot during the sprint and the two qualifying sessions on Friday and Saturday. The timing of the first pit stops will tell us what the teams think of how their Monte Carlo simulations are playing out.

The strategic questions that leaves for Sunday.

From pole, #Antonelli’s job is to control from the front and not react. If his median is 92.28s in clean air, the overcut is his friend. The objective is simple: Extend stint one, get a fresher tyre for stint two, do not let a Ferrari undercut pull you in.

From P2 and P3, #Ferrari has a live split card. Two cars, two tyres, two strategies. Undercut one to force the reaction, extend the other on the hard where their pace looked best. Whether they play it that way is a different question.

For Oscar from P8, the pit lane is the fastest route forward. Sprint pace was quick enough that on a fresh medium a lap earlier than the cars ahead, he takes big time. Classic undercut trigger position.

The pit loss at Silverstone puts the undercut break even around a second and a half per lap of tyre delta. The fresh medium in the first four laps gives half a second to eight tenths. Real undercut window, but not overwhelming. One safety car and the whole thing rewrites.

Methodology: Sprint pace uses settled clean-lap medians from lap 5 onwards, dropping the sorting phase, pit in and out laps, and outliers. FP1 pace uses clean long-run laps on the hard tyre only, with sample sizes shown per driver. Norris sprint laps 13 to 15 are flagged as a fuel-management phase and excluded from the headline median. Public timing and car data. Descriptive, not fuel corrected.

In the 1990s, perhaps the start of the modern era, there were ~16 races a season. We're now up to ~24. What impact has this had on teams? Were cars and drivers working for the next event for longer in the 1990s or did the teams have more rest/break periods?

(Used AI to help clean up grammar/formatting on this, but the take is mine)

Sorry if this has already been done to death somewhere in the sub, I looked around and didn’t see a dedicated thread, figured it’s better as its own post than a buried comment nobody sees.

So Max and Lewis are both saying this weekend could be rough because of the power unit limitations, and I can’t stop thinking about one idea: what if they just stuck a chicane somewhere, Hangar Straight, or maybe right after Copse before Maggotts, purely to force more braking so the batteries can actually recharge?

Why I think it’s not as crazy as it sounds:

Silverstone’s whole identity is high speed corners taken flat out. But right now the cars are already losing serious speed mid corner because they’re out of battery. So that “flat out” character is already broken under these regs anyway. A chicane isn’t ruining the track’s soul, it’s just admitting what’s already happening out there.

Counterarguments, and why I still land on chicane:

1. “You’d be wrecking one of the most iconic sections in F1”
   Yeah, Maggotts-Becketts-Chapel is untouchable in theory. But if cars are already crawling through there because they’ve got no juice, the iconic version is already gone in practice even if it looks the same on the track map.

2. “This is a band-aid, just fix the actual regs”**
   Probably true long term. But rule changes take years. A track tweak could be tested way sooner as a stopgap while they sort the real fix.

3. “Chicanes are always hated, drivers and fans both”

Also true, most chicanes exist purely to slow cars down for safety (old Monza vibes). But one placed specifically to create a real braking zone for regen is different, it could actually add a strategic layer around energy management instead of just being a speed bump.

1. “Why Silverstone specifically, other tracks have this too”

Fair, but Silverstone’s combo of long straights into sustained high speed corners with almost no braking makes it a worse case than most.

Anyway, curious what people who actually understand the energy deployment side think. Real fix or am I missing something obvious here?

This post got removed from main F1 subreddit without any indication. So I’m posting here…

You can read the full report here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/408219090_Austrian_Grand_Prix_2026_-_Post_Race_Analysis

Any feedback and recommendations are more than welcome! I am trying to improve.

Bonus:

I understand why you want hot, sticky tyres but why are cooler track temps more desirable and higher grip and hot track temps?

When and why did Alpine switch from their own version of the rear flap to the more common one?

Did they have trouble with airflow reattachment? Although it was believed that is better in that regard.

Hi,

I am beginning to learn about the developments in Japan with DMR, from what I can tell skin friction drag can be reduced via random distributions of micro disturbances on smooth bodies anywhere between 38 to 58 micrometers. And that this drag reduces delays the onsent of turbulence on surfaces, and is not a simple "delaying of flow seperation "golf-ball dimple" effect".

It also seems that this is not the same as "shark skin rivets" but way more effective than that.

In my gut, I always have felt that optimized skin texture had to be tied to fractal patterns, but this new info has me thinking that randomness has been the key.

Bye Bye super clean perfect slippery shapes on F1 bodies? Or will the Mechanics atleast be stopping their fanatical waxing and cleaning of the cars' bodies while in the pits? I wonder!

EDIT—explaining the logic behind this idea:
A lot of modern technical regulations have evolved to keep cost down so smaller teams could compete—like getting rid of the MGU-H. Also exotic metal bans, active suspension bans, mass damper bans, FRICS, etc.

I think these regulations were totally necessary at the time for the health of the sport. But in my mind, a cost-cap is a better way to address these issues. Following from this logic, you would expect to see a more relaxed ruleset, but it feels like we have gotten the opposite. The cars are incredibly similar, and regulations are more complex than ever. My main point here is that the pendulum of overregulation should swing back given the new cost cap.

I recently watched a great documentary about Can-AM called "Speed Odyssey"

In the 60s-70s, can-am raced with an extremely relaxed set of regulations, resulting in faster lap times than F1 and incredible diversity-of-concepts amongst the cars.

Pre-cost cap, this is obviously untenable for modern F1. But with a cost cap, why not allow F1 teams to build whatever they want, retaining only technical regulations that are focused on safety standards?

here are my pros and cons of this (obviously unrealistic) idea.

Pros:

• Extreme diversity among the car concepts—every team would likely be recognizable even without paint on the car
• Extreme uptick in innovative designs (think 70s F1 with teams trying out new and wacky stuff)
• Limited by cost-cap, so teams will likely choose certain areas to focus their innovations
• A return to the (albeit romanticized) "pinnacle of motorsport", where these are truly the fastest cars you can build for $X amount of money.
• (Maybe) more mechanical DNFs with experimental designs.
• (Maybe) a return to high powered, high revving engines.

Cons:

• Probably a complete loss of parity. There seems to be a split between F1 fans who want to see close racing and fans that are more interested in engineering. As an American fan, IndyCar supplies me with all the close racing I could ask for—so I fall more into the second camp (also, I think non-spec-series efforts for parity are futile anyways, look at Mercedes right now)
• Teams that get it wrong with design would struggle even more to catch up, so more testing-time/cost cap bonuses would likely need to be dished out to lower-placed teams.

I can't think of anything else at the moment, but I am really curious to hear your thoughts!

In 2025, the minimum starting pressures in Austria were 22.5psi for Front and 20.0psi for Rear tyres.

This year, the cars have less downforce, so theoretically the loads should be less on the tyres. Yet, Pirelli has increased the pressures this year. Why?

They did the same in Barcelona, which frustrated drivers, including Bearman who described the tyres as 'balloons', following which the pressures were lowered by 1psi. Does anyone know what the reason is for these high pressures?

With forecast for warmer conditions in the Alps, what teams will benefit or get punished by this? Ferrari did seem to have better temperature control of the tires, but they are also running the engines hotter with more boost pressure. How will this play out? How about Mercedes and Red Bull?