[Sensord4notbeingafanboi]

Unfortunately I can’t prove what I’m saying next simply because I can’t post images about the following nor I can claim to be an aerodynamicist.

Has anyone noticed how Ferrari powered cars get old school film effects on the roll-hoop camera?
Ever since the start of the year those onboard picture fragments have been bugging me. Until a week ago I started to suspect that this effect was more than just bad electrical insulation.
Last week I watched a kid on youtube bending the water flow from a tap with a statically charged comb. Okay that’s not that special but good ideas come from the simplest things, and what that comb did was what every aerodynamicist tries to achieve when they design any aero piece. Bending the airflow at will is practically impossible to achieve on F1 as rules forbid movable aero devices designed to cope with the varying air speeds cars get around the circuit. At any speed but particularly at low to medium speeds the slower air speed may not be able to follow the car surfaces as intended eventually reaching a point where the air detaches from the surfaces this is called aero stalling, and it’s one of the laws that shape the F1 grid as certain aero pieces can’t take extreme and sharp angles because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to keep the air flowing therefore designers try to achieve a car that is as least aero sensitive as they can bear because this worsens drive-ability. In recent years Redbull and Sauber came up with the idea of using hot air to avoid aero stalling and to bend the air more comprehensively, this idea became norm on the grid, however much of the scope for that has been restricted even though there’s plenty of hot air coming out of the new powerunits.
If Ferrari is successfully statically charging their car to aid aero performance, Ferrari would have achieved a massive step in F1 aerodynamics I assume, as such feet would presumably affect the air attachment to the car at an atomic level and possibly erase aero stalling for good. Far fetched perhaps but the Ferrari is suspected to be overweight nevertheless Alonso was quickest in sector2 in Shanghai as demonstrated in practice and I suspect in the race as Ricciardo gained little on Alonso despite having better tyres. If so, why are Sauber so bad? I don’t know. Please comment reply debate and educate, I just want to know why is there a camera glitch on the Ferrari powered cars.

[matt90]

I’m confused, are you talking about Ferraris, or Ferrari-powered cars?

[davey]

Some paragraphs would have really helped me read that! But interesting!

[Keith Campbell]

I may be thinking about this too simplistically. But the charged comb can deflect water because water molecules are polarised (molecules have a covalent bond but oxygen atom pulls electrons towards it making the oxygen atom slightly negatively charged while the two hydrogen atoms are slightly positively charged). Surely the same effect wouldn’t happen to air because the air mixture isn’t polarised?

[Sensord4notbeingafanboi]

Thanks, @keithedin. Do have any theory for the camera glitch seen in Ferrari powered cars?

[matt90]

If you are talking about Ferrari-powered cars, then why would Ferrari share a development which isn’t entirely related to the engine with their customers?

[dragoll]

Perhaps the Ferrari cars aren’t well earthed, there is a lot more electricity generation going on in the cars, perhaps this isn’t by design and its just a by product of all the new technologies and Ferrari haven’t sorted their MGU-K and HGU-K units. That would still go towards what you are saying about Ferrari powered teams, however, you’ve assumed its by design, when it could be a bug.
Obviously the levels of static build up aren’t enough to be dangerous to mechanics working on the cars in pit stops, however, maybe its enough interference to mess with the cameras. Furthermore, teams control how the cameras are mounted to their cars and also how they are wired up, perhaps its also a case of not installing the camera correctly.
Or perhaps the quality of the cameras on a handful of cars, which you’ve found to be ferrari powered cars by chance aren’t great quality.

[Sensord4notbeingafanboi]

@dragoll For the record I assumed first that it was just bad insulation. It’s expressed clearly above in the poorly written theory.
It’s constant and throughout all the GP’s yet and just in Ferrari powered cars, therefore it must not be a camera glitch and because there are 3 Ferrari teams I think it’s unlikely to be how the cameras are wired up as all 3 teams must have different wiring, the power source though could be the same but the insulation should be similar.

[Author]

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