Formula 1 has conducted its first test of the ‘spray guards’ it hopes to introduces to improve visibility during wet races.
However more work needs to be done on the design of the bodywork to make it suitable for introduction, one team involved in the test believes.The spray guards are pieces of bodywork designed to be fitted to all cars during wet weather races to limit the amount of water thrown into the air by tyres. The FIA hopes this will improve safety in very wet conditions and prevent races being abandoned due to rain, as happened at Spa-Francorchamps in 2021.
The sport’s governing body enlisted Mercedes and McLaren to test the design at Silverstone last week. However Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin says the design needs more work to produce the desired effect.
“There’s more work to do on them,” said Shovlin. “But it’s a problem that would be useful to have a solution for because the teams and certainly the fans hate it if a race can’t go ahead because the conditions are too difficult.
“They’re not ready to be moved into production and regulation at the moment so there’s definitely work to do.”
Part of the challenge F1 faces is that the spray drivers encounter is not only generated by the wheels. “They do improve the spray that you get from the tyres, but you still get a lot coming from the diffuser and the way that the rear wings are pulling it up. That’s all very powerful.
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“But interesting first steps. We’re providing the car and some bits to do that development, it’s the FIA project to decide where that goes next and what happens in the future.”
F1 cars already have some mandatory aerodynamic parts, such as the shrouds fitted to the inside of front wheels, which are intended to improve the airflow from cars and make it easier for other drivers to follow. While adding the extra pieces during wet races could decrease car performance, Shovlin said that “if the loss is the same for everyone then kind of the scale of it doesn’t matter too much.”
However he pointed out F1 has other problems to solve, such as when teams should be instructed to fit the parts and whether they can continue to use them as a track dries out.
“You’ve got to stop the race to fit these things or the race has to have not started to fit them,” he said. “But it’s not our project, we were just contracted to do some work to run a car and the FIA will steer it and decide where the future goes.
“But the goal of making sure we can give the fans who pay to come to the track on Sunday a race to watch is definitely a worthwhile one to do. I think it’s good that the sport has these initiatives where it’s trying to find solutions to the bigger problems.”
McLaren team principal Andreas Stella said the test generated useful information which will go towards solving the problem.
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“It looks like we could acquire quite a lot of data that was important to validate the models because you do a lot of the design based on the development models, especially computer simulation, and this data I think is invaluable in terms of being able in the future to use these tools to fine-tune the design of these devices.
“I’m sure through the practicality of the tests, you could learn also, like, can these devices stay all the time on? What is the implication for pit stops? And so on. So a very important step in trying to improve the situation with the spray.”
Several drivers urged the FIA to redouble its efforts to improve visibility following Dilano van ‘t Hoff’s fatal crash in a wet race at Spa-Francorchamps earlier this month. Stella believes it is “important” the FIA has “taken the initiative to look at how we can improve the situation with the visibility associated with the spray.”
“That’s, I would say, a high priority topic in the agenda for motorsport,” he said. “And therefore we welcome this initiative and we were happy to support the FIA.”
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Esploratore (@esploratore1)
21st July 2023, 19:02
Hopefully that leads to the possibility to run races lika spa 1998 again or to actually have a race in spa 2021 or not have to wait ages in suzuka 2022: it’s not the wait that annoys me, it’s that torrential rain is so damn rare and having to settle for intermediate conditions is a disappointment.
MEGATRON M12 (@megatron)
21st July 2023, 20:03
The tires are the problem, indycar does not suffer from these issues, the fact remains the pirelli’s full wet tires are INCAPABLE of racing. It was proven that the 2010 Bridgestone inters displaced more water than the 20q6 pirelli full wets. They are using this as a cover up for the trash pirelli supplies to F1.
The Dolphins
22nd July 2023, 2:46
While the cars are effectively massive vacuums and as such will lift lots of water from the ground just dealing with the spray from the tyres ought to be a significant improvement for visibility. As far as fitting them goes it would be interesting to investigate how they might be attached as part of a full-wet tyre wheel during a pit stop. Thus eliminating the need to Red flag a race in order for teams to modify the cars.