Prat Perch Motor Race Engineering

Merc W03 Rear Wing

Samir — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:08:09 +0000

This post and other newer content on understanding performance can be found at our new online home. Please have a look.

UPDATED Image showing hole:

The rear wing on the new Mercedes W03 Formula 1 car has been declared legal. It is great to see the innovation of the Formula 1 teams and I wonder how many points of drag this apparent stall system reduces.

The image shows a close up, best I could find at the moment, of the rear wing of the W03 Mercedes 2012 Formula 1 car. The area I have highlighted is where the small top wing comes into contact with the rear wing end plate (the bit with aabar written on it – same on both sides).

The reason for highlighting this area is because the little wing is what rotates open when the DRS* system is activated.

It seems that as the little wing (or flap) opens, it is revealing a hole that channels air through the rear wing end plate. This air flow is apparently being used for other beneficial purposes.

This seems to either be to further reduce the aero drag being caused elsewhere on the rear wing (most likely on the beam wing for example) or, and possibly more far fetched, to reduce the lift on the front wing, by channelling air back up from the rear to the front of the car …

The rear wing benefit is fairly straightforward – just reducing straight-line drag giving you more acceleration potential when using the DRS.

The front wing benefit is possibly more involved. One idea is to re-balance the car in high speed corners so that the DRS can be used more often in corners on a qualifying lap. I am not sure about this, as really on corners you want as much downforce as possible. It is however an interesting train of thought.

Possibly a more likely benefit would be in reducing high-speed ride-height variation at high speed.

The car often changes ride-height quite a lot at high speed because of the down force generated by the wings. The downforce is really for the corners; on the straights its not as important. However, the car will run the lowest at the end of the straights as this is typically the fastest point on the track.

The cars are typically set-up so the front is lower than the rear. This is called rake angle and what was used to good effect by Red Bull last year.

The cars also have a limit on how low they are allowed to run. Go with me on this if its new to you but the lower the cars the better.

What happens is that the front wing generates downforce and pushes the car into the track. The faster the car goes the low it gets to the road.

This is all great until that lower limit comes into play. That limit is controlled by-the-way by an extremely sophisticated (!) blank of wood under the car. It starts life at 10mm thick. After a race it can’t be less than 9mm thick; with one notable German having previously been disqualified for planing his plank too low.

Anyhow, so what the engineers have to do is something like this:

1) Work out the fastest speed the car is likely to be travelling at any point on the circuit.

2) Work out how much the front wing will be reducing the ride height of the car at that speed.

3) Then set the ride heights so that they don’t plane the plank. (There’s got to be a better description than that but anyhow …)

Now clearly this leads to quite a few compromises which I won’t go too into here, but includes things like choosing appropriate suspension spring solutions to trade off high stiffness suspension and low stiffness suspension. Again, something for a future post …

The idea I think they are trying to get to is that if they can reduce the front wing downforce on the straights, they can run the car at a lower overall ride height.

A lower overall ride height would have quite a big benefit all round.

It’s an idea anyhow. The issue is that this would be great in qualifying but then you can’t change the ride-height (officially) before the race. In the race you’re not going to be in control of when you use the DRS so you’d end up planing the plank as before.

Now if the front wing worked on its own and just stalled all the time at high speed, through the pressure differential air switch, discussed here and here. Then that would give you the reduced ride height variation and the ability to run lower overall.

And …

If the rear beam wing stalled when the DRS was opened, through the channelling of air from the little exposed hole in the end-plate, then you’d reduce the drag and go even faster on the straights.

Phew.

There a clever lot these F1 guys.

Of course there is another theory, that the air is being channel down the end plates to create a curtain between the wheel and the difusser, therefore improving the effectiveness of the diffuser in qualifying …

All just ideas but its fun guessing.

Comments welcome as ever.

Notes:
There are some good pieces on the written Mercedes wing ideas here:

http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/mercedes-f-duct-front-wing-operated-by-the-rear-wing-drs/

*For those unsure about DRS, check out this video. Mark Webber explains the Formula 1 DRS system with some nice animated graphics. Scroll to about 1m25 for the DRS bit.

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Deltawing makes it on track

Samir — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:48:29 +0000

This is a great video in-car of the Delta Wing project car finally making it on track. Now Nissan title sponsored I hope Ben and the guys are rest easy that they’ll make a decent crack at Le Mans this year.

Enjoy the in-car:

First video of Merc F1 2012

Samir — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:41:29 +0000

Mercedes not to be out done by spy shots have release this video teaser …

Watch out for the new cockpit camera angle … #cockcam?

First pictures of Merc F1 car 2012

Samir — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:59:07 +0000

Here are the first pictures of the Mercedes F1 car for 2012. They are spy shots taken yesterday at Silverstone. Another ugly duckling I am afraid.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/mercedes_w03_silverstone_2012.jpg

Thanks F1fanatic.

Peter Windsor thoughts on F1 testing Jerez

Samir — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:15:19 +0000

For those interested in a more personal view of how the F1 drivers are performing after the winter break, here is a great post from the respected journalist Peter Windsor.

http://peterwindsor.com/2012/02/08/notes-from-jerez-testing/

Two points come to mind;
1- Its amazing how much can be learned just from watching a car from the sidelines. If you ever get the chance to do this you can really tell how confident a driver is, just from observation.

2- The importance of the sound. Being able to hear throttle application is a real benefit, when trying to get in side the mind of the driver, in 1). Can EV’s offer the same?

Enjoy.

Driving inspiration [video]

Samir — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:47:40 +0000

He’s some fun. Skip to 3min 30sec for the good stuff:

Toyota Le Mans On board

Samir — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:00:11 +0000

With F1 testing well underway, here is something a bit different. Great onboard footage from Toyota.

State-of-the-art Telemetry

Samir — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:53:05 +0000

Race engineering and race engineering software is a hot topic in motor sports. One system that is used at the top level is known as telemetry.

Here is a nice article explaining what that is all about and what one can expect from the state-of-the-art telemetry systems used in Formula 1.

Is there however a better way … ??

F1 Champions information

Samir — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:39:16 +0000

It has been a while since a post on the blog here (again!). However things are moving pretty quickly in the background now and expect more news soon – its so exciting what we are developing I just want you to see it now but it is not quite ready yet.

In the meantime, I got sent this infographic on F1 drivers which you might like to see.

The graphic tries to take some stat’s from the F1 champions. It is an interesting data set. I am not sure the Pre-F1 Championships are covered well however the most telling thing for me was the reduction in age of champions over the years. I guess started by Alonso, then Hamilton and now Vettel – who’ll this weekend lower that bar further, at a time when I guess the average age of an F1 driver is in fact going up …

Credit to James Hind for sending it over to us. Thanks, and interesting stuff.

Where has the time gone?

Samir — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 16:18:45 +0000

It is August already! Far from being quiet, things at Prat Perch have accelerated. We have a demo / concept of our initial product that we have been showing a (sometimes!) eager audience.

This post discusses another step on our journey and some amazing feedback we’ve had, while we’ve been out meeting potential customers.

Amazingly the feedback from people has been extremely positive. We haven’t got everything right and are busy now working on the suggestions that people have put forward.

It was lovely however, to see that moment where people go from “what is this all about” to “I get it – that’s cool!” …

Normally this is followed by a barrage of further questions; these range from deep technical questions around “how is that possible” to “haven’t I already got that” (no!) to “in that case can it also do xyz”.

This last question is turning out to be my favourite. Invariably people are suggesting things that we haven’t thought of and that has been fantastic.

With that reaction people are accepting the difference of what we are looking to achieve and then focusing on the consequences and improvements they’d like.

It is an amazing experience (both scary and rewarding) going out and talking to potential customers – I heartily recommend it …

Many times we interrupted people working hard, on a tight time scale, to prepare racing vehicles for racing.

I have forgotten the number of times we went from people going “sorry we are too busy” to briefly showing them what we’re doing and then not being able to get away!

Thanks to everyone we’ve spoken too. I look forward to meeting many more of you soon.

Next steps for us is to develop some more of a working prototype for people to try.

I also plan to blog a little more now we are definitely pursuing this project.

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