Formula E

New Formula E aero

Viewing 9 posts - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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  • #325130

    Interesting new aero being tested by Formula E:

    #325131
    Uzair Syed
    Participant

    I hope that they don’t actually use this for next season. The current Formula E chassis looks nice to me. Much better looking than the current F1 cars with the ugly finger noses. No need to ruin it with this!

    #325132
    andae23
    Participant

    Pretty odd why they would put a wing there, it’s not a place where you would want to produce downforce because the rest of the car (particularly the rear wing) will be disturbed by it. I guess the only benefit is that the vortex generated by the top of that huge wheel fence is gone, but that could be used to their advantage. This looks to me like an aesthetic design.

    #325630
    Jeanrien
    Participant

    @andae23 Very similar to the design for roborace cars where they aim to generate the most part of downforce from ‘the floor and active bodyparts’ to quote them.

    The only option I could see is making both cars (Formula E et roborace’s cars) look alike and exploiting and eventual ‘bi-plane effect’. You have in a simple way twice the surface to generate downforce and the surface is more effective by being duplicated.

    #325820

    Formula E has put out some images showing how the revised cars will look:

    Formula E 2016-17 car
    Formula E 2016-17 car

    Formula E 2016-17 car
    Formula E 2016-17 car

    #325821
    andae23
    Participant

    No mention of any aerodynamic benefits in the press release, so it’s indeed just a cosmetic change.


    @jeanrien
    It’s actually the opposite: two wings placed on top of each other negatively influence each other (the pressure differences become less extreme, so there is a smaller net force), so I doubt it’s a positive change.

    #325825
    Craig Woollard
    Participant

    FE cars don’t generate masses of downforce anyhow so I doubt it will change much there. However what I do hope will change is the strength of the wing as a whole. Too frequently last season wings were broken. They almost seemed to shatter at the sight of a bollard. As for aesthetics, I actually quite like the look of it personally.

    #325826
    Jeanrien
    Participant

    @andae23 Indeed bad memory from my part, lift is less effective per surface unit for a biplane than a single plane but the total lift is greater because of the augmentation of the surface at equal span which I thought might present an interest. But it seems it was not what they were after anyway…

    It’s quite a nice addition, at least it doesn’t seem to have two large bulk hanging on both side of the front wing and it’s a more homogeneous entity.

    #325845
    sam3110
    Participant

    Looks a bit closer to the Indycar chassis compared to before, I personally like the bi wings on the front

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