F1 – PRE-SEASON TESTING
Ground force After years of planning and a Covid-induced delay, the new generation Formula 1 cars finally took to the track. Racecar Engineering was on site to see the first of two pre-season test sessions and offers its best guess as to what the teams have been up to
XPB
By STEWART MITCHELL
T
he 2022 Formula 1 World Championship cars turned a wheel for the first time at the Circuit de Cataluña on 23-26 February this year. It was here the new era of the sport began, and the teams got to grips with their new machinery, designed to all-new chassis and aerodynamics regulations. The 2022 technical rule book defines a specific flow field and wake pattern for the car’s aerodynamics to follow – a vast departure from all generations of Formula 1 before it. The rules also limit the number of aerodynamic devices teams can put on the car. Because of this, teams are forced to be more efficient in the design phase,
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asking more of their engineering choices, rather than just adding as many features as possible to extract maximum performance. With a completely new aerodynamic shape, the cars perform entirely differently. Consequently, much of the aerodynamic understanding teams have accumulated over the last few decades has been put to one side. Additionally, the way the rules are written is also new. In the previous generations, designers were given boxes to design elements inside. As more loaded surface area means more downforce, the aerodynamic features would typically run up to the edges of the boxes, forcing a vertical and horizontal interface at the corners.
The new regulations are written around prescribed CAD surfaces, and teams must design within specific tolerances to these. This rule-writing technique means teams’ approach to adhering to them had to change, too. The most dramatic result is that the 2022 regulations turn many of the 90-degree intersections into sweeping radii. Vastly different interpretations of the new rules could be seen up and down the paddock straight off the bat, with teams’ engrained engineering and aerodynamic philosophies shining through. The way each team wants to achieve the FIAdesired flow field, and its dependence on each aerodynamic feature, power unit
