Has F1 become a wind tunnel war?

As the fight intensifies at the forefront in Formula 1, the key to success lies in bringing the best developments without encountering pitfalls. The missteps of Ferrari, Red Bull, Aston Martin and Mercedes since the start of the year contrast with those of McLaren, which has so far succeeded in all the developments made to the MCL38.

As the competition ponders why the UK structure managed to do things so well while others struggled much more, an interesting theory has gained momentum. The story of the 2024 season is simple: it would be about who has the best wind tunnel.

The link between the fact that McLaren is recording such good results with its car and the team having the most recent of the current generation wind tunnels is not seen as a pure coincidence by insiders in the paddock.

Indeed, while Red Bull intends to understand why the development of the RB20 has experienced hiccups this year, the manufacturer is increasingly convinced that its problem comes from its own wind tunnel in Bedford, a modernized installation but originally built during the Cold War.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner revealed after the Italian Grand Prix the problems the team is facing with its car: “The front and rear are disconnected. And you can see it. Our wind tunnel doesn’t say it, but the track does.”

Any difficulty with the wind tunnel can be a real problem for teams because, with development driven by the data generated from it, any misinformation makes it almost impossible to know for sure whether new parts are real improvements or not.

“It is not uncommon that when something is not working on the car, the simulation tools give different results that do not converge”Horner said. “You then get three sets of data: you have the CFD [mécanique des fluides numérique]you have the wind tunnel and you have the track. Obviously it’s the track data that really matters, but to elaborate, it’s like you have to tell the time using three different watches. So we have to focus on the tool that will give the most valuable information, and of course, the track data is the most reliable.”

The current situation makes Red Bull all the more eager to get its new state-of-the-art wind tunnel up and running at the Milton Keynes campus.

Lace and rolling plate

The situation within the best teams is not just about having a wind tunnel whose data is not erroneous. Rather, it’s about how much better the data coming out of your wind tunnel is than that of your opponents.

As the current generation of ground effect F1 cars are very sensitive to ride height and underfloor aerodynamics, the more accurate your readings are and the closer to reality the correlation is, the higher the success rate of developing your car will be high.

Better data can be obtained from a more advanced wind tunnel, with teams looking for several key features these days – some of which were adopted by Ferrari after it closed its wind tunnel for several weeks this summer for refurbishment.

As part of the lessons learned from the high-speed rebound issues that caught it off guard as part of the upgrade package brought to the Spanish GP, the Scuderia has decided to make improvements to its wind tunnel.

Sources say that originally it was primarily about improving the yaw angle simulation, to mimic the airflow over a car as it takes a turn. After all, when teams want cars to produce downforce, they don’t move in a straight line, but turn, pitch and veer against the airflow as they round a corner. Wind tunnels must therefore be able to reproduce this phenomenon as much as possible.

But after closing its wind tunnel to modernize it, Ferrari also decided to go further than what was originally planned, by renovating its running platform. Other teams have also done it. So while the norm used to be to have a smooth, shiny metal surface providing a stable aerodynamic platform for checking aerodynamics, today’s cars require something different.

The flow of air under the floor being absolutely essential to the performance of ground effect F1 cars, and these being very sensitive to the surface of the track on which they operate, the teams understood that the lessons learned from Wind tunnels were better with a floor that simulated real-world conditions. And F1 cars don’t drive on shiny metal surfaces.

The preferred solution today is to use rubber-type materials for the coating. The surfaces are roughened, which helps better simulate the airflow disruption generated by asphalt in the real world.

As a senior team official explained, every bump and gap in the asphalt contributes to creating a little swirl under the car as it passes. It’s managing these tiny imperfections in the airflow as they move across the floor that is key to achieving performance in the real world.

Teams have progressed so much in using these rougher running surfaces that they have different types that simulate the different track surfaces seen on the calendar.

The flow of air under a car on a rough circuit like Bahrain will be very different from that of a smoother circuit like Montreal. An engineer even suggests that certain teams would have 3D printed asphalt coverings in order to precisely recreate the different circuits…

Better sensors

There are other areas where the latest wind tunnels are better too, and that involves measuring data. Luca Furbatto, Aston Martin’s head of engineering, recently spoke about a potential McLaren advantage coming from more advanced sensors – which help provide more precise and therefore better feedback.

“If I’m not mistaken, the last wind tunnel developed in F1 was 20 years ago, so there are a lot of technological changes”he declared. “Imagine, in terms of flow visualization, there are tools today that didn’t exist 20 years ago.”

“You can take a wind tunnel from 20 years ago and modernize it with new technologies, but it’s never the same as starting from a brand new wind tunnel and asking yourself: ‘how to do [en partant d’une feuille blanche]and what’s the best on the market?'”

“Today it is possible to scan the flows in different areas of the car. This is something more modern than tools such as simple scales that were used years ago. The addition of sensors allows us allows you to check the quality of the flow in many areas of the car.”

It’s little wonder that the Aston Martin team itself is excited by the prospect of its new wind tunnel coming into operation in time for the development of its 2026 F1.

The human element

It is clear that teams have everything to gain from having the most recent and high-performance wind tunnels. This is why Ferrari was ready to close its wind tunnel in the middle of the season to renovate it before winter.

Few people outside McLaren know exactly what technology is in the wind tunnel at Woking. The boss of the team, Andrea Stella, does not hide that this new tool is an asset for what is currently happening on the track, but he suggests that it is not a miracle solution, because a key element that cannot be ignored is the human aspect of using the data that comes out of it.

“I think when it comes to the wind tunnel, the fact that we can rely on a new, state-of-the-art wind tunnel is helpful, because we’re dealing with complex aerodynamics. I think the evolution of these cars “has led to some physics challenges, and I think that’s where teams, including McLaren, are struggling to easily generate developments.”

“However, I think more than the wind tunnel, at the end of the day, if we have a competitive car on the track, all the credit goes to the aero team. There is no one tool that does the job A tool is a tool as such, because it is used by humans, so for me the kudos go to the aerodynamics team who, since we started the work last year. been able to achieve such a success rate in terms of development.”