- Feb 25, 2020
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Welcome to the new F1 season. I'll sum up where we are in terms of what happened last year, the stories going into this year, the ramifications of the new regulations both political and sporting.
2020
-Lewis won his 7th world championship equaling Michael Schumacher. Lewis also has the most poles and wins of all time too
-this means he has a strong argument for being the GOAT (if you care to go down that rabbit hole)
-Mercedes were the best team
-they had the now banned DAS system which allowed them to manually alter wheel toe angles out on track
-this allowed them, among other benefits, to heat their tyres faster and more efficiently at important moments of the race like safety car restarts or qualifying
-the negatives were extra weight and more weight equals slower laptime but on balance DAS performance gains outweighed any performance offset
-Red Bull were 2nd best and closed the gap in the 2nd half of the season to Mercedes because;
1-Mercedes stopped developing their car quite early on
2-Red Bull sorted out, to an extent, an aerodynamic oversight that upset the balance of the car making it more difficult to drive, more prone to spinning and more inconsistent downforce levels mid corner (plus imbalanced grip levels always create a negative impact on tyre degradation)
2021
New regulations?
The big changes this year are;
Budget cap. Team are limited in how much they can spend on the car. Driver's salaries and team principles and other senior management not included.
-this benefits the teams who spend less already obviously
-however, as with anything there are workarounds such as using satellite branches of the organisation to handle R&D and other aspects
Wind tunnel time. Teams who finished lower last year in the standings (the WCC) now have access to more windtunnel and CFD simulation time in a bid to close the rather large performance gap between the best and worst teams.
-Mercedes have the least windtunnel time now and as a result have already introduced changes to how they operate their Computational Fluid Dynamics software/windtunnel allocation with regards to efficiency. Pragmatic and relentless data driven efficiency, zero blame culture, absolute will to win and constant remodelling of processes are hallmarks of the Mercedes team and large reasons for their continued domination.
Aerodynamic changes to the cars.
The biggest change this year to the on track performance are the aerodynamic changes to the car regulations put in place to reduce overall downforce and performance of the cars. Too much downforce eventually puts too much load onto the bespoke tyres F1 uses, potentially leading to negative results such as tyre blowouts.
The main change to downforce levels comes as a result of the new floor changes. The floors have been simplified and shortened inward at the rear which combined with the new reduction in diffuser flaps mean the cars now have greater difficulty "sealing" the floor; the high energy air underneath the car which produces such a large amount of downforce, and therefore lap time.
Will this help low-rake (more horizontal) cars like Mercedes who you could argue rely slightly less on floor generated downforce, or will this help high-rake (the rear of the car is slightly more raised) cars like the Andrian Newey produced Red Bull, a philosophy that relies heavily on the ability to seal the floor. If you picture the high-rake car you can see how there's more space between the rear area of the car and the track surface, which means more space for high energy downforce inducing air.
I've written too much for now so I'll write more later on driver changes and I'll give my ratings of each driver. I did it last year too. To the excitement of about 1-2 of you guys.
Also, I won the CHB/OTH fantasy league last year in the last race. God bless my genius Max Verstappen pick all year. (plus Lewis getting Covid...)
2020
-Lewis won his 7th world championship equaling Michael Schumacher. Lewis also has the most poles and wins of all time too
-this means he has a strong argument for being the GOAT (if you care to go down that rabbit hole)
-Mercedes were the best team
-they had the now banned DAS system which allowed them to manually alter wheel toe angles out on track
-this allowed them, among other benefits, to heat their tyres faster and more efficiently at important moments of the race like safety car restarts or qualifying
-the negatives were extra weight and more weight equals slower laptime but on balance DAS performance gains outweighed any performance offset
-Red Bull were 2nd best and closed the gap in the 2nd half of the season to Mercedes because;
1-Mercedes stopped developing their car quite early on
2-Red Bull sorted out, to an extent, an aerodynamic oversight that upset the balance of the car making it more difficult to drive, more prone to spinning and more inconsistent downforce levels mid corner (plus imbalanced grip levels always create a negative impact on tyre degradation)
2021
New regulations?
The big changes this year are;
Budget cap. Team are limited in how much they can spend on the car. Driver's salaries and team principles and other senior management not included.
-this benefits the teams who spend less already obviously
-however, as with anything there are workarounds such as using satellite branches of the organisation to handle R&D and other aspects
Wind tunnel time. Teams who finished lower last year in the standings (the WCC) now have access to more windtunnel and CFD simulation time in a bid to close the rather large performance gap between the best and worst teams.
-Mercedes have the least windtunnel time now and as a result have already introduced changes to how they operate their Computational Fluid Dynamics software/windtunnel allocation with regards to efficiency. Pragmatic and relentless data driven efficiency, zero blame culture, absolute will to win and constant remodelling of processes are hallmarks of the Mercedes team and large reasons for their continued domination.
Aerodynamic changes to the cars.
The biggest change this year to the on track performance are the aerodynamic changes to the car regulations put in place to reduce overall downforce and performance of the cars. Too much downforce eventually puts too much load onto the bespoke tyres F1 uses, potentially leading to negative results such as tyre blowouts.
The main change to downforce levels comes as a result of the new floor changes. The floors have been simplified and shortened inward at the rear which combined with the new reduction in diffuser flaps mean the cars now have greater difficulty "sealing" the floor; the high energy air underneath the car which produces such a large amount of downforce, and therefore lap time.
Will this help low-rake (more horizontal) cars like Mercedes who you could argue rely slightly less on floor generated downforce, or will this help high-rake (the rear of the car is slightly more raised) cars like the Andrian Newey produced Red Bull, a philosophy that relies heavily on the ability to seal the floor. If you picture the high-rake car you can see how there's more space between the rear area of the car and the track surface, which means more space for high energy downforce inducing air.
I've written too much for now so I'll write more later on driver changes and I'll give my ratings of each driver. I did it last year too. To the excitement of about 1-2 of you guys.
Also, I won the CHB/OTH fantasy league last year in the last race. God bless my genius Max Verstappen pick all year. (plus Lewis getting Covid...)
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