Just how much difference does air flow really make to a racing car?

	Just how much difference does air flow really make to a racing car?	Back to Windtunnel Questions Find out more about Friction! Discover Downforce! What is Air Resistance?
A big difference! The FIA produce regulations to limit the amount of downforce the teams generate on their cars for safety reasons. While the engineers and aerodynamicists in the Formula teams try to develop designs to overcome these so their cars are fastest. The F1 regulations for the 2005 season were estimated to reduce the amount of downforce the cars could generate by 25%. But by the fifth race of the 2005 season (Spanish Grand Prix) the fastest lap was almost 2 seconds faster than the previous year. The amount of downforce the cars produce is commercially sensitive information, but at full speed must be at least three times the weight of the car. The amount of grip a tyre has on a track depends on the load on the tyre. This can be increased by making a car weigh more, but this would increase the force required to make the car turn corners. A better way of increasing the vertical load is to use aerodynamics to manipulate the air flow around the car. Devices on the car like wings and underbody diffusers generate downforce and force the air to do what we want. The extra vertical load gained from forcing the air to go where we want, without an increase in weight enables the car to go round corners faster. Wings are specially shaped structures placed across the car. They are shaped so that they generate a force at right angles to the airflow, in the same way as an aircraft wing. In aircraft the force is upward to lift the aircraft off the ground, while on a racing car it is downward to increase grip. It was Colin Chapman, at Lotus in 1978 who realised that if the entire body of the car could be shaped to generate downforce. The underside of the car was shaped to increase the speed of the air passing under the car and reducing its pressure, effectively sucking the car onto the track. Side skirts were used to prevent air moving into the low pressure area. Lotus won both the Drivers (Mario Andretti) and Constructors Championships that year. © Cranfield University

A big difference!

The FIA produce regulations to limit the amount of downforce the teams generate on their cars for safety reasons. While the engineers and aerodynamicists in the Formula teams try to develop designs to overcome these so their cars are fastest.

The F1 regulations for the 2005 season were estimated to reduce the amount of downforce the cars could generate by 25%. But by the fifth race of the 2005 season (Spanish Grand Prix) the fastest lap was almost 2 seconds faster than the previous year. The amount of downforce the cars produce is commercially sensitive information, but at full speed must be at least three times the weight of the car.

The amount of grip a tyre has on a track depends on the load on the tyre. This can be increased by making a car weigh more, but this would increase the force required to make the car turn corners. A better way of increasing the vertical load is to use aerodynamics to manipulate the air flow around the car. Devices on the car like wings and underbody diffusers generate downforce and force the air to do what we want.

The extra vertical load gained from forcing the air to go where we want, without an increase in weight enables the car to go round corners faster.

Wings are specially shaped structures placed across the car. They are shaped so that they generate a force at right angles to the airflow, in the same way as an aircraft wing. In aircraft the force is upward to lift the aircraft off the ground, while on a racing car it is downward to increase grip.

It was Colin Chapman, at Lotus in 1978 who realised that if the entire body of the car could be shaped to generate downforce. The underside of the car was shaped to increase the speed of the air passing under the car and reducing its pressure, effectively sucking the car onto the track. Side skirts were used to prevent air moving into the low pressure area. Lotus won both the Drivers (Mario Andretti) and Constructors Championships that year.