F1 2021 'India' concept

How will F1 revolutionise the racing in 2021? Its new concept car analysed

F1 technology

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Despite changes aimed at improving the racing this year, current F1 cars lose 50% of their downforce when running behind another car.

Formula 1 plans to change that with a radical overhaul of car design in two years’ time. F1 motorsport director Ross Brawn has said some of their concepts for 2021 lose as little as 5% of their downforce in the slipstream of another car.

How is F1 planning to revolutionise the quality of racing in the championship? And what changes are they considering to bring about this change?

Craig Scarborough takes a close look at India, one of the concept designs for the 2021 F1 season, to find out.

We are now nearing the point where the final plans for the 2021 F1 regulations will be made public. To get to this point, the FIA with Liberty and FOM have been working in a new way to decide the technical direction of F1.

Under the leadership of Ross Brawn, a technical research and development group has been created and, for the first time, the rules will have been thoroughly researched and qualified before their release.

To do this Brawn’s technical team have had simulation programmes running to meet the aims given to them by Liberty, the primary aim being making it easier to follow another car and thus making it easier to overtake. The secondary aims are equalising the field, reducing costs and improving the aesthetics of the cars.

Along the way the teams have been assisting Brawn with further CFD research on a series of car concepts, the current model being called ‘India’, apparently as the ninth version, with “I” being the ninth letter of the alphabet. Looking at the ‘India’ car CFD model, we can see the direction that the sport is thinking of going in, although some of the final details may be missing or current details deleted. Taking the model at face value we can analyse how F1 aero might work in the future.

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Firstly, the key issues the Brawn group have worked on are reducing the sensitivity of the car’s downforce-producing surfaces when following another, then reducing the wake generated by the car ahead. These can be opposing requirements, but the model appears to have met these basic aims by shifting downforce creation to larger underfloor tunnels, while cleaning up wake by the simplification of the aero, with a few additional aero solutions to make the car’s wake cleaner.

Creating downforce

While the ‘India’ car at first looks similar to a current F1 car, albeit with some IndyCar influences, it’s the underfloor that’s changed the most significantly. Now the floor generates the majority of the aero load, while the wings have been reduced in their influence.

F1 2021 concept aerodynamics, front
F1 2021 concept aerodynamics, front

Current F1 floors feature a step along the centre of the car to lift the diffuser clear of the floor, to reduce its performance and sensitivity. Now, the floor of the monocoque and sidepods are on one plane, still with a plank along the centreline, but with larger tunnels. The most obvious change is the leading edge of the floor featuring a raised venturi inlet with the vanes inside acting as bargeboards to control the airflow through the floor to improve the downforce produced from ground effect.

To keep the up-wash from the front wing from upsetting the underfloor inlet, there is a triangular vane fitted amongst the front suspension. This will turn this airflow downwards and direct it into the underfloor tunnels

A hangover from rules dating back to 1983 is the flat floor under the raised footwell section of monocoque, demands for this floor section created the front splitter or Tea-Tray under the car. This has been deleted and the “V” shape under the monocoque is visible, its removal being to clean up the area ahead of the shaped underfloor.

F1 2021 concept aerodynamics, rear
F1 2021 concept aerodynamics, rear

At the rear the diffuser is a little longer and taller, but is far from a full-length ground effect tunnel as seen in the early eighties, this leaves a flat floor in between the ramped sections.

Renault RE30b skirt
A full-length skirt on a Renault RE30B
It’s thought that the underfloor venturi effect is less sensitive to the wake of a leading car and equally can be made to produce less wake, making this an obvious choice for the new car, although this will have been validated by Brawn’s group with CFD studies. In a further benefit the long floor will generate downforce both at the rear and the front, creating an equal balance of downforce front to rear.

Back in the eighties, the long ground effect tunnels were effective as skirts sealed the low pressure beneath the floor. Skirts helped make huge amounts of downforce, but at the same made the car sensitive to bumps and kerbs, as any low pressure was lost when they lost contact with the track surface.

Therefore, skirts were not reintroduced for the ‘India’ car, but instead a pair of vanes flank the rear diffuser tunnel, these vanes being much lower than the floor of the car to help seal the diffuser. Hanging some 10 centimetres below the floor, what’s surprising about these vanes is that they are mounted to the rear brake ducts, thus will move with suspension movement, remaining close to the ground at all times aside from any tyre movement. In this guise the vanes should be very effective at sealing the underfloor without adding sensitivity as experienced with skirts.

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F1 2021 concept floor edge
F1 2021 concept floor edge

Another problem with powerful diffusers at the rear of the car is that high-pressure air spilling off the rear tyres gets directed the low-pressure area inside the diffuser ruining its performance. This issue known as ‘tyre squirt’ has been fixed in the past ten years with; shaped floor sections, exhaust blowing and latterly slotted floor edges. Evident on the ‘India’ model is a return to the scalloped section and a complete lack of any other floor edge slots, serrations or add-ons. This scalloped section will send a blast of airflow in between the floor and tyre to reduce the negative effect of tyre squirt.

Given the increased desire to equalise the cars and reduce costs, one wonders if the shaped underfloor will be a spec part, either made by a third party, or made by the teams to a FIA template?

In adopting the shaped underfloor format, the front and rear wings have been clipped significantly, the front wing is still at the car’s full two metre width, which is the same as the current cars and the rear wing narrowed compared to the current wings.

F1 2021 front wing
F1 2021 concept front wing

The front wing follows the path established by Brawn’s changes with the 2019 rules, now reduced to just three elements spanning all the way from the nose to the endplate. This discards the ‘Overtaking Working Group’ 2009 concept of a neutral centre section hanging from a raised nose. In the frontal CFD picture seen here, the wing looks unusually high, but this is a trick of the eye, the viewing angle of image has the car positioned horizontal, so the front wheels are up in the air and not at ground level, it appears the front wing height will be similar the current set up.

Its unusual that the wing is split by the nose, it might be a nod to the early nineties F1 designs, but is actually a wake reduction trick. On the post-2009 front wings, the intersection between the neutral centre span and the outer wing shapes produces the Y250 vortex. This is an outwash trick exploited since 2009 to push the front tyre wake outboard. Without this intersection or any means to shape the wing in this area will greatly reduce the outwash effect and clean up the car’s wake.

F1 2021 concept rear wing
F1 2021 concept rear wing

At the rear the wing is quite unusual, as its stylised appearance does away with separate flat endplates joining the wing profiles. This may be another aesthetic trick, but the lack of endplate above the top wing elements will reduce downforce and the wake formed at its wingtips. Also, the wing sees the return of the lower beam wing, in this case, it appears to be acting as an extension to the underfloor tunnels. On this model at least, there is no DRS, the theory is that these cars should be able to overtake legitimately without it.

Reducing turbulence

The cars turbulent wake will have already been reduced by the simpler wings and underfloor tunnels, but a great proportion of the cars wake is produced by the wheels themselves. It seems fans and F1 itself are sensitive to remain an ‘open wheel’ format, or rather exposed tyres. Again, Brawn’s research team focussed on front tyre wake with the 2019 F1 regulations, ‘India’ goes a step further in reducing this.

F1 2021 concept front wheel covers and canards
F1 2021 concept front wheel covers and canards

Firstly, there are wheel covers, closing off the outer face of the wheel with a flat disc. It’s not clear if there are attached to and spin with the wheel or if they are 2008-style static covers that do not spin. These will greatly reduce turbulence as the wheel wake will flow smoothly along the wheel cover’s surface and not break up over an open wheel design. There remains the issue of brake cooling with this design, that isn’t resolved with the model seen here. Perhaps the brake heat is ducted through inside face of the wheel, rather than through the outer face. It’s also notable that the brake duct also features a lower mounted vane, banned this year, to help clean up the tyre wake as is flows along the inner brake duct.

Likewise, the rear brake ducts are reshaped, not just with the diffuser sealing vanes, but the duct flows back behind the wheel to the rear edge of the tyre, this should help clean up the wake behind the rear tyres.

Another tyre wake trick is the ‘blade’ mounted over the top of the tyre, this small piece of bodywork will be hugely influential in reducing tyre wake as it will delay the break-up of airflow behind the tyre. Although some fans have expressed this as un-F1 as it partially covers the tyre.

With this cleaner tyre wake, along with the loss of the Y250 vortex, the reduction in the front wing endplate outwash effect and lack of powerful bargeboards means whatever wake is created by the front tyre will be pulled into the coke bottle area and not pushed outside the rear tyres creating a narrower wake behind the car, thus easier for the following car to get closer.

Other features

Aside from the headline downforce and turbulence tricks on the ‘India’ car, there are some other less obvious features that may also give an indication of a desire to make the cars look different to each other. Additionally, there are many unanswered questions as regards what lies beneath the bodywork.

F1 2021 concept nose
F1 2021 concept nose
Since 2012 F1 noses have been subject to rules to lower their height and enforce a mandatory cross-sectional area. With stepped noses, shifting towards the 2014 finger noses and the current thumb-tip noses. This car still features a long, low-tipped nose, but no awkward nose tip is adopted, so hopefully we should get some better-looking designs in this area.

Equally the chassis cross-section where it meets the nosecone has been a distinctly square-edged rectangular shape since the late nineties. This is now more rounded on the 2021 car, perhaps the rules will be less explicit in the cross-section area leading to more appealing rounded designs in the future.

Also, a small shark fin is also included on the CFD model, in this size and shape it would certainly help the rear wing aero through corners, but also adds an element of visual interest to the car.

It seems the sidepods are the least considered area on the ‘India’ concept, these are conventional mid-positioned inlet designs with a stylised lead-in to the inlet. There appears to be no side impact structures integrated into the shape, either as this is an early iteration of the car, or perhaps that the shape of these spars mounted to the flank of the monocoque are changing for 2021.

Beneath the skin, the power units are not now expected to change significantly for 2021, but a more radical shake up of the Engine/ERS format has been delayed. Meanwhile gearboxes are believed to go with a single-supplier fixed-specification for this season too, reduced to a seven-speed unit within a self-contained cartridge, leaving teams to design their own outer casing to join the suspension, rear crash structure and gearbox to the rear of the engine.

Other fixed specialisation parts are likely too, perhaps brake calipers, brake disc and pad material, suspension uprights or even wheels. While other innovations such as a return to a fixed hardware-spec active suspension set up and electronic rear-view mirrors.

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Summary

From these images it’s clear that opinion is split on the looks of the car, the validity of wheel covers and the tyre ‘blade’. Furthermore, it’s not apparent if the extreme wheelbases and heavy weight of current F1 cars will be resolved by these rules. 

But F1 has for the first time a set of properly conceived, researched and validated rules that should deliver on the requirements set out for them.

Video: F1’s 2021 aerodynamic concept

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Author information

Craig Scarborough
Craig Scarborough is RaceFans' technical contributor....

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65 comments on “How will F1 revolutionise the racing in 2021? Its new concept car analysed”

  1. Biskit Boy (@sean-p-newmanlive-co-uk)
    2nd April 2019, 12:51

    Looks good.

    I’d previously been very pessimistic about the chances of producing a rule set that would retain enough downforce for F1 retains its status as the fastest form of motorsport and yet still allow cars to follow closely.

    Very interesting.

  2. Why has it taken this long for them to look at going back to increasing the down force through the floor rather than larger front wings? When you look at footage back when they had ground effect skirts on the cars there’s plenty of instances where cars could follow eachother nose to tail through corners, surely there aren’t many F1 tracks that are bumpy enough to cause big problems?

    1. The 2009 Overtaking Working Group suggested this but Red Bull veto’d it “on cost grounds”.

      1. More likely that there aren’t as big advantages you can gain through crazy intricate wing designs when every car is getting the majority of their downforce through ground effect skirts, i.e taking away a lot of the advantage the Red Bull aero department have over other teams.

        1. So, does this new regulation means the F1 series becomes an engine series?

        2. Yeah that’s why I put it in quotation marks. Red Bull ended up having a pretty amazing run after getting their way on that decision…

    2. The primary reason for avoiding ground-effect is that it leads to immense crashes when cars lose it. Closed-cockpit cars are generally a bit safer, so could start using it sooner. F1 cars are now arguably safe enough to do the same.

      Bear in mind that with wing-based downforce, if a car leaves the ground it still experiences full downforce pushing it back down. A ground-effect car could potentially generate lift instead of downforce when it leaves the ground. So you’re going to get cars that fly, and they have to be safe enough for the immense crashes to be survivable.

      1. Dave, the high pitch sensitivity of what most people term “ground effects” (when it would be more appropriate to use a term along the lines of “sculpted underbody”, since “ground effect” is a much broader term that just means “an aerodynamic surface interacting with a nearby boundary surface”) is indeed part of the reason why the sport is now moving towards having standardised active suspension systems – they’re being used to compensate for that pitch sensitivity by keeping the car at a constant ride height.

        The problem is that, once the floor chokes and the airflow becomes unstable when it gets too close to the ground, it takes a long time for the airflow to reattach as the car rebounds – the airflow cannot stabilise until the car has raised up significantly further from the ground than the point at which the floor stalled.
        It’s worth noting that some IndyCar drivers have said that the current IndyCars, which have a heavier reliance on a sculpted underbody to generate downforce, have noted that can make the cars unpredictable to drive and, in some circumstances, resulted in quite a few crashes when the cars would seem to randomly lose control (especially in speedway or superspeedway trim) – so it’s not always quite as beneficial as some suggest.

        As an aside, I would disagree with the statement that “Closed-cockpit cars are generally a bit safer, so could start using it sooner.”. Sportscar racing really dropped the sculpted venturi tunnels that you are thinking of decades ago – they disappeared with the demise of Group C in the early 1990s.

        The prototype cars are in fact subject to similar flat floor regulations to Formula 1 cars – if you look at the LMP1 or LMP2 regulations from recent years, they specify a minimum area of the floor that has to be a flat rectangular surface. Modern prototype cars are just fitted with two diffusers – one that fits under the front axle, and one that is fitted to the rear floor of the car – that are not that dissimilar to what is used in F1.

        Basically, the main reason why most sportscars produce a lot of downforce from the floor isn’t because it is a venturi tunnel – it’s more down to the fact that they just have a much larger floor to play with and the ACO’s regulations allow for the diffuser to have a larger expansion ratio.

      2. That’s nonsense. Ground effect cars also have an aero-foil shape that pushes the car downwards.
        And without sideskirts to seal them to the ground the loss of downforce will be much mitigated.

  3. Awesome read @scarbs! Worth becoming a supporter here just for these articles.

  4. Awesome news! The car looks great, and it should produce great racing! I just hope not many undesired loopholes are found

  5. What a fantastic summary of the new proposals. Thanks Scarbs.

    I note your last paragraph, and also hope the cars length and weight get trimmed.

    Do you know if the target is for equal downforce levels to 2019-spec cars? It would seem to me there are numerous areas where performance could be found (weight, suspension, tires, engines) that would compensate for an overall decrease in downforce, further assisting the ‘race-ability’ of the cars without slowing them.

    Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

  6. Can’t claim that I sufficiently comprehend all this, but it is always good to read these articles.

  7. Another tyre wake trick is the ‘blade’ mounted over the top of the tyre, this small piece of bodywork will be hugely influential in reducing tyre wake as it will delay the break-up of airflow behind the tyre.

    I can imagine these blades being thrown all over the track in the event of a puncture/tyre delamination…

    I have to admit, I am nitpicking a bit because I really like the look of that concept. It has a very “early 90’s CART” look about it, which is no bad thing. I’m also very glad to see a return to ground effect type aero rather than relying on wings and top body downforce. Excited to see what the rule makers produce in the end.

  8. This looks like a great concept and it seems like they’ve really thought a lot of it through. I hope you’re correct in that they’ve left plenty of areas open to interpretation so we don’t accidentally end up with every car looking exactly the same.

    Force India!

    1. Downforce India :)

      1. BlackJackFan
        3rd April 2019, 3:09

        I also had this thought in mind… but you put it into words… ;-)

  9. Thanks Craig, and thanks Ross, this is more or less what many here have, for some years, been asking for made do-able.
    A couple of queries; Blade mounted to rear brakes is going to be a movable aero device as is the mini mudguard over the front wheels.
    Is it intended that these will be a one-design for all part, or is the whole package, floor-wings-vanes, going to be mandatory for all, or will there be an attempt to write a rule allowing the teams some room to fine tune this concept ?

    1. PS with those wheel cover discs I can see AMG bringing back their early road-car mag wheels, which were mostly a near flat disc, to evoke F1 wheels.

  10. It looks good. After reading this, I’m relatively positive of it all working out as intended.

  11. Looks great! Hopefully the front wings, at the very least will be standardised, putting an end to the wasted effort and money on developing winglets throughout the year.

    1. I wouldn’t assume adding winglets will be allowed.

  12. Seems promising and more of the right way forward, but I’m not an expert so my opinion is worthless. :-)

    On the aesthetics of the car, I hope they bring back pre 2009 narrower front wings because they looked a thousand times better, and then try to mitigate whatever negative aero affect they have. I also hope that they try and incorporate the shape of the halo into the shape of the chassis instead of having it as a strange stuck on part.

    The critical bits of carbon hanging off the rear suspension that seal the diffuser are so low that I can see them being easily knocked off over curbs. When that happens I imagine it will be game over for the performance of the car.

  13. Just want to say that the RaceFans livery on the renders is quite tantalizing. It would be fun to see it decked out in full green/blue livery just for kicks :)

    And yes, that’s all the level of contribution I can offer to an excellent technical article like this.

    1. @phylyp: we could have much more than painted livery tricks, but your RaceFans F1 Racing Kickstarter donation for $1M on the 1st appears to have been paid with a MasterCard Lola credit card from 1997.

      1. @jimmi-cynic – Oh, that’s excellent news, glad to hear it cleared, so that means it’s a contribution of $1.5 mil today.

  14. What an excellent article, thanks!

    We can only hope things will be going that way, I much like the sound of it.

    1. We?
      Don’t count me in.

      I hope only they do something with making racing closer, but not at the cost of making F1 a stock racing car, with only a different engine (just like proposed above)

  15. It seems fans and F1 itself are sensitive to remain an ‘open wheel’ format, or rather exposed tyres.

    Do people actually have strong feelings about this, or is this market research hooey?
    Personally I’m not too bothered with the idea, there have been more than a few artist renderings of future cars with covered wheels that looked really neat. If it’s a performance enhancer then it’s a pity to throw it out the window on the grounds of vanity.

    1. @knewman – I think its the same crowd who were against the halo purely because it detracted from the “open cockpit” ethos who would likely be against any form of wheel coverings, for reasons of “because”. I’d also think that would have a large overlap with those who would like to go back to H-pattern gearboxes. Our resident commenter anon usually does a very interesting job of deconstructing those rose-tinted arguents.

      On the other hand, if you look at the comments by GeeMac and Nickkk above, they raise cogent concerns about the proposal, and that’s the kind of meaningful criticism that makes for worthwhile reading.

    2. I must admit I do like the idea of open wheels, but they create problems, e.g. lift and a turbulent wake, meaning you need to do something if want to reduce the turbulent air behind a car.
      I like the idea of this wing above the front wheels. I’m guessing it is more or less horizontal, and that this is sufficient to dampen or nullify the lifting effect of the open front wheels as they rotate, meaning the car needs less downforce to achieve the same braking and cornering as they currently have. If so, it is a very good compromise between the current situation and a fully enclosed front wheel.
      I notice they don’t seem to have made any effort to tidy up the turbulent air and lift generated by the rear wheels. Indycar do have covered rear wheels, and as far as I know that hasn’t created lots of controversy. I think they should at least try to tidy this area up while they still have the chance.You can see the turbulent wake from the rear wheels of normal cars when driving along the motorway after it has rained. They did discuss ways of reducing the “squirt” of air from the front of the rear wheel. It would be great if what they’ve done minimises the turbulence from the rear wheels, but I suspect the turbulence from the rear wheels will still be apparent. I noticed there seems to be less turbulence from the duel wheels used on large vehicles, but I’m not exactly sure why this is, or even if such an idea would be practical in F1. Maybe a simple vertical fin behind the rear wheel would be sufficient to dampen the turbulence from the rear wheel.

  16. I’m optimistic that the changes are also supposed to help reduce costs as I think the best way to reduce costs is to make speed cheap rather than try to enforce a budget cap that will be easily circumvented.
    I wonder if the teams will also try to simulate the performance of the proposed car to validate the findings.

  17. Neil (@neilosjames)
    2nd April 2019, 17:08

    Quite positive about that sort of car, looks decent and the general idea behind it is nice.

    But, in keeping with the good old F1 fan standard of finding at least one fault with everything… I do hope they can come up with a different solution to those wheel covers. I don’t mind the little fins over the tyre (as long as they don’t morph into crazy X-wing type aero bits because someone forgets to write an extra line in the technical regulations) but I’ve never liked the discs on the wheels.

  18. We won’t get shorter or lighter cars (suggested by The Summary) unless we get rid of MGU-H. Mercedes can applaud themselves for they have won it all with keeping the engine status quo. In other words, thank you for screwing up the sport for a few more years.

    1. Sure, Ferrari, Renault and Honda was desperately willing to spend another $1Billion (combined) on a brand new engines!
      Hate Mercedes? Ok, but at least be frank about preferences of your favorite engine-maker.

      1. Mercedes were the strongest proponents (alongside Ferrari) of keeping the current engines. Nobody’s talking about a brand new one, the simplification would help other manufacturers to get into sport and level the field even more. I’m not ok with the biggest players creating their own rules.

        1. No that is not true. Renault had already made it clear they didn’t want to change anything on the engine side. Honda probably also didn’t want much change considering how much they have spend over the last two years. So don’t just blame Mercedes. All 4 engine manufacturers have invested over a €1 billion why would they want to throw all that investment in the bin.

  19. While I wholeheartedly welcome the adoption of scientific approach, the moment they dumb down F1 to a stupid stock car racing I quit and never look back.

    At the moment it looks like they will be achieving the goal of close racing, but essentially killing F1 along the way.

    I will of course wait till we have a final decision, but I think all is almost clear now.

    1. @dallein

      Twice the article claimed they would have properly engineered and tested regulations, and I twice thought, “surely they looked carefully at these problems already”

      Then I remembered double points and whatever that disastrous continuous eliminate qualifying was. So, yes, perhaps previous rule changes were not carefully considered or tested.

      Of course bad designs are often the product of conflicting goals from owners of the sport.
      Getting good ideas past manufactures, team bosses, FIA, sponsors, etc…this is just as difficult as good design.

  20. I like the look of it, and if it means we can get rid of DRS and get better and longer scraps for position then I’m all for it.

    They need to do something to make the tyres less heat sensitive as well, though.

    1. God, those tyres. I hope they will finally realize that the cause of such fragile rubber is caused by the immense weight and the consequent forces pushing on those tyres. F1 cars have to go on diet. The only reasonable solution is to get rid of one of the batteries, but I don’t expect we will until say 2025.

  21. A lot of resistance will again come from RBR as they have Newey and don’t have the most powerful engine, unless Honda manage a trick or two by 2021. It’s possible.

    Newey already complained in 2014 that F1 was becoming an engine formula, but you can really argue that it was an aero formula since end of the Bridgestone/Michelin tyre war, so he had a lot of fun. RB6/7, anyone?

    My only caveat is I’d like some differentiation on the cars. I know ‘India’ is a concept model and there will likely be a fair amount of changes but we are already at a point where the cars really do look alike.

    I really wish they would get the weight down.I know there’s no rational reason for it, but F1 cars should not be this heavy.

  22. Great article, Craig! This is the most hopeful news re: the 2021 regs that I’ve yet read.

    If they can implement an effective ground effect centered aero design and avoid the safety issues that were inherent in ground effects in the past (from the skirts), that will be a major accomplishment, indeed.

  23. georgeboole (@)
    2nd April 2019, 20:29

    I like the idea but hope they can eliminate the dangers of ground effect. I m sure that will create better racing.

    So now, when do we install headlights and indicators on those wheel covers?

  24. @scarbs So how does this under-body downforce generating concept compare with IndyCar, which essentially has a large diffuser that extends about halfway under the car?

    What’re the chances that these under-vanes could get badly damaged on kerbs or run-off areas, and become a liability?

    1. @grat, Badly damaged vanes ? Sounds like a great way to keep the drivers on the track.

  25. The key point to a lot of this will be whether or not the floor or part or f it will be a spec part or whether ach team will be able to design/develop their own.

    If it’s not a spec part (and it shouldn’t be) I imagine that we’ll still end up with some massive disparity between teams. If it is then won’t we be heading towards F1 being a spec series?

    It’s a good start, hopefully it will still allow for sufficient creativity to keep things interesting.

  26. Just so this hack can at least think that I have this straight ….
    Currently we have spec parts for …
    The Halo, tethers and similar safety hardware
    Tires (sorry, Tyres)
    Engine electronics and controls
    Fuel flow management
    Spec Parts currently being proposed …
    Wheels
    Steering Wheel
    Gear Box internals (not casings)
    Talked about spec parts for 2021 …
    Floor and diffuser
    Active suspension (expect that would include dampers, actuators, controls, sensors and of course, rule compliance software) will it include suspension linkages, likely it will.
    Wings front and rear
    Vanes over wheels (I can see A. N. busy scheming how to make these waaay more effective, and he will)
    Wheel covers
    Engine cover and shark fin
    And the list will surely go on. Oh and all this will need to increase min weight as it is expensive to design and build lighter cars, especially for all the new teams.
    Being a tech sort, I don’t find this encouraging. There is a reason that Indy-Car is not as successful as F1. It used to be. But now it looks like Nascar with more carbon fiber.

    1. Missed mentioning …. great article Scarbs, well done.
      Thanks.

      1. @rekibsn I’d be surprised if the steering wheel became spec…hadn’t heard that as a possibility. Also I highly doubt the front and rear wings will be spec. Engine cover? Doubt it. NASCAR with more carbon fibre. No way.

        1. Hope you’re right.

  27. All sounds great. I hope all the theories work out the 20’s become the modern equivalent to the golden era.

  28. I am glad they are listening to me; make the wings go all the way to the nose. Amazing how great I am to figure this out without a wind tunnel.

  29. For some reason the wheelbase of that car seems quite a bit shorter than what the teams might realistically want to build. Maybe the floor downforce generating part is now defined in length by the rules because otherwise it seems the long wheelbases will just keep getting longer to get more floor under the car so to speak to make more downforce. I really hope the new rules have a wheelbase maximum limit and I hope the limit is like a half a meter shorter than what the cars are now. I also wonder if f1 is planning to keep the width of the cars and how the tire dimensions change with move to 18inch wheels?

  30. I think I’ll be the only one to say I don’t like it, to me it looks more and more like f1 is becoming a spec series which isnt f1 and never should be, it should be about pushing the limits and finding new ways to do things. I don’t like the front wing, wheel covers, canards over the front wheels or the bargeboard area. Do like the rear wing however 😊

    1. Liberty and Brawn do not want a spec series and know that would never fly with the teams.

  31. It seems fans and F1 itself are sensitive to remain an ‘open wheel’ format, or rather exposed tyres

    Rather sadly. There’s nothing more silly and counterintuitive in the formula.

    To keep the up-wash from the front wing from upsetting the underfloor inlet, there is a triangular vane fitted amongst the front suspension. This will turn this airflow downwards and direct it into the underfloor tunnels

    They should have just extended the chassis forward and dispose with the front wing altogether.
    Same in the back. There’s no need for them with ground-effect, they just produce rubble as they brake of due to the numerous collisions. They should have just gotten close to the Lotus 88 in this regard. (But also covered up the wheels with the chassis)

    Oh, well. If it lives up to its promis at least there will be proper on-track action, and everyone will be happier.

  32. Thank you ever so much to @ScarbsTech for the absolutely brilliant analysis and very clear description of the India concept car. You almost made me feel like I understand engineering concepts. This layman is very grateful.

    Great, too, to hear your voice on the video, @keithcollantine.

    High quality stuff, guys!!

  33. Firstly, there are wheel covers, closing off the outer face of the wheel with a flat disc. It’s not clear if there are attached to and spin with the wheel or if they are 2008-style static covers that do not spin.
    These will greatly reduce turbulence as the wheel wake will flow smoothly along the wheel cover’s surface and not break up over an open wheel design.

    Wasn’t the pretext to ban them the exact opposite? Remove them, to improve the cars wake…

  34. Standardised front and rear wings would go a long way to making these regs work, with the added benefit of saving the teams hundreds of thousands!

  35. This is such an amazing article/analysis @scarbs!
    So in depth. I see this as so promising. Like others I’m interested to know where the performance differentiators will be, but I’m really encouraged by the numbers regarding following.

    Thanks for such an in-depth article. I’m really appreciating your contribution to the F1 technology section of the site

  36. Why the name India? Is it simply random or is there a specific reason like the concept aiming to give more room to breathe for lower level constructors like for example Force India or was the concept conceived by Indian engineers. Excuse me if my question is absurd, but I’m an Indian so can’t help but wonder.

    1. It says in the article:

      the current model being called ‘India’, apparently as the ninth version, with “I” being the ninth letter of the alphabet

      1. So it’s random then. Thanks for the clarification, @keithcollantine.

  37. for the first time, the rules will have been thoroughly researched and qualified before their release.

    this right here is so annoying.

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