P. Cornelius Scipio wrote: ↑2 years agoSo why are we still seeing cars with wings if we all know that wings is a fully developed technology that cannot be replicated in road cars and not only doesn't improve the show but rather it is probably the single biggest problem that prevents good old fashioned closed racing?
I'd love to know what you guy think of this, I am really struggling to find an answer to that question. The only answer that I can come up with is that wings are great for geeks, wings have become the triumph of engineers over racers, they are the proof that the balance of power inside F1 has shifted from racers to engineers and sadly IMHO engineers have lost sight of the main goal of F1, racing.
You could say the same about slick tyres. Slicks have no practical application to road cars, so why don't they all have fully treaded tyres? And why are F1 car tyres so wide, why don't they just use regular road car tyres? And why is there only one seat, when road cars have at least two seats with a gap in between them? And what about ride height, there isn't a road car out there which could practically run 30mm off the ground. You could keep going on and on about this.
The reality is that a car with zero downforce could corner
at most 1.4-1.5G or so and that is not accounting for high speed lift. For a corner like Curva Grande at Monza, a car without wings couldn't get through there at more than 140mph.
Now the cars have 1000bhp, it would be difficult and quite dangerous for them to have that much power with no downforce at all. Highly impractical in fact. And the lack of drag would mean they could top out at probably 250mph+, which they would never achieve because they would be spinning the wheels in almost every gear.
The best F1 can do is shave some downforce off the wings to make them produce less turbulent air and it seems that is what they will achieve for 2022.