Only the driver's head is sticking up above the car's bodywork, it would be no different if he were lying down, his head would still have to be in the air flow (unless the car had an enclosed cockpit). If you mean they should make the car lower that would indeed make a difference but it's probably against the rules.
You are thereby claiming that F1 rules specifically forbid prone drivers or reclined seats. On the other hand, I'm merely claiming that F1 engineers aren't clever enough to know to move things around on the cars to get better aerodynamics.
Nope. You are being unimaginative. There is a mandated minimum height above the wheels in F1? You can put your finger on such a rule?
There is a lot more to aerodynamics than just what you think you see. A large area that is properly streamlined doesn't have much drag. As noted above, most of the drag in an F1 car is created by separation of the airflow around the wheels. The shaping of the headrest and flow diverter at the front of the cockpit results in very little drag being created by the drivers head. The frontal area of the engine is the major determining factor of frontal area, if you look at where the cylinder heads are, the drivers shoulders aren't any higher, thus there is no payoff to laying the driver down any further than he is now. It would only make it more difficult to see where he is going and to drive the car under the extreme g forces that are happening here. If you lay the driver on his stomach, his breathing is made more difficult by the weight of his body on the ribcage, the pounding of bumps would knock the wind out of him and if he hits something the high compression loads on the spine would make him a paraplegic, so laying him on his stomach is really a stupid idea. It was tried with pilots in WWII to try to avoid blackout (GLOC) and improve aerodynamics and it didn't work then either. The people designing these cars are working constantly to develop their product and are doing so under tremendous time constraints in the crucible of competition. They are highly motivated and very bright people working against the laws of physics, and to assume that someone coming in off the street could do any better borders on the absurd. These folks know what each increment in horsepower or drag is worth relative to an increment in downforce, and how that effects the lap time for each and every course that they run. It is easy for an amateur to pick at one thing, as say if you change this the car will be a lot faster. The reality is that, more than likely, the team has looked at it, done an exhaustive analysis, and determined that there is not a payoff in terms of lap time or fuel consumption, or whatever the metric that they chose, and didnt do for that reason. If you have an advanced degree in engineering, and have worked in the field of aerodynamics for a long time, you can look at an F1 car and see exactly what they are doing, and while at times it is not pretty, there is purpose to it and it is all based on sound engineering principles with one eye on the rules that they run under. To say these guys aren't clever only shows your ignorance.
That's silly. Desperate, even. There's no F1 engineering study on the benefits of laying a driver prone and changing the engine block to be lower and longer/wider instead of tall. The truth is that they simply haven't thought of laying the driver down.
You are aware there are restrictive rules in F1 the aim is to slow them down. The main problem is striking a balance between increasing overtaking ie stopping dirty air and getting the cars to work within the areo aerodynamic's rules. I fail to see why you think these engineers aren't clever. If the engineers were given carte blanche I'm sure you maybe right, however there not.
1. Slicks. 2. Natural technology progression. However, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think that the aero winglets of yesteryear slowed the cars down. Every change is rigorously tested (theoretically on CFD & windtunnel) and then with testing (well, when testing was allowed).
It's not *entirely* their own fault. Natural human psychology during incrementalism is to eschew revolutionary changes. F1 changes incrementally each year, so a revolutionary new idea would meet stiff pyschological resistance. However, you excuse such lack of innovation by claiming that rules prevent it. Unless you can show, which you can not, that F1 specifically bans reclined seats or prone driving, your excuse fails. Which is a long way of saying that F1 engineers aren't clever because they aren't laying down their drivers and instead insist upon sitting them as upright as if the world hadn't changed since the first driver sat upright in the first car.
Well I'am sure if they were allowed to lay down in the car they would have experimented with this concept, you claim it would be better ok. I'am not disputing this theory but you still fail to answer why you don't think the engineers are not clever, IMO they are the best money can buy in that field of work. The money spent last year for the last race in Brazil by Mclaren to gain 1 tenth of a sec IIRC was 7 million. So by your analogy they should have put a reclining seat in LH's car and save themselves alot of money.
They are allowed. There is no rule against it. They just haven't thought of it. They do well at applying what they've been taught, but that's not being innovative or clever. That's just monkey-see, monkey-do. Brilliance saves lots of money. Innovation...innovates. Spending lots of money won't necessarily do either.
F1 doesn't want innovation...it wants to be a sport, not a science lab. The science angle that F1 pushes is pedestrian, for public consumption only, for that very reason.
Any opinions as to why we don't see innovators like Colin Chapman these days? Are the rules so much more restrictive or was he a once in a lifetime phenomenon?
There are a few of factors that prevent the teams from doing this. 1. They would have to find talented midgets to drive the car. The current drivers are quite small. The teams would have to find even shorter drivers as the drivers feet cannot extend in front of the front axle. To lay down the driver they would have to extend the wheel base of the chassis. Not the most optimum solution. 2. The FIA requires that a driver can get out of the car within a set amount of time. When you lay down the driver it makes it even more difficult to extract themselves quickly. 3. The drivers chin would have to contact the top of there rib cage for the entire race in order to see ahead. Put your chin up against you rib cage and move your head side to side. It is a lot more difficult to do so in this position.
EEERRRNNNNTTTT..... Well No Doubt, that's a wrong answer (sorry I couldn't resist the pun). There has been a ton of analysis and testing done to examine the effects of airflow in the area just forward of the rear wheels. Airflow between the rear wheels on the upper surface of the diffuser is THE key to creating downforce. If the engine is wider there is a major reduction in the airflow between the rear wheels. Ferrari had flat engines in years past and there are advantages that result from lowering the center of gravity of the engine by making it lower and wider and reducing weight transfer in cornering. The reason that they went away from that configuration is that it substantially reduces the critical airflow between the rear wheels on the upper surface of the diffuser, which reduces downforce and consequently reduces cornering speed. So there is a reason and there have been studies done that proved that a wider engine is bad for downforce and makes the car much slower. Your statement that there has been no analysis done on making the engine wider is incorrect. They didn't do the analysis because they wanted to lay down the driver, the analysis was done because a lower CG benefits cornering. But the problem is dowforce trumps CG height in this case. Skinny taller engines are faster. They may or may not have thought about laying the driver down more than he is presently. That's not the point. My point is that if there was a demonstrable advantage to doing it they would have done it. You are assuming that they just didn't think of it and that it would be an advantage. The simple fact is that there aren't any apparent advantages to the concept. There are safety issues with the prone positon, the engine sets the basic frontal area at the shoulder presently, and lowering that would kill downforce and make the car significantly slower. So what is the advantage? Then, there are a ton of other issues in play here that you aren't even considering, and the Beast above has just mentioned three of them. In addition, the right distribution of weight in the chassis requires that the engine be moved forward and that restricts the available space between the engine and the front wheel centerline, which is why a midget would be required. The drivers knees are already bent with the feet well above the waist, due to the elevated nose design (again for aerodynamic reasons). If he were laid back more he couldn't see over his feet. It is all a complex problem with hundreds of tradeoffs. Just because nobody has recently discovered things like ground effects doesn't mean that the guys doing this stuff aren't innovative. This years new diffuser design proves just the opposite. So other than saying "aerodynamics", explain how you would implement this hairbrained idea within the rules and the state of the art in aerodynamics, and what advantage it would be gained from it?
here's an idea... go work for one of the teams, and zip it! the parameters of the car design are ridiculous, 'this has to be here, this can't go past there, this has to be yay tall, etc, etc, etc', to say they just never thought of it is absurd!
I don't think it is that we don't have innovators like Chapman, it is simply that racing technology has advanced to the point where most of the "big discoveries" have been made. Auto racing is a what can now be described as a mature technology. We now know what creates the lowest lap times and what the trades are that will win races. In Chapman's time it was more by gut feel, so big innovative ideas were possible. Large amounts of money have changed the game and that's why the cars all look the same. It isn't from a lack of innovation, but they have all found out what works and are doing the same thing because it does. At this point the people who shave the rules like the "flexible undertray" of Shumi's Ferrari, or the Braun diffuser (gee, maybe there is some innovation going on here and maybe Ross was behind a good bit of it) will be more successful. The more restrictive the rules are, the more payoff there is to bend them (think NASCAR here). It was a lot more interesting when there were more ways to skin the cat, now it is just entertainment and most of the technical challenge is gone from the sport.
It's not absurd, it's obvious. The difference between the two isn't trivial. Of course they never thought about it. That's why no one in F1 has ever performed a formal study of laying the driver down instead of racing him around sitting up as though he is riding a bicycle with training wheels.
History is full of instances where the common wisdom was that the ultimate had been reached. So far they've been wrong every time I think it more likely that the rule makers have so constricted the formula that any innovation is banned before its even conceived. Its a real shame since traditionally the strength of F1 has been innovation. Now that F1 is a business first and foremost, stability has become the paramount concern.
What F1 discovered was that it wanted to be a *sport* instead of an advanced technology proving ground. Innovations in F1 get *banned* because F1 wants to keeps speeds down. Banning innovations stifles creativity. Thus, F1 Engineers go to work and apply what they have learned...but that's not being creative. That's not innovation. Innovation is something highly out of the box, such as active braking (electric motors spin the wheels backwards in a spin so powerful that the car is literally driven to a fast stop). Innovation is something so obvious that it becomes like a paperclip...once one person sees it he slaps his forehead and says "Why didn't I think of that first?!" Like laying the driver down. In war, there was once a tactic of "standing" armies. Whole battalions of men marched standing straight up into withering enemy gunfire. It took *centuries* before that tactic was replaced with laying men down to avoid most of the incoming bullets. Well, those bullets are traveling a path not disimilar to air. Lay down the driver and he'll drive through less air.
VIZSLA; I didn't mean to say that the ultimate had been reached, it is just that we know so much more now, that it is going to be a lot harder and take longer to make substantial improvements. For that reason the progress will, of necessity, become more incremental. Ever since the "Sucker Car" was banned the rule makers have tried to limit technology and once F1 started regulating wings, ground clearance and diffuser areas, racing really ceased to be a technology demonstration that it was before that, and it became entertainment. There are still some areas where big innovative changes can be made in F1, areas like tire aerodynamics, (as we saw in the more recent wheel skirts in the last couple of years) there is a lot of room for innovation and improvement. As you said however, the rules makers don't want the cars to go any faster, or cost any more, so I am sure that they specifically don't want to see much in the way of innovation, it would cut into the profits....
Design is a ballet of compromise. Engine height/ground clearance/configuration for current engines probably sets a minimum height that drivers bodies are then fitted into for optimal aerodynamic considerations. Ergo's for control at current "sit-up" vs increased pronation in the boundaries of engine height are likely not favoring a lower "upper body" angle. These aren't go karts.
Impact, front on, would focus all the energy on the feet and spinal collumn... You could also loose a few male body parts in the 6. point harness. Allan Jones (1980 WDC) once said "The Ferrari is that far ahead that if they put a three foot purple pole sticking out of the top, it would be only a couple of weeks before all the other teams would come out with thier OWN pole design" Ferrari was among the early development teams that were told by F1. the defuser should be ### x %% x @@@. Question.. you mean basiclly a rectangle with slots Answer..Exactlly
