F1 2010 preview - Technical

[Tension_36th]

The 2010 F1 season is bringing in some significant Technical changes in some regions of the Technical regulations while they are not changing at all on other areas that have been subject to change in 2009 from 2008. But every change in F1 affects the other areas automatically even if they are not required to be changed mandatorily by regulation.

In 2010 the multideck diffuser scandal caused teams who did not go down that route to significantly change both their front and rear ends of the cars to incorporate this downforce generating loophole. No one forced them to change their cars to suit the multideck diffusers, but they had to as merely putting on one at the back will not work. The design requires changes at the front of the car to channel airflow to the diffuser to get the best out of it at speed on the track. Also the designs of the mutlideck diffuser are never going to be the same as its design will be influenced by the overall design of that team’s car concept.

The term “double diffuser” is not accurate, there can be more than two decks, and some have had 3-4 decks like Toyota and Williams, though they changed it to a more streamlined two deck solution. Hence we will refer to this from now on as the multideck diffuser.

Coming back to the original argument, change one region and you have to change other areas as well even if you would like to carry over the same ideas from the previous year since the regulations are more or less same in those areas of the car from the previous year.

The design of a formula 1 car is too flowing to be just a add/patch design scheme these days, a small change in the venturi channels on the front wing causes changes to be needed under the sidepods undercuts to maintain optimal airflow and directed channeling.

For 2009 we saw:

1. The groove tyres being done away with for sick tyres
2. Wider and lowered front wings
3. Taller and narrower rear wings
4. Banning of aerofoils protruding from the main body in an effort to generate the smallest gains in stability and downforce
5. KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System)
6. Movable flaps on the front wing for changes upto 6 degrees with only 2 such changes allowed per any given lap
7. 8 engines per driver for the whole season, forcing the life span of engines to be extended far more than 2008 season.
8. Engines detuned to 18,000 rpms from the 19,000 rpm of 2008
9. In-season testing ban - only 8 days of straight line testing allowed during championship campaign
   

Now all that is retained but there are some very considerable changes coming to the cars for 2010 that will inevitably change the design for cars in 2010 even if they get to carry over many ideas and lessons learned in 2009

1. Due to weight distribution problems related with KERS the minimum weight of the cars are now increased to 620 kgs from the previous standard of 605 Kgs
2. The front tyres are going to be narrower than the rear tyres, although Bridgestone’s specs haven’t been made public about the actual dimensions, they will be really narrow for that matter.
3. Tyre compounds will be inevitably be harder than 2009 with their softest 2010 lines probably as hard as the medium compounds of 2009
4. Despite KERS being an option in 2010 regulations FOTA has generally agreed to not use KERS or even develop it, so this means more freedom for them to play with the weight distribution. But they are looking at some ways to have it homologated for 2011 or 2012 and beyond.
5. Refueling will be banned for 2010 this will have a big hit in the design planning, with double sized fuel tanks.
6. Because of the refueling ban, the Q3 phase of qualifying will change to a low fuel run. This means Q1 Q2 and Q3 are all going to be all out low fuel runs. Also the number of cars eliminated in Q1 & Q2 will be now be 8 instead of 6 as we had until now.
7. In-season testing is still banned but there are plans of Monday testing at each race venue with reserve drivers in the works. What is confirmed though is that the 8 days of straight line testing will now be further reduced to just 4 days within the active season.
   

Team related changes

1. There are talks of reduced personal for each race that will be capped. This not the whole team’s personal number but just on those who attend races. The number being put forward is a total of 45 members per team
2. Every team is downsizing and laying off staff to reduce budgets and most importantly to avoid redundancies.
   

Those are some serious changes even if there are not as large as the changes F1 faced from 2008 to 2009.

Before we go into how these things affect the cars, we need to revisit the basics to have a better understanding of what all this can mean for the 2010 car designs.

Think of an airplane’s wing and what happens on it. The air that flows above the wing surface is faster than the airflow under this wing. This difference in velocity is used to explain the lift generation in conjunction with the Bernoulli’s equation. The region with the lower fluid (air is a fluid in strict terms) speed has more pressure compared to that of a high speed fluid region.

This is the simple explanation.

The details on how this happens is popularly known as the conventional theory, In which it is stated that two particles of air/fluid arriving at the wing structure stagnation point ‘S’ (as show in figure below) must also meet each other at the trailing edge of the wing 'T'. This obviously means the air particle travelling over the wing has to move faster to cover the large distance to meet the slower moving air particle moving under the wing towards the trailing edge. This difference in speed is what is used to explain lift along with the Bernoulli equation that states the lower the speed the more the pressure and vice versa. So we can deduce here that there is more pressure under the wing than above the wing, causing it to generate lift.




Lets put the record straight right now before we go any further, the above ‘popular’ theory is fundamentally wrong. Yes it is wrong. It’s also taught this way in the high school or pre-college physics, used by so called ‘experts’ when commentating or presenting on the build up program prior to a race and even used as an explanation in the UK Airforce instruction manuals.

In the real world 2 air particles arriving at the stagnation point do not have to meet each other at all at the trailing edge of the wing.

Then why will they teach students or explain to the masses the above flawed theory as the explanation for lift? It’s simply because it is beyond the scope of explanation at that level to delve into finer aspects of lift generation without advanced understanding of pressure gradients and strong foundation in advanced math. To really appreciate what goes on, one must see it through the equations that prove why lift happens and why two particles do not need to meet at all at the trailing edge. Mechanical Engineers of undergraduate level and above have already gone through the first phase in their freshmen years where they are told to bin the popular theory and learn the right and accurate analysis of this process.


credits Karman Trefft

The above animation shows the real world situtaion for two particles arriving at the stagnation point 'S' on the wing.

We will not go into that area as it’s beyond the scope of normal discussion; those who are interested can request an article to be posted which covers it purely from an academic point of view. So for simplicity all we need to know now is that the speed and pressure are inversely proportional when it comes to lift.

Downforce

We hear it all the time and is explained to us that it is the force that keeps the car glued onto the track. This is correct but it’s not the whole story. Downforce is the reverse of lift. You are changing the angle of attack on the wing and reversing the curvature of the wing to have the underside longer than the top side of the wing, this way the airspeed under the wing is faster than above the wing. This leads to an increased pressure from above the wing, resulting in that force called downforce.

It is simply put the reverse of the lift generation process.

And interesting fact of downforce in an F1 car: If you where to attain 100mph on the F1 car and then somehow manage to drive it up onto an upside down track, the car will stick to the top like of it were glued to the track, that is the level of downforce generated.

Note: when the car is upside down it behaves like “lift” because now the car is being pushed upwards not downwards.

Now that you know these jargons a bit better, let us move on to the regulations for 2010 and see how they affect the cars.



Tyres:

The 2009 season saw the re-introduction of the loved slick tyres. The whole idea here is the larger the areas of contact patch with the track surface the more grip you tend to get out of them. So a grooved tyre has less grip inherently compared to that of a non-grooved a.k.a Slick tyres.

That is the easy explanation, but practical science is not this straight forward. The problem with having slick tyres now on the current F1 cars is that front of the car has more grip than the rear. Though the rear also has the slick tyres on it just like the front, the 2009 requirements on the front wing designs has made the front wing more on downforce compared to the rear wing.

A wing can generate more downforce the lower and more closely it is to the ground and the more surface area it has the more the downforce generated at any given height. Therefor the wider lower front wing in comparison with the taller narrower rear wing already created a disparity in downforce generation levels. This downforce difference is compounded by the fact that the tyres have also more grip than grooved tyres. The cars are all extremely oversteery beyond drivable parameters. No car is balanced this way and it has to be reduced. This is where the rear end of the car is designed to generate more downforce to compensate for the loss in downforce due to the weaker rear wing. Multideck diffusers and clever channeling of air and changes to the rear and front suspensions allowed to reduce the oversteery extra grip effect at the front and make the car as neutral as possible. But this fix has a cost.

This penalty is Tyre degradation

Because engineers spent too much time trying to fight off the excessive front grip and enhance the rear end for traction, they had to make a compromise. Any setup will ultimately wear the rear or the fronts excessively. Teams who opted to run without the KERS had more weight forwards and they experienced front wear more than rear wear. Some through had changed setups to let the rear wear more at a later stage than the fronts but this terribly upsets the balance of the car in different fuel loads. And teams who chose to go with KERS had a lot of rear wear compared to their fronts. No one had a balanced wear ratio. When the front as so grippy if you try and fight it or restrict it, the fronts will still try to be grippy and this resistance or any measures through suspension configurations etc will only make the front wear more faster than when it is unrestricted. This is why they are going to reduce the width of the front tyres so that no one needs to spend too much time optimizing the rear end for downforce. Currently the fronts are not the focus for downforce but merely to channel more air to the multideck diffusers. The front wings are already abundant on downforce so no one puts much effort there. All focus was on the rear end in 2009 with the fronts being just the aid for the rear end.

2010 will see the return of a bit more focus to the front and possibly equal to that of the rear end, because the tyres will be considerably narrow at the front compared to that of the rear. Narrow tyres have lesser contact patch area and hence reduced grip levels.

Currently the front tyres as per regulations should be between 305mm and 355mm and the rears being between 365mm and 380mm. While the rear specs will remain the same we can expect the fronts to be in the regions of 235mm to 270mm. We need to wait confirmation from the FIA and Bridgestone as they maybe testing these as early as the junior winter tests in December 2009. It’s a good way to know before they finalize the specs.

This change to the tyres also means the narrow front tyres will offer less resistance to air flow over and around it, this means less drag. The lower the drag the faster your top end speed will be. This reduction in drag at the front means again changes to the front wing design.

The tyres will also be harder since they need to cope with full fuel loads at the start and this can severely impact degradation through understeer because of the weight and inherent inertial amplification during motion. As mentioned earlier we can expect their softest compounds to be as hard as the medium or hard compounds of 2009




Front wing

A lot of attention in 2009 on the front wings was to

1. Generate reasonable downforce
2. Channel airflow around and under the car
3. Divert airflow over the obstructive drag inducing front tyres
   

Now there will be lesser focus on diverting air around the front tyres since they are narrower, the wings will look different and the engineers can concentrate on channeling more air to the multideck diffusers. As mentioned earlier there will be an increased focus on generating more downforce compared to 2009.




Minimum Weight

KERS was a pain and we discussed this last year in detail as to how the KERS will add a good 30-45Kgs on the car towards the rear or at best closer to the middle depending on how compact your designs are. Some teams like BMW had bulky designs with radiators to cool the KERS unit down taking up most of the space inside the sidepods. This also forced them to have large and lesser under cut side pods and this hurt their cross section and increased drag. Teams like Ferrari had designed the KERS first and built their cars completely around the concept which made them unable to simply ditch the KERS and get back lost weight distribution flexibility.

People often think why not just remove the KERS and that should cured everything. It is not that simple. The 2009 car had a minimum weight of 605Kgs, the movable ballasts used in 2008 for example where around 25-30Kgs depending on the teams in question. Very little movable ballast was available after all the rigid car parts are accounted for, so when you have a 30-45Kg KERS being thrown in to the mix, weight distribution is a big problem.

In 2008 the weights for most cars where 53-55% forward biased, no KERs, no worries. In 2009 those who had KERS, had at best 50% or less weight to the front, mostly rearward biased. And the Bridgestone always deliver their best when your weight is forward biased. The 2009 cars are already rearward biased in weight so all efforts are to making the cockpit area, seat belts, some elements of the rear suspensions etc lighter in order to afford moving weight forwards.

Ballasts can be fixed ballast as well, like deliberately heavy constructed front suspensions can add weight to the front, but this weight is not movable depending on the needs for the track and driver. This purposeful addition of weight is just a away to make the fronts heavier to compensate. But when you put the KERS in and the overall weight of the car is over 605Kgs. Ferrari would never admit it but their cars were well above the 605Kgs regardless of who the driver was. The same was true for Mclaren which is why you see a huge difference in their mileage compared to that of force India, because the mclarens always had less fuel that they seemed to have. Both Massa and Kimi got reduced weight chassis later on in a bid to have more flexibility on the weight distribution. Norbert Haug even hinted by saying “no one knows how many cars are above the minimum weight minus the fuel”

The problem is clear; whatever movable ballast was available before 2009 is now unavailable if you have KERS on your cars. This means they look for other areas to reduce weight and move it forward. The problem with this is that some parts are now weaker than before because the engineers reduced weights of those components to move the weight forwards. This is a safety problem, like a failed rear suspension can be very dangerous to not only the driver but also the marshals and even spectators close to the fence on the other side.

Raising the weight to 620Kgs means that these weakened parts can now be put back to full strength, and although the rule was change to reduce the penalty of having KERS, FOTA members have agreed to not use KERS, this is good news for weight distribution, we can expect a 51-52% forwards (minus the fuel) weight bias now for 2010, which can only help the balance at least when the fuel levels go down after the first 10-15 laps




Refueling ban

The fuel tank is made from Kevlar composites which have high tensile strength and are bullet proof. These tanks are not really ‘sturdy tanks’ so to speak, they are ‘fuel bags’ to be precise, they can crumble upon impact and prevent an outright explosion. The strength is approximately 1500 MPa.

Now this is positioned right behind the driver’s seating well with short 'arms' extending around the sides of the driver (for some teams), this is done to reduce the center of gravity (CoG) as the fuel is used up and the weight reduces the mass change should not affect the overall balance of the car, but with the tank now doubled in size the fuel tank must be extended either rearwards or forwards underneath the driver. Both have its merits and demerits and will depend on each car’s construction. But the rules don't allow for the modification of the monocoque to have a the fuel tank extend underneath the driver seating well. So the only way the tank will extend is backwards. There is no alternative route alleviate this problem unless the F1 Commission agrees to change the regulations, but perhaps that is exactly the point - they want it to be difficult for the drivers.

As we can see this is just as severe a change as the narrow front tyres, the weights of these cars will be so rearward at the start of a race the cars will get very forward biased by the end of the race when they are nearly on empty tanks. The handling will change significantly on full load to that of no load scenarios that all drivers will now face this in a 2010 race.

So its enviable they will move most of that extra 15kgs they gained (620 - 605kgs) by raising the weight limit, to the front as much as possible plus the abandonment of KERS will help as well. But if you optimize the weight to the front to completely balance out a heavy car full of fuel, it will prove to be a beast when its down on fuel because the handling will change drastically towards the end of a race.

But practically the driver can only try and struggle with the car at first and hope for a balanced car towards the middle of the race and beyond. This is the route teams will have to take. No team can go all out on full fuel weight optimization because the car will be undriveable towards the end. So the drivers will have to deal with a very understeery car at first and then after the first 15-20 laps or so find the car more to their liking and balances itself out as more laps are done and the fuel loads go down. This means tyre management is key. Those who eat their tyres faster will suffer severely (you all know a certain McLaren driver who will be whining next year). Smoother drivers will have the upper hand. Or else you will need more pitstops to change tyres and that’s going to work against you because everyone is continuously losing weight and becoming faster and faster as the laps count down.

You will obviously see the fastest laps being set in the last 10 -15 laps of the race.

The car’s side pods may take a bit of a hit with wider sized pods due to the placement of the larger fuel tank. But then again some teams have very efficient engines that can deal with reduced radiator sizes and still be cooled well enough and therefore freeing up some space that can be used by the larger fuel tank and related bulkheads.




Engines

At the start of 2009 Renault in particular along with others were all allowed to retune the power outputs to equalize with the power levels of Ferrari and Mercedes. This was done despite the engine homologations in the interests of competitive fairness. But as engineering is always progressing on other fronts open to development, performance is bound to again vary across the teams. And this happened once again in 2010.

There are many ways in increasing the power of engines even under homologation restrictions. While the major areas of the engine are frozen from development the other key areas are the Fuel composition, Electronics (ECU), engine air box and cooling.

The fuel composition is a very potent area for gaining performance. As much as 20BHP can be gained through fuel composition research in finding the best mixture that combusts nearly completely leaving no unused fuel as vapor.

The ECU (electronic control unit) controls engine firing sequence, inlet value timings, anti-stall, ignition etc to name a few functions. If this is not mated properly to the engine, there is a large potential to under use an engine’s full capability. Mclaren in cooperation with software giant Mirosoft supplies the firmware and hardware for the homologated ECUs to the entire field.

The engine airbox is a diffuser in its own right which slows down the high speed incoming air to create high pressure low speed air going into the engines, the optimization of the air pressures and amount of air rushing in to the engine can either increase or decrease engine power output.

Cooling is crucial as higher temperatures beyond the optimal range will result in immediate power loss and abnormal torque curve bands.

There is yet another avenue to improve power but this is the underhanded technique of requesting changes in the name of safety or reliability, when really the hidden agenda is to gain performance. Mercedes have engaged in this practice in 2009 so have BMW, but the blame for letting them get away with that falls on the other teams like Ferrari, Toyota and Renault for carelessly approving it.

But for 2010 outright engine power is not important. With the refueling ban in effect, the car that carries the least amount of fuel stands to gain big on the others regardless of where it starts from due to the inherent advantage of being lighter. And if the car is already sound in its aerodynamics, the combined effect of lower fuel loads at full race trim will exacerbate the advantage it has on speed alone. Such combination can be expected from a team like Redbull with its higly fuel efficient Renault engine.

Rivals often use Acoustics to listen to engines and determine their rmps and possible grear ratios and predict the max total power outputs.

Currently the power range stands as shown below

Mercedes>Ferrari>BMW>Renault>>Toyota

Cosworth is not figured in this as they are using the 2006 model and tune it for 2010 needs which is worse in fuel consumption and not significantly high on power to the competition given its rate of fuel consumption

The double " >> " indicates a larger deficit to the one in front

As for the fuel consumption

Toyota >Renault >> BMW > Mercedes > Ferrari

Ferrari is the worst and Toyota the best but not that far ahead of Renault especially given the fact that the Toyota’s very low on power outputs.

It’s all about the best tradeoffs and the Renault is the best engine for 2010 for now unless rivals improve their fuel consumptions rates over the winter ahead of March.

An important aspect to note is that it is much easier to improve power than to improve mileage.

There are strategies that teams who are unable to improve fuel consumptions, can resort to. They can carry more fuel than they need on their normal levels of engine operation. They can choose to go aggressive on the first 10 laps and use high fuel mixtures to burn more fuel and gain more power and then reduce the power and mixtures towards the middle-end of the race, the downside to this is that if the car is fighting for position it will be down on power and will be open to late attacks from cars behind or be unable to keep up with a rival ahead. Remember the engines still have to last atleast 1500 km of life inorder to avoid using the 9th engine and incurring a penalty towards the end of the season.




Overtaking & Wake

The Wake is nothing but the profile of the air left by the aerodynamically influencing elements of a moving vehicle. In this case the F1 car. This wake can either be very disruptive or subtle depending on the car’s aerodynamic properties.

If the wake is very disruptive and non-streamlined, a following car will experience a loss of downforce and front instability as it gets closer to within 20-35 meters.

2009 F1 cars were supposed to be better for close racing but as teams developed this semi-venturi based multideck diffusers the wake began to be even more disruptive. Wheel fairings have also contributed to disturbed wakes for the following cars.

The only good news is that the wheel fairings are now banned for 2010. The bad news though is that the combination of reduced front tyre widths giving way for more rear wards flow channeling front wings plus even more developed multideck diffuser concepts, the wake will get even worse than 2009.

If the FIA were serious about overtaking and improving the wake profile they should have banned the multideck diffuser altogether, but underhanded politics played by the FIA to destabilize the FOTA early on in 2009 the concept has now become the main stay of many teams like Brawn Mercedes, Williams, Toyota and the others who have spent too much time, money and effort to have it on their cars as well. It will be a financial disaster to drop it for the next season given all the time and money that has gone into it. Especially given the new mantra is “cost saving” for whatever FIA horse droppings its worth.

Barring any regulatory enlightenment within the rusted intellects of the FIA, we can do away with hopes of closer racing in 2010

Moving onto sporting changes




Qualifying

F1 will finally do away with the needless wastage of fuel and more pollution (F1 is already a polluting sport) by eliminating the fuel burn phase in Q3 for an all out low fuel attack for pole. The other notable change is that instead of 6 cars, 8 cars will now be eliminated in Q1 and Q2 sessions leaving the usual 10 cars to fight it out for Pole.

Driving a heavy fuel balance optimized car on low fuel trim will not be as easy it was before, as the setups will be considerably different as detailed early on.

Number of personal travelling to races per team

This number is currently proposed at 45 max per team. Plus the layoffs of redundant positions and reduction of expenditure will mean lesser man power to simply throw resources and money to solve a lemon of a car at the start of the season.




Strategy

Teams will have to find out in the short winter testing span, what works best based on tyre degradation, the current 2009 tyres are rated for 180-200kms, but this if the car’s balance was absolutely perfect, in the real world these tyres don’t last for more than 110kms at best. This range has to be extended if teams need to shoot for 1 stop tyres changes, since they all have to mandatorily use both compounds brought to the grand prix. This will again depend on how hard Bridgestone have decided to on their compound constructions.




Development

A team can have only 3 update steps to the car during the season. It won’t matter if a team has a lot of money and recourses at the team’s disposal. If the team built a lemon of a car, they will be heavily penalized for it as you can only make so many steps in trying to correct the problems during the season. Inefficient teams like Mclaren who throw a lot of money, man hours and made more than 6 steps in upgrades to improve their cars last season will not have that luxury anymore. The media has been harping on how impressive Mclaren’s turnaround was, these press core folks haven’t got a clue what they are talking about. It won’t be so rosy if the same happens to them or other heavy spending teams in 2010.




Scandals

We had the diffuser scandal on the regulations side, we may yet have another classic scandal for 2010 but that’s for another article.

2010 is set to still provide surprises in terms of performance and how the strategies pan out, but some of the newly established front runners like Mercedes GP and Redbull will get only even stronger. Redbull have the technical strength some of the smartest engineers in paddock. Only the naïve will think Mclaren and Ferrari will automatically come back to dominance. These teams don’t have a birthright to anything. Only good engineering will get any of these teams to the top. Ferrari’s position is weak they have not only to overcome a bad baseline design in 2009 having stopped development early; they also have a weak engine for 2010 interms of mileage. They will need to do exceptional well on the aerodynamic side of the new car to offset what will surely be a weakness in terms of fuel efficiency in 2010. Starting a project early is no guarantee to success; Brawn GP was only a recent exception. There were a lot of things that could be learnt even in 2009 by going ahead with development till the last race.

We will be analyzing the cars as they launch in detail to compare and contrast how they fair compared to their previous iterations in 2009.


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[icegirljenni]

good job tension , this is a complete details of explanation well done

[TheProdigalSon]

very well written, and very informative thank you, although i hope your wrong about Ferrari for Alonso's sake

[Tension_36th]

Indeed I am hopeful to be proven wrong, but these things do have signs well before they become reality, so we have to see what they can do. Unfortunately for Ferrari but & fortunately for the sport, there are brilliant minds working now at various teams, which neutralizes the talent pool advantage.

[Spyro]

thanks for the information Tension

[Chrissie]

my head hurts......


Thanks tension

[Tension_36th]

Teams have agreed to force drivers getting into the top 10 in Q3 qualifying on low fuel loads, to use the same tyres for the start of the race as they did in Q3.

This will force everyone to gamble on either soft or hard. But if someone wants to gain a higher grid posotion for the start of the race they may go for softer tyres. But without refueling it is hard to see why anyone would seriously try that knowing fully they have to pit sooner to get hard tyres on after wearing down the softs on heavy starting fuel loads.

We may yet see smaller teams and the midfield pack punching above their weight as they pursue the soft tyre race start option, just how that will help them in the end remains to be seen.

More here

[Tension_36th]

I dont know if this is the actual car covered with the Ferrari drape.

But notice the nose is higher than the F60, its almost redbull style. If you cant notice the place where the nose ends and the drape drops off, I have sectioned out the nose area and put a contour line to reveal the nose line.

But we will soon find out wont we?