The introduction of new technical regulation has evidently created troubles for Mercedes in the coming season. The primary reason that is assumed is rake angle. Rake angle is the difference between ride height of front and rear of the car. It is pretty neat to say that the car is inclined up at the rear than the front. Mercedes is one team that has been very successful and dominant with their low rake concept . Their design philosophy is quiet not understandable for many engineers but definitely they are best in it. But the introduction of new technical regulation has resulted in downfall of Mercedes which is one among two teams that has been using this low rake concept car, other one is again a Mercedes in green ( Sorry Aston Martin) .
To understand why Mercedes and Aston Martin is suffering with the low rake concept, we first of all need to understand what rake has to do with car. Understanding this doesn't need rocket science concept it is a simple high school concept .
Imagine having a water hose in your hand with some flow rate . Try keeping your hand in front of it and try to feel the speed of the water flowing out of it. Now squeeze the hose at the tip and try to analyze speed of the water coming out of the host. Water that comes out of squeezed tip is faster than the undisturbed hose. This is because by reducing the cross section area and flow rate remaining constant, the water has to increase it speed to match the flow rate given in both the case. Now talk about science to your partner when playing with water with her. DO IT! .
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What water hose has to do with F1 car?
I have explained about
diffusers before in my other blog, if not read before. I hypermarked it in the word diffuser. To make it simple , Bernoulli says that when velocity of a fluid is high , pressure is less.
So by basically increasing the rake angle we are making a
venturi tube like shape
( About: Venturi )at the bottom of the car. Since the volume under the car is high , and the car is sealed at the bottom completely with the help of
vortices surrounding the side of the car. This helps in increasing the velocity of air under the car , creating a low pressure zone, so the higher pressure above the cars push the car down leading to increased downforce.
But by increasing the rake angle, the weight distribution comes front, and center of gravity goes high and front , which will impact the rear traction of the car , where all the power comes to ground , thus resulting in instability of cars in corners and turns , leading to spins and drifts which is not preferred.
How new rules helped Red Bull , but impacted Mercedes?
Since the floor area has been cut , with no slots and holes in floor , it is quiet difficult to seal the floor.
Which Mercedes has been exploiting in their past. While Red Bull on the other hand had car which is not very stable at rear , but really had downforce enough for controlling the car.
With tire squish coming into play, the turbulent air created by tires is sucked inside the floor ( Floor is not sealed effectively with new rules in hand) creating a mix up and affecting downforce of the car , but Red Bull who have high rake that means high volume under the floor ,resulting in any air that come under the floor is used efficiently in producing downforce along with diffusers ( more air into diffusers meaning, more downforce).
The conclusion now is , Mercedes is quiet aware of this before . But the reason why Merc couldn't help with it Covid - 19. Since the pandemic has brought budget cap and stopped teams from changing parts in car , making a new car is not possible with high rake concept or in other words it is illegal. So both the Mercedes (Oops! Again sorry Aston Martin) can't do much about that this season ,but can work on upgrades that can improve car with the existing set ups. With more simplified aerodynamic in 2022 where sealing floor with high rake could be difficult ( I am assuming) might help Mercedes again to develop their low rake concept.
P.S: Whenever I used the word Mercedes , I refer to Aston Martin, because they are same car.
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