Full Technical Analysis of This Season's Grid
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TheLeading-Edge leading motorsport Motorsport technology Technology publication Since 1990 since 1990 Formula 1 2015 • Digital edition • www.racecar-engineering.com Formula 1 2015 Full technical analysis of this season’s grid Peter Wright, Sam Collins, Ricardo Divila, Simon McBeath Nicolas Perrin, Andrew Cotton HIGH-PERFORMANCE TESTING FOR MOTORSPORT AT TMG WE HAVE A TESTING SOLUTION FOR VIRTUALLY EVERY MOTORSPORT NEED. 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Toyota Allee 7, Cologne, 50858, Germany | +49 2234 1823 0 | [email protected] @TMGOfficial www.toyota-motorsport.com Untitled-50 1 06/08/2015 12:16 CONTENTS/COMMENT he 2015 Formula 1 season may not engineers with no a liation to the teams, and Paddock gossip was delightfully ripe this year. go down as a classic in terms of the therefore no agenda, as to what can be done to What happens after CVC sells its share in F1? What quality of the racing, but from an ‘improve the show’. There are a number of options, was Max Mosley doing mid-season on television engineering and political perspective but key is to identify what Formula 1 wants to be, with Bernie Ecclestone? What is the future for Tthis season provided some wonderful stories. and for that it also needs to work out who is in Lotus and Renault? What is the future of the Red Mercedes’ domination of the sport continued in charge. Is it CVC, under which Bernie Ecclestone Bull team? Will there, after all, be an option for a 2015 and, from a technical point of view, what operates? Is it the manufacturers, whose money non-hybrid engine for the smaller teams? How it achieved was mightily impressive. The other and commitment to Formula 1 is also critical to its close was Michelin to securing the exclusive tyre power unit suppliers have work to do, but under success? And how powerful are the teams such deal and what would it have meant? And, more the powertrain token system there is only so much as Manor, Williams, Force India and Sauber? They recently, what is happening with the fuel ow that they can do. This season, we majored our may not have the nancial clout of the big teams, meter, and how are Haas and Ferrari developing coverage on those power unit suppliers, looking at but then without them the show would su er. their 2016 cars? I would argue that this has been a what they had achieved, as well as looking at the Each faction has its own agenda at the negotiation fascinating season and I hope that in these pages complete car design for each team. table, and that is primarily where the problems lie. you enjoy the very best of our 2015 coverage. While we analysed the current cars, we also Formula 1 must either clarify its core identity, or took a view of the sport overall from a technical nd a solution where each of the parties around ANDREW COTTON standpoint and o ered opinions of leading the table gets what it requires. Editor, Racecar Engineering Contents 5 STRAIGHT TALK 28 CRYSTAL BALL 58 F1 CFD 1 Ground eff ect anyone? Can anyone stop Merc? Simulation of a modern F1 car 7 PETER WRIGHT 30 MERCEDES 64 F1 CFD 2 The value of unpredictability Analysis of an incredible engine Dynamic fl ow fi elds 10 SAM COLLINS 38 FERRARI 72 BACK INJURY STUDY How teams adapt to new regs The race to close the gap The future of cockpit design uncovered 18 WRIGHT STUFF 46 RENAULT 78 PERRIN Figuring out power unit potential Renault Energy F1-2015 Low-cost, high value development 26 TECH UPDATE 52 HONDA 84 THE FUTURE First look at 2015 power units The fi rst steps on a long road The next step for F1 power units FORMULA 1 2014 www.racecar-engineering.com 3 041515_CRP_EU_OUTLINED.indd 1 4/16/15 1:19 PM STRAIGHT TALK – RICARDO DIVILA Skirting the issue F1’s ground effect era was not without its problems, as our columnist remembers round effects was the Pandora’s box would shift the aero balance even further forward. of vehicle dynamics, turbulent flow, near-sonic of motor racing, for the exploitation of The eventual solution of suppressing front wings speeds at the venturi throat, all coupled with Gdepression under a racing car changed the was one of the fixes if your CP was too far forwards, boundary layer detachment and suspension and paradigm of design forever. Despite all the King’s while drilling hole-saw cuts in the skirts to shift said tyre frequencies. horses and all the King’s men, and all the regulations CP backwards was another way. The sequence would go something like this: that the FIA and other sundry racing organisations The introduction of polypropylene skirts increased speed would compress the suspension have thrown at it, it embodies the cliche: once rubbing away at the ground evolved into different and tyres, closing the venturi and accelerating the things have been seen, they cannot be unseen. density sheets, flexi at the hinge-points, then air passing underneath, which would increase the The Lotus 78 was the first ground effect car that stiffer near the ground. The next steps were more downforce, further closing the gap. Eventually really worked, and it was sealing the leak from the complex, and the introduction of sliding skirts the amount of downforce would be drastically gap between bodywork and ground that was the morphed into quite complex spring-loaded slabs reduced due to choking of the throat, it going sonic bingo idea. The skirts used for this actually started as of honeycomb composites with ceramic skids to or detaching from the undersurface. This in turn some brushes closing the gap between the sidepod make them last longer than the easily worn poly would make the car rebound on tyres and springs, and ground, massively increasing the depression skirts, plus the introduction of side rollers to keep opening up the gap, and re-establishing the flow caused by a nice application of Daniel Bernoulli’s stiction from jamming them in a leaky position, and thus the downforce. principle. Fluid dynamics states that for an inviscid because the loads on skirts were rapidly increasing Where your CP was would give either flow an increase in the speed of the fluid occurs as the cars improved. porpoising, with the entire car moving up and simultaneously with a decrease in pressure or a Many drivers did not like the cornering on rails down, or the even more disconcerting, galloping, decrease in its potential energy. behaviour this downforce gave, plus the fact that, where it not only moved in the heave mode, but counter-intuitively, the faster you went the car felt also in the pitch mode. Bernoulli’s principle less on the edge, it being planted by the higher In its worst manifestations this would give It can be derived from the principle of conservation downforce provided by increased speed. It was drivers a rough ride as they bounced from of energy. This states that, in a steady flow, the sum bump-stop to droop-stop. As Keke Rosberg once of all forms of energy in a fluid along a streamline Putting more rear wing complained to me when describing it: ‘It’s difficult is the same at all points on that streamline. This aiming at the apex when the helmet is shuttling up requires that the sum of kinetic energy, potential on to counter high speed and down and one only gets a stroboscopic view energy and internal energy remains constant. of the track.’ The initial early attempts to control Thus an increase in the speed of the fluid – oversteer could actually this by springing or damping did not get very far implying an increase in both its dynamic pressure as the main culprit was the tyre, bouncing at its and kinetic energy – occurs with a simultaneous increase oversteer 4.5Hz characteristic frequency. The only way to get decrease in (the sum of) its static pressure, potential away from it was to work away on the venturi and energy and internal energy. If the fluid is flowing out XPB associated aero gubbins to avoid the downforce of a reservoir, the sum of all forms of energy is the loss, even to the extent of reducing total downforce, same on all streamlines because in a reservoir the as a more controlled downforce was preferred to energy per unit volume is the same everywhere. the ‘ride ’em cowboy’ mode. Bernoulli’s principle can also be derived directly from Newton’s Second law. If a small Ground rules volume of fluid is flowing horizontally from a region The increase of cornering speeds brought on of high pressure to a region of low pressure, then by all this pushed the powers-that-be to ban it there is more pressure behind than in front.