The rear wing is the back spoiler on an F1 car. It helps press the car onto the track so it grips better. If there are “rear-wing issues,” it means the wing isn’t working as well as it should, which can hurt handling and speed.
Gear ratios are the “step sizes” between gears. They control how quickly the car accelerates and how fast it can go. In an F1 setup, the right ratios help the engine stay in the strongest part of its power.
The front wing is the main aerodynamic device at the front of the F1 car. Adjustments change how much downforce the front produces, which can make the car turn in better or feel more stable. Teams tweak it to match the track.
Driver weight affects how the car sits and handles. F1 cars have minimum weight rules, so teams add ballast to compensate. If the driver is heavier or lighter, the car’s balance can change and that can affect grip.
“Spa” is a famous Formula 1 race track in Belgium. It has fast corners and big changes in elevation, so the car setup and driving technique both matter a lot. It’s a track where getting it right is challenging.
Term
yoyo effect
The “yoyo effect” means the car’s behavior changes unpredictably, like grip or balance comes and goes. In F1, that often happens when airflow over the car isn’t staying stable. The result is a car that feels inconsistent instead of predictable.
Kilowatts are a way to measure power—how much “push” the car can make. In F1, it can refer to how much power the rules allow the car to use at certain times.
Horsepower is a unit that tells you how much power the car can produce. More horsepower generally means more acceleration, but in racing it also depends on how long you’re allowed to use it.
Concept
limited amount of extra power
This is about the rules limiting how much “extra boost” a driver can use, and for how long. If the boost is only temporary, passing can feel less like pure racing and more like a short power trick.
An overtake is when one driver passes another car to take the lead. The point here is that the pass should be hard to do, not just made easy by a short burst of extra power.
A rotating flip-top rear wing refers to a rear-wing mechanism that can change its configuration by rotating and/or flipping a section. In F1, that kind of movable aero hardware is tightly regulated and must be safe and reliable, because it can also influence airflow behavior and downforce consistency.
Max Verstappen is the driver being mentioned. The episode says he experienced the rear-wing problem during a race, which helps the team figure out what’s going wrong.
The British Grand Prix is one of the Formula 1 races. The hosts mention it because that’s where the wing problem showed up for Verstappen, helping explain how serious or repeatable the issue is.
They’re also talking about Austria as another race where a similar rear-wing problem happened. The team says it looked similar, but the root cause was different.
DRS is a system in F1 that lets the rear wing change shape for a short time. The goal is to reduce drag so the car goes faster on straights, but it can also change how much grip the wing provides.
This means a rear wing that can move or change shape while the car is running. In F1, that’s usually done to reduce drag and make the car faster in a straight line.
Airflow reattachment is about whether the air “sticks back” to the wing after it gets disrupted. If it doesn’t reattach properly, the wing can lose grip and the car may not behave as expected.
The FIA is the organization that writes the rules for F1. Their regulations set limits on how quickly the rear wing can move, which affects how well the airflow can adjust.
A transient condition is the brief moment while something is changing. In this case, it’s the instant the rear wing moves, and the airflow hasn’t fully settled yet—so performance can be worse than you’d expect from a steady wing position.
On a wing with multiple parts, there’s a tiny gap between them. That gap helps the air “stick” to the wing and flow in the right way. Changing the gap can make the car either grip more or lose downforce.
Flow attachment means the air is staying stuck to the wing instead of peeling away. If the wing moves too quickly or the gap/angle isn’t right, the air can separate, and the car loses grip (downforce).
CFD is a computer simulation that models how air flows around a car. Engineers use it to predict things like whether air sticks to a wing or peels away, but they still verify it with real testing.
A wind tunnel is a lab setup where air is blown past a car part to study how it behaves. It’s a way to measure airflow effects, but it can’t perfectly match what happens on a moving, vibrating car.
Stow means moving the wing/flap into its closed or retracted position. If it happens quickly at speed, it can change how the air flows over the wing and affect downforce.
A flap assembly is a part of the wing that can move to change how the wing works. By changing its angle, engineers can influence how the air flows and how much downforce the wing makes.
Vortex generation means making controlled swirls in the air around the wing. Those swirls can help keep the airflow attached longer, which helps the wing keep making grip.
The parachute effect is when the car suddenly creates a lot more air resistance. That can make the rear feel less stable until the aerodynamics settle again.
Term
reattachment of the airflow
Airflow reattachment means the air that got disrupted by the car’s surfaces starts flowing smoothly again. If it happens too late or too early, the car’s grip and balance can change.
Silverstone is a famous Formula 1 race track in the UK. It’s one of the biggest events on the F1 calendar.
Term
working window
A working window is the “sweet spot” where a car part works the way it’s supposed to. Outside that range, it can behave unpredictably and cause problems.
A wheel shield is a cover near the wheel that helps with airflow and also protects parts around the tire. If it breaks, it’s usually because the forces acting on it—like airflow and tire movement—were too much.
A tire shield is a small aerodynamic cover near the tire. When the tire deforms and pushes air around it, that airflow can press on the shield and help cause it to come loose or break.
A brake duct is a passage that funnels air to cool the brakes. Teams rely on pressure differences so air actually flows through the duct and cools the brake area.
FE analysis is a simulation that lets engineers test how a part would behave under forces without physically breaking it. It helps them see where stress might be too high and why a part failed.
A black flag is a warning from race officials that your car has a serious problem. It means you should stop right away so you don’t endanger other drivers.
MGUK is the hybrid motor in an F1 car. It can turn the car’s motion into electricity, and it can also use that electricity to add extra power when accelerating.
RPM means how fast the engine (or motor) is spinning. Higher RPM usually means more speed, but in a hybrid system you can’t just spin it as fast as possible to get more electric power.
The clutch is what connects the engine to the drivetrain. The point here is that you can’t just disconnect it to make the electric motor spin faster—because the system still needs the rear wheels driving the setup.
Car
Williams car
They’re talking about a Williams Formula 1 car that was too heavy. In racing, extra weight makes the car slower and harder on the tires, so teams work hard to keep the car as light as rules and engineering allow.
Carbon fiber is a lightweight, high-strength composite material commonly used in race car structures and bodywork. Exposing more carbon fiber can be a sign of weight-saving because it can reduce the amount of heavier coatings and trim compared with fully painted surfaces.
The centre of gravity is the “balance point” of the car’s weight. If it’s lower, the car tends to feel more stable and easier to control when turning or braking.
Weight distribution is how the car’s weight is spread out. Where that weight sits affects how the car turns and brakes, and how hard the tires have to work.
Term
X, Y and Z
X, Y, and Z are a 3D way to describe where things are located. Engineers use it to figure out how each part’s position affects the car’s balance and handling.
Term
lateral differential weight
This is about how the car’s weight is split between the left and right sides. The way that split is set up can change how the car feels in corners.
A washer is a thin ring that goes under a bolt or nut. It helps spread the force so things don’t get damaged, but adding extra thickness can add weight.
The monoclock is the main carbon-fiber safety “cage” the driver sits in. It has to be strong enough for crashes, and making it stronger usually means adding weight.
Crash tests are safety checks that see if the car’s structure protects the driver in an impact. If it doesn’t pass, teams add strength, and that usually makes the car heavier.
Resin is the glue-like material inside carbon-fiber parts. It helps the structure hold together and resist damage, but more of it can make the part heavier.
A rollover bar is a strong safety bar on a race car meant to protect the driver if the car tips over. Here, they tried making it lighter with carbon fiber, but the lighter design didn’t handle the crash load the way the rules/test required, so they had to redesign it.
A bolt-on component is a part that’s attached with bolts. In this story, the rollover bar is described as bolt-on, meaning they can swap designs, but the new design still has to survive the required safety test.
A layup schedule is how the carbon-fiber layers are stacked and oriented when making a composite part. In this story, even though the team followed the plan, the resulting part still failed the load test—so the layup design needed to be changed.
A test rig is a special setup that applies forces to a part in a controlled way. They used it to check whether the rollover bar could handle the required load before putting it on the actual race car.
Colin Chapman was the founder of Lotus, a big name in race-car design. He believed that making a car lighter usually makes it faster and easier to handle. The point is that you can’t just lighten one part without checking what it affects.
Lotus is a racing team and car brand connected to Colin Chapman. They’re known for building race cars that are as light as possible. That’s why Lotus comes up in a conversation about saving weight.
Ballast is extra weight the team adds to the car. If the driver is too light, they add weight so the car meets the rules and the car feels balanced.
Term
aerodynamic thing
When the speaker says it becomes an “aerodynamic thing,” they mean the driver’s seating position and cockpit packaging affect airflow around the car. Even small changes in where the driver sits can influence drag and how cleanly air moves to key aerodynamic surfaces.
Person
Rubens Barrakela
Rubens Barrichello is a former Formula 1 driver. The host mentions him to illustrate how different driver body sizes can force compromises in how the cockpit is built.
Eddie Irvine is a former Formula 1 driver. The host brings him up to show that when drivers have different body sizes, the car’s cockpit layout can’t fit everyone perfectly.
The headrest area is the shaped bodywork around the driver’s head and upper back. In F1 it’s not just for comfort—it’s designed to help the airflow behave properly.
The airbox is where the engine’s air intake is housed. In an F1 car, its shape matters because it affects how air is guided into the engine and how the surrounding airflow behaves.
Russell is George Russell, a Formula 1 driver. The point is that teams design the cockpit for a target head position, but real drivers sit slightly higher or lower.
“Kimmy” refers to Kimi Räikkönen. The host is saying that different drivers sit at different heights, so the team can’t make the cockpit perfect for everyone.
A window of operation is the “safe zone” where a wing setting works well. If you move outside that zone, the airflow stops behaving the way the engineers want.
An aerodynamic surface is a part of the car that’s shaped to control the air flowing around it. On an F1 car, these parts are designed to help the car stick to the road and behave predictably in airflow.
Turbulence is when the air flow becomes messy and uneven. Wings work best when the air flows smoothly over them, so turbulence can reduce grip and efficiency.
Active aero means the car’s aerodynamic parts can adjust while driving. Instead of a fixed wing angle, the car can change settings to improve grip and balance.
Flap angle is the deflection setting of a wing element (a movable flap) relative to the airflow. Changing flap angle alters the wing’s effective shape, which changes downforce and drag and can also influence airflow reattachment and turbulence levels.
A three element wing means the front wing has three main parts stacked together. That lets engineers shape the airflow more precisely to generate grip without creating too much drag.
A four element wing is a front wing with four stacked parts. Having more parts can help the wing control airflow better, but it also changes how you adjust it.
The rear wing is the back spoiler on an F1 car. It’s shaped to push the car down onto the track for grip, but it also creates some drag that slows the car down.
Balancing the car means making sure the front and rear grip are working together. If one end has too much or too little grip, the car won’t turn the way the driver expects.
Flow structure is basically how the air is moving around the car. If the airflow pattern changes too much when the wing changes position, it can mess up how the rest of the car generates downforce.
Angle of attack is how tilted the wing is compared to the air hitting it. Tilting it more can help create downforce, but if you tilt too far, the airflow can stop following the wing surface.
This is the air moving under the wing’s main surface. Faster air under the wing helps create a pressure difference that pulls the car down to the track.
Term
attached
“Attached” flow means the air keeps following the wing surface smoothly. If it stops being attached, the wing loses efficiency and downforce.
Pressure is how strongly the air is pushing on different parts of the wing. Wings create a pressure difference that helps pull the car down.
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The Athletic
Coming up, we look ahead to Spa and ask whether Red Bull can get on top of its revolving
rear-wing issues and whether Mercedes Silverstone Wheel Shield issue was a one-off.
Plus, Gary answers questions about gear ratios, driver weight, and front-wing adjustments.
Welcome to the Race F1 Tech Show.
I'm Ed Straw and with me is Gary Anderson.
And we're going to look a little bit ahead to the Belgian Grand Prix and also back a bit
at what happened at Silverstone and some of the technical matters arising.
Gary, good point of the season this is, isn't it?
Going back to Spa, everyone enjoys going there.
You had a few enjoyable moments of that particular track.
Yeah, I mean, Spa's a fantastic track.
It's a challenge for the drivers.
It's a challenge for engineers.
It's great, you know, the amount of enthusiasm from the crowd.
Just the atmosphere is fantastic.
It's changed about over the years, more in the safety sort of way, you know, through
Alouge, et cetera, et cetera.
It's still a daunting type of track for a racing car and for a racing driver to get
the best out of it and the commitment you need to get the best out of it.
A little bit worried about coming into this year because, you know, at Silverstone we
did see a little bit of the yoyo effect coming in again.
We haven't seen since, you know, well, didn't see it really at Barcelona.
We didn't see it really at Monaco, obviously.
But once you get to these tracks where you want more deployment relative to what you
can harvest, then it becomes a little bit trickier.
I just sort of wish that they would down the electrical output, you know, just change the
amount of kilowatts that you can use per lap to allow you not to need to do that because
it would be just the overall horsepower.
But, you know, the reality of it is it would just as the overall horsepower for everybody,
not just for one driver, but it means you've got it for longer.
And that's really what we want.
We don't want to see this limited amount of extra power for the limitation of time that
we're seeing.
So there is things that could be done pretty quickly.
But again, I don't think it will detract from Spa that much or I would be disappointed if
it does and the governing body doesn't step in and change some things.
And even then, you know, again, it's the teams.
You know, they should be pushing for that.
You know, I know there's some teams and some drivers that can make better use of it, maybe,
as best we are putting it.
But it's just, it's the racing that counts, you know, whenever you pass somebody because
you've got an extra, you know, 100 horsepower or whatever, you haven't really passed anybody.
You've just, you know, indicated, pulled out and driven past them.
I want to see racing again.
And I think the racing drivers that we know that are real racing drivers want to do the
same thing.
They want to have the challenge of an overtake being an overtake.
So let's wake up to the reality of what racing really is.
And, you know, that, and it doesn't actually make the entertainment better.
It doesn't make the show better overall.
It gives you a bit of excitement for a minute or two because, you know, Joe blogs has passed
XYZ, but it, you know, it's artificial.
It's not real.
So we want real racing and sorry to have a bit so early on in this podcast, but, you
know, we've had what nine races, I think is something like that.
But, you know, and the same problem to a lesser degree is still hanging in there.
Yeah.
And ultimately, I think the whole evidence of the season so far is that, that you don't
want these drive by passes.
I keep seeing the argument that, well, it was the same under DRS, but those criticism
of DRS quite rightly as well.
You want something a little bit better, but that's probably a deeper discussion for another
day and we have talked about it on previous episodes.
So we've got a few other things to tackle today.
Now going to spy at the time of recording, we don't know what Red Bull is doing with
it's troublesome rotating flip top rear wing, whatever you like to call it.
Max Verstappen had that off in the British Grand Prix, which was sort of similar to that
Austria off, but the team has said that it was a problem, but a different problem to
the Austria one.
I should add that heading to spy, the FI was in discussion with both Red Bull and Ferrari
over the designs of the revolving rear wings to establish whether there's an inherent safety
issue.
So Gary, how do you see this?
If you were sat there with this question mark over your car, would you say, look, just take
it off and go to a known quantity for spa, especially given the Red Bull did start the
season with a more orthodox version.
So even if they have to do a few, a few sort of shortcuts and cut back some wing profiles
to be set for spa, they can do it.
Would you be saying, look, and so we really know what's going on here.
We take it off.
And what do you make of the problem in general?
Well, I think we'll start with the problem.
I don't think I don't believe that changing back to a more conventional, let's say DRS
style of active arrow wing would actually make any difference.
The flip over job is really not the problem.
It might increase the problem fractionally, but it will be fractionally.
It'll be very small numbers.
My belief is really that it's something that isn't really measured at this point in time
to the greatest degree.
You know, the whole system works as we know, you open up to get red rid of that drag.
Unfortunately, with the reduction in drag, downforce disappears as well, but it gives
you more straight line speed.
And then you close it to maximize the downforce to be able to have the best cornering ability
possible. And that all happens with either lifting the throttle or pressing the brake
pedal. The rear wing shuts automatically.
The driver does have access to a button to shut it if he wants to shut it.
And we have seen in the past where DRS has had a problem with airflow reattachment where
the driver would push it a bit earlier just before he breaks.
So there is, you know, there is the precedent has been set there.
And I believe the rear wing problem from Austria and from Silverstone, although the mechanism
of it might be fractionally different, it was the same problem.
The rear wing shuts mechanically as we see.
And as obviously if you look at Sky and their analysis afterwards on the screen, the rear
wing shuts mechanically as it should shut.
But that doesn't mean the airflow reattaches.
And the objective of this, as I said, the rear wing is to minimize the drag when it's open
and maximize the downforce when it's closed.
So when you close the wing, you're going to work those surfaces as hard as physically
possible, because that means you're going to get the maximum downforce out of it, which
will bring a lot of drag with it, because you're not really too worried now about the
efficiency of the wing when it's closed, because you have the opportunity to open it.
So that means that the airflow reattachment on the flaps of the wing is more dramatic,
is more critical, because when you shut that wing, as I said, the FIA regulations between
mechanically from one end of the movement to the other end of the movement is 0.4 of a second.
So if you take, let's say, a DRS style system, that 0.4 of a second is moving that wing
flap assembly by, let's say, roughly 45 degrees.
If you take over the upside down wing, it's rotating that wing design by probably
225 degrees, it has to flip it right over and back down again that same 45 degrees as the DRS wing.
So in 0.4 of a second, that red bull or Ferrari style rear wing has to move a lot faster than
the DRS style rear wing does, and that's where I say it could be exaggerating the problem fractionally,
because as you shut down that wing, the slot gap goes from being very wide to being, you know,
the minimum regulations, I think it's between 12 and 15 millimeters of a slot gap. As that
wing is shutting down in that 0.4 of a second, that flow needs to be attached to the under surface
of the wing. So it has more time on a DRS style wing to reattach before you actually turn the steering
wheel between hitting the brake pedal and turning the steering wheel. It has more time to reattach
than the other wing that's flipping over, because it's probably, it probably struggles
to do all that movement within the 0.4 of a second. So when it actually is shut and starts to reattach,
which will take milliseconds, but it's much closer to the time
that you turn the steering wheel. So in effect, I can understand the problem. The big problem is,
do you go back to a wing that's not as efficient, or do you up the speed of the closure of the
rear wing? Do you open the slot gap up fractionally? Do you adjust the angle of the flaps fractionally
so it's not as hard to reattach it? There's many ways of doing it. What you have to do is look at
the best compromise, I suppose you might call it. Yes, go back to the DRS style system. It has more
time to reattach, as I said before, you turn the steering wheel. Erdynamically reattach.
Mechanically, it can shut or it'll shut earlier, basically. But in all of that, you're losing
potentially, it's 1,000th of a second of performance. That's the objective of all this. Either you're
losing a lot about downforce because you're reducing the angles, you're losing a lot about
downforce because the drag reduction reduces faster. There's always a little compromise in
here somewhere. So if it was me going to spar, I would be looking at trying to look at the speed
of the rear wing closing and try to look at somehow, look at the detail of how the rear wing
air flow attaches. Very, very difficult to do because it's the transient condition. It's those
last five degrees of wing angle, just one slot gap is going from being maybe 20 millimeters open,
let's say, just before it's fully closed to 12 millimeters. That's when you want to get the
flow attachment to start. So you need to look at that very, very closely. So it'll be looking in
CFD at a lot of different wing angles and looking at the transient effect between them. If you shut
the wing down instantly to the smallest slot gap, do you get the theoretical downforce instantly?
Or is it better if you shut it down a millimeter every 100th of a second or something?
So a lot of detail to go into it, but the solution is there. The problem is, as you say,
that the fact that the 225 degree rotation that you would have with the upside down wing
will close faster at the last part than the DRS style wing, which will close slower and allow
that air flow attachment to take place before the slot gap gets as closed as it should be.
How easy is it to actually test this? Because as you say, you can test it in CFD, but presumably
everything's as it should have been much earlier in the process on CFD anyway. And you can do stuff,
I guess, in wind tunnels, etc. But I presume in terms of that airflow reattachment, when you've
got a car that's running in the real world, there's vibrations, there's all sorts of things,
obviously, thinking about stow, it's high speed when you're shutting it. So there could be all
sorts of things that are quite hard to chase down on there. Could you find yourself in a position
where you think, well, we know something's going on, but we don't know exactly what. Because although
you can make things much, much, much more conservative to try and prevent it, you want to make it
just as conservative as it needs to be to be fine, don't you? Otherwise, you're giving away
performance. So running this down must be quite tricky. Is it something that you need real track
running to actually be able to experiment with? Yes and no. I think what you have to do is look
at how near the limit you're actually running at. So in other words, you take your real wing
assembly that you've got now, and be it in a wind tunnel or be it in CFD or be it both,
which is what you'd be doing, you would increase the angle of the flap assembly by, you know,
a small amount, let's say half a degree increments, to get to the point where it does stall. Now,
if you don't have enough room there, let's say it's just you can only increase the angle one
degree and then it stalls, you're pushing it far too near the limit. So then you would look at
reducing that wing flap angle relative to the main plane by a degree or a couple of degrees. And
yes, you'll lose a little bit of downforce from it, but that'll give you another, you know, another
two degrees of wind where the flow will reattach or the flow will have time to reattach before,
you know, before you need it. So I think it's just working the surface is too hard. I think it's
very, very easy to have everything right on the limit of the maximum potential from a surface,
be it for given flow direction or vortex generation or downforce created by the wings. I mean,
this could be happening to the front wing as well. But the driver won't have a problem if the front
wing doesn't close quickly enough and it gets a little bit of initial understeer. As a matter of
fact, he'd love it to happen. You probably, if you had a system where you can control the speed of
change of that front and rear wing assembly, you'd probably shut the rear wing first and then close
the rear the front wing afterwards. Just from the fact of, you know, necessarily getting the rear
stability, getting the parachute effect on the rear of the car, the rear stability before
you need to turn the steering wheel. So there's, you could play tunes on this, you know, the rate of
speed of change, rate of speed of closing and reattachment of the airflow. But first thing you
have to do is make sure that you're not pushing the limits too much. So, you know, the loss of
maximum spin enough into the gravel that's still at Silverstone is greater than maybe, you know,
a hundredth of a second loss per lap because of a fraction less downforce. The loss financially of
crashing the car in Austria, you know, during the qualifying lap and the grid position is,
the grid position for a race that he probably could have won, actually, is a lot more than,
again, this hundredth of a second per lap potential lap time. So the compromise needs to be made
somewhere along the line as to how far you're going to push the limits on some of these things.
So it's, you know, it's just part of building this jigsaw that's called the Formula One car,
getting the best out of everything possible, but not overdoing it, not going past the limit too
much. So the answer, you know, the answer lies in the question, I suppose you might like to say,
the thing needs to work correctly, that's basically it. There's nothing wrong with
the regulations, the way they are, there's nothing wrong with any of that. It's just the
thing needs to work correctly to achieve the goal. As we've seen, I don't know how many
rear wings have been closed during the time of these last eight or nine races, and
basically they all function pretty well, except for Max Verstappen on two occasions.
So, you know, you need to look at your design and how far you're pushing the limits. And obviously,
for Red Bill, they've always pushed the limits to the maximum possible, but you still need to give
it out a car or any component on the car a working window. And I think that working window was a
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Let's now turn to another problem
that arose at Silverstone. This is one that isn't hanging over. It shouldn't be a problem,
but I thought it was worth talking about because it was an interesting failure. That was the problem
that Kimmy Antonelli had at Silverstone at Copse with that broken front-left wheel shield. I think
people will have seen the footage when he's running very fractionally wide, but not ridiculously
wide or anything at Copse. It's not that severe a curve there. Then you just see that this big
arrow device just snap out of place and get stuck. What did you make of that? How do you go about
understanding the cause of that sort of thing? Because it didn't seem to be within the realms of
just he'd run stupidly wide into a place that he was being told never to go towards because he had
been there before and other drivers did as well. Is that the kind of thing that as a technical
director would be concerning you? It wouldn't be concerning me. First thing I'd look at is
to try to see if I saw or if anything hit at that time. A bit of debris from somewhere else,
a big bit of rubber of somebody's tire, some stones that were put up on the track, but you would
be looking very closely at the structure of that component. As we know, it is a bit of a tire shield
up the inside of the tire. It does carry the brake and let. It's something that as the air
pressure, as the tire is pushing into the airflow, the air pressure has been pushed around the sides
of the tire and that does put a pressure on that component directly in the direction of the failure,
which means it turned to inboard. And so does the brake duct itself, the inlet part of the brake duct.
I don't think that would be a problem because the inlet part of the brake duct itself has an outlet
and what you need is a pressure on the face of it and a low pressure to exit so that the flow
knows where it's going, goes in the front and out the back. But that pressure differential
wouldn't be huge. So I don't think the pressure on the brake duct has meant that it put too much
load into the brake duct. I think it's the pressure off the front of the tire plus a bit of the
vibration. You get vibration through the tire because of the going over the curves, but the
racing line on a given racing track is using the curves. That has to be accepted. So your structure,
your structure of any component on there has to withstand that. If it fails, it's because it's not
adequate for the for the job that it has to do. So I can understand it completely. I think they'd
be looking at the at the FE analysis of that brake duct, checking out what they could see if
there's a weak point we're at broke at. But as I say, you look at seeing if there's any debris
might have hit it from something else. But you know, that's only just a wrong to say it's just a
normal thing. It's a failure that's not really a drama. But I'd like to go into a second point on
that failure. You know, we got this thing about losing five seconds because he was going off the
track. And it was, you know, before the before the failure of the brake duct, he was done for three
times. I think it was for going off the track. So he was on a the limit. And then after
the failure, obviously, he went off the track quite a few times. But then there's this big question is,
should he be done for five seconds for going off the track when the car was having a problem?
Or should he be allowed to do that? Well, I think I think he's been done for more than that because
he was driving a car that was unsafe. And, you know, it's not unsafe for yourself because you
know in your car what you're doing and what's happening to it. But Joe blogs the other driver
that's coming up behind you might overtake you because you suddenly deviate it off the line or
go and slow or whatever. Doesn't know that he's a passenger to all of that stuff. And if he gets
caught up in the fact that Kimmy Anton now is going to run wide because he can't turn the steering
wheel, then that is a dangerous. So where do you draw the line? I think immediately that that sort of
problem happened. And immediately he complained about he couldn't steer the car. He should have been
immediately, you know, it should be immediately a black flag, but he should be called in before the
black flag the team should call him and retire the car. So I'm not taking this as a Kimmy,
a hit on Kimmy Anton early because I really rate the guy very, very highly. I'm taking it on a hit
and in general as to how races are run and how safety is looked at because there's nothing as
dangerous as a car that's not doing what it should do on a racetrack when somebody else is doing what
they should do on a racetrack. And the difference in speed is, you know, could be 50, 60 miles an hour.
So you need to look at very deeply, I think the team needs to take responsibility for it. My
minimum thing was Mercedes as a team should have been given a very hefty fine for not retiring the
car with immediate effect because of that problem. You know, when the driver says I can't steer the
car, that's a problem. And you don't know what it is. That's an even bigger problem. So let's just
be serious here about the outcome that could have happened there. It didn't, luckily enough.
But the fact of the arguing the five seconds or a bigger pill than that, you know, for me, it's
just blank and white. Yeah. And ultimately, when it comes to matters of safety as well,
there shouldn't be any compromises or risks if there's a potentially dangerous situation. I know
there's risk in motorsport, but the risk that you accept is there when everything's going as it
should be. But when you've got something failed, you have to be careful that there is a responsibility
for it.
As always, the final part of the podcast is devoted to questions from you, the listener. If you've
got a question for Gary, fire it through to podcasts at therace.com. That's podcasts at
the-race.com. We'll take conventional typed questions or you can leave a voice note and
send it through. We don't get many voice note ones, but we do like them. So that's always an option
if you fancy that. But either way is good. And as long as the question is at least
tangentially related to tech, it can be anything you want, past, present or future,
even if it's a really simple question. In fact, I encourage the really simple questions because
sometimes getting to those first principles are actually the most interesting and you really
go down some interesting avenues there. So I always like to say there's no stupid questions.
Right, Chris M's got the first one for you, Gary. Following on from the discussions on
gear ratios last time with the modern engine rules and all the associated high-speed clipping we see,
are the teams running significantly shorter high gears compared to low gears than previously?
With the power units dropping 50% of their power or even more during super clipping,
does it not make sense to suit the gear ratios accordingly, having shorter gears when they
expect to not be deploying or even harvesting? Surely this presents a headache for the engineers
where different circuits present different amounts of clipping? Would they not want to
have longer high gears on tracks with less energy starvation?
Yeah, there's a balance and actress between all I suppose. I mean, I am pretty sure that the MGUK,
which is used to drive the electric motor, to drive the engine to give you the extra power,
the deployment, and the MGUK, which is used to charge the battery pack up,
only goes to a level and then sits there. It's not RPM related. It goes to a level of
recharge, let's say, due to the RPM it's doing. It doesn't just keep climbing, the more RPM you can
drive at. So, for example, sticking the car in the seventh gear, normal seventh gear straight,
or whatever you like to call it, where the engine would be doing 12,000, 13,000 RPM,
you wouldn't get much out of it by driving it, you know, put by being in fifth gear down that
straight, let's say, with no drive to the rear wheels, trying to drive the MGUK faster to get
more charge on it out of it. So there's a balance and act between what you can do and what you get
back, I suppose, from it. I think at the end of the day, the driver does have control over the gears
that he's running at, but the thing that they can't do is disconnect the engine from the rear
wheel drive. He has to have the rear wheels driving the engine to drive the MGUK. So it's not as though
he can be, let's say, in running at 12,000 RPM and pulling the clutch and rev the engine to 14,000
RPM just to drive the MGUK faster. He has to go with the speed that the engine is doing
relative to the speed that the rear wheel is doing. That is through a gear ratio, whatever one it is.
So if you're going to use all the power of the engine to drive the MGUK to charge the battery up,
then you've got nothing driving the car forward. So the last thing you want to do is to give it
another headache of driving the engine faster. You'd want the car to go as fast as possible
with freewheeling as such with no engine power. So you'd want to put it into a longer gear,
so you'd like to be just in the speed of the MGUK. So it's all a balance tonight between what
the maximum, what the best RPM is to make sure the car doesn't slow down anymore and to make sure
you're getting the maximum you can at the MGUK. The driver has got eight gears in the gearbox,
which will all be available to him. So he can decide on that. And I think the difference between
teams of one gear longer and such or one gear shorter or 500 RPM on the engine is a very,
very small compromise on either of those. So I don't think that when you're doing 320,
330 kilometers an hour, whether you're doing that with a slightly shorter seventh gear or a slightly
longer seventh gear or a slightly shorter eighth gear, I don't think it's something that really
sort of stands out as being a deal breaker. I think you just have to go with it and just try to
make sure that you've got the best out of the whole package that you've got. The next question
comes from Joe Poccoi from Brisbane, Australia. I'm not sure if you've answered this before,
but you've been talking a bit about car weight and the topic has arisen due to the Williams car
being overweight. Teams will always aim to make the car as light as possible, but how do they
become overweight and what do they do to reduce it? Apart from some of the obvious things,
we see like less paint exposing more of the carbon fiber. I remember you mentioning in the Jordan
days you were as pedantic as having the right bolt length exposing little thread at each end.
Yes, I've always been pedantic about weight because it's one of those things where you can
either pay a price and lap time for either the carbine too heavy or back in my days it was COG
height. You really were pushing as hard as possible to get the centre of gravity as low as possible.
So you always wanted the car to be as light as you could practically build it. I think I said
in one of my last podcasts, even way back then, we used to try to allocate everything on the car
on a big spreadsheet where it was going on the car in X, Y and Z. So you could tell about the weight
distribution, you could tell about the lateral differential weight and the height of the COG
as best you could in the days, you know, whenever steam was still used to repel trains.
So it's a long time ago, things have moved on quite a lot since then, but even to the extent
that we would have taken a car apart and taken all the nuts bolts, washers, tire ups, etc, etc,
put them, you know, the amount of them that was in front of the centre of gravity put them in a
bucket, the amount that was behind the centre of gravity put it in a bucket and then accommodate
that because, you know, measuring every one in those days was very difficult. Now it's not because
everything's modelled, everything has a specific weight for the density of it, etc, etc. So,
you know, it's one of those sort of things where sometimes you want a larger diameter bolt because
you want the surface area on it, but you don't need the strength of it. You just, you can see you
have a larger diameter bolt with the whole drilled up through the middle of it to get rid of the weight.
It's just those details, but the problem is that if you miss, if you miss those details on the car
and it just spreads right through the car from the front to the back, i.e. using, you know,
one and a half millimetre thick washers instead of a one millimetre thick washer, for example,
underneath a nut, that adds up to the amount of weight at the end of the day. And you just
so you've got to be on top of it from day one. So I think, you know, I think it's
it's very poor if you build a car that you don't know the weight of. That's the problem. If you're
surprised by the weight of it when it's put together, then you've got a problem. And that's
a bigger problem than trying to build a car that's light or, you know, or missing the weight limit by
a little bit. As long as you know it's going to be 10 kilograms heavier than the weight limit,
you've done your job. If you if you want it to be 10 kilograms lighter than the weight limit,
and it is 10 kilograms lighter than the weight limit, then you've done your job. But if it becomes
a surprise the minute you put the car on the on the scales, then I learned very early that
that's that's a surprise you got to take out of the equation. So you got to do your home your
homework better, you got to do your analysis better right from the first day you start putting
pencil to paper, as far as designing the cars concerned. And certainly the the monoclock itself
tends to be a place where you can end up if you have to make changes for strength reasons for
crash test reasons that you suffer. That's something that does appear to be the case for
Williams. They've got a new new monocoque spec coming I think around Baku time, which will be
a chunk of weight off. And indeed the problems Alpine had was down to the the monocoque as well.
As I understand, they kind of had a design that was sort of had recesses in it. So there was kind
of a hollowness in it to save weight, but it wasn't strong enough. So you ended up basically
having to pull some kind of resin in there to help bulk it up. And that's just extra weight
you're putting into the car. Yeah, I mean, I'll go back to that. It's a quick example to my days
with Ford Jaguar, basically, and the Rollover Bar for the R1, the Jaguar R1. I like the story.
Yeah, so it's a strange story. But, you know, we had a Rollover Bar on the on the the Stuart
Grand Prix car, the one SF3 before it. And you know, the weight of the Rollover Bar, the bolt-on
component there was, you know, and this is this is going back to just sort of memory a little bit
here. Let's say it was three kilograms. And Ford company us said, oh, we can we can design that
much lighter. It's a carbon fiber structure. We can design that much much lighter.
So okay, go go ahead. And they did and they took their month and tried to design something. They
sent us over a layup schedule for it. And we built it and it came up one and a half kilograms. And
we said, oh, that's fantastic. So we had a test our own test rig for the Rollover Bar before we
put it on the chassis, put it on to the this test rig. And lo and behold, it crashed, you know,
at about 50% of the of the load. So we thought, okay, oh, Ford said, oh, well, he shouldn't have
done that. Must be the layup somehow. No, it wasn't the layup. You know, it was done properly.
So they went back and got back on it. And another month later, they come back with another layup
and we made it again. And it did the same thing again. So then time was getting a bit tight for us
were getting the first race. So they off they went again to redesign the Rollover Bar. And at the
same time, we thought, well, we'll we'll make one ourselves because the next test is probably going
to be the real test on the real chassis to before we can go racing. So the Ford one came along and
lo and behold, they put it on the real chassis and the FIA came to visit the visit the test and
observed the test and it failed. And we just happened to have this one. Here's what we cooked
earlier. So we brought it on bolted the Ford example and put on our example, which weighed again,
the normal three kilograms out, we thought it should should weigh. And lo and behold, it passed
the test. So you get nothing for nothing. You know, these these chassis, if you can imagine,
you know, they've been Christ test to a certain degree for quite a few years now,
there is sort of a weight that passes the test, or passes all the tests, not just the one test,
but there is sort of the weight. So, you know, if you're going to come up with something that's
going to be 10% lighter, you know, you're going to have a problem somewhere. So you've got to
realize that it's just what what do you do? Where do you draw the line at? So it's just about
trying to make sure that you look at everything dot dot the i's and cross the t's on everything
during the design process, and not just any one part, because as I say, if you if you lose control
of it, it's normally everything that needs needs weight taken out of something Colin Chapman,
the founder of Lotus, I used to say was, you know, there's nothing as light as a whole.
So if you try to make something lighter, there's a chance it will be not a stroll.
But if it's something you put a hole in, then it's lighter. So just, you know,
adhere to everything, just look at everything all the way through in every detail, every knot,
bolt, washer, you know, tire up piece of lock wire, whatever you need to do, clip for doing
whatever, you look at every detail of everything and just say, right, okay, take that one off.
Can't do much with that one. Because if you're going to try and save weight later,
you've got a huge amount of parts to change, or else you're going to hit the chassis like
Williams and and probably all kind of done and try to get you know, kilos out of the chassis
instead of, you know, grams out of a lot of things, you're trying to get kilos out of the chassis.
The next question comes from Hugo Pring. What difference does the height and weight of George
Russell versus Kimmy Antonelli make to the dynamics of the Mercedes car? Might it assist Kimmy at
all? For reference, George is 1.85 meters, six foot naught, and Kimmy is 1.72 meters or five foot seven?
Well, yeah, six foot against five foot seven. I don't know, I would have thought there was
a slightly more than that. But anyway, I'll take your word for it. Three inches is a reasonable
amount. Weight wise, it shouldn't make any difference because quite a few years ago,
there was a driver weight added. I don't think it's added in the right way in my opinion,
but that's different, a different problem. I think it should be should be a pocket halfway up the
seat back. So it's at the centre of gravity, theoretically, of the driver. And that difference
in weight, if you're, you know, I think it's 80 up to 80 kilograms, the driver weight as such. I
can't remember the exact number. But if you're less, if your driver's less than that, then you have to
put ballast into that weight pocket. If he's over that, then you have to to a maximum of something
like five kilograms, I think it is. Then if you're over that, well, that's tough, you have to go
on a diet. So the height wise, then it becomes an aerodynamic thing. And obviously, it becomes a
slightly irritating as far as the length of the chassis is concerned. And again, quite a few
years ago, that was altered, there was a minimum length from the centre of a certain point in the
seat back to the brake pedal position. I believe it's still the same, like 1.8, 1.8 metres,
something of that nature. Maybe it's different from that. But anyway, there was a length put in
there to allow the taller drivers to not be cramped with their legs, you know, bent too much, etc,
etc. That's all okay. But it doesn't actually change the length of your bum to your head.
If you take our drivers that we had, you know, Rubens Barrakela and the Jordan many years ago,
1994, was a normally built person. Eddie Irvine wasn't. He had a very strange, he was
longer from his bum to his head than he was from his bum to his feet. He was very short legs.
Or I can't remember what was vice versa. I think it was very pretty short legs. So, you know,
the layout of the car, where the fire extinguisher and stuff was, was a compromise for both of them
a little bit. But taking into account the head, you can see all the detail of the halo and the
headrest area and the airbox, etc. A lot of aerodynamic detail goes into that. And one of
the first things that the design team would do is position the driver's helmet in space. So,
they say that we're okay, we design all this headrest area, halo, etc, etc. around that driver's
head position. So, for Russell, he might be sitting, you know, a centimeter higher than what
that design position was. And for Kimmy, he might be sitting a centimeter lower than what that position
was. But when you make the driver's seat, etc. and put them in their position, you would try very
hard to have the driver's head in the right, in the design position, if possible. If you've got two
different driver sizes, obviously, you have to compromise a little bit here and there, but you
probably compromise both of them. So, I don't see it being a big difference. Would it be negative
for one and positive for another? Not to the extent that you really get excited about it.
But, you know, there will be something there. And you've seen in the past people, you know,
my gosh, you're my car driving along with his head sticking out the side trying to get better
air flow into the airbox, etc. That all is all okay and can happen. But the best thing to do is try
to keep your head in the design window. And even now, the headrests are much tighter than
they used to be. The driver's head used to tip your head over quite a lot more than you do,
you can currently. So, the driver's head is sort of always on the move a little bit. So, you have
to give it a window of operation, as you might call it, like we talked about on the rear wing,
etc. or any of these aerodynamic surface. You have to give it a window where it can work
and do the job as best possible without lots of turbulence, but also without affecting the rear
of the car too much. So, you design it in a certain position and then you give it a, you know,
maybe one centimetre of movement that it could live with without being critical to anything. So,
yeah, it's taken into account very early in the days, but I don't think the difference in George
and Kimmy makes the fact that Kimmy is a mega driver. And the final question for today comes
from Not Chad. How do front wing adjustments work now with movable front wings? Which part of the
wing are they adjusting and have their adjustments changed since moving to active aero? Well,
actually Chad, it works in the same way. You basically adjust the flap angle that the main
plane is more or less stationary. You have a three element wing now as opposed to a four
element wing in the past. So, your adjustment will be the final two flaps. You put more angle on it
or less angle on it. And again, going back to the rear wing assembly, you know, it's one of the
sort of things where you've got a requirement from the front wing and that's to get the car balanced.
But the one thing you would try not to do with the front wing is to work it really as critically
or as near the critical limit as the rear wing, because the rear wing has the thing that gives
you the drag. So, the downforce and drag ratio of the rear wing you'd be working
as a sequence closed to the maximum of downforce. And you know that you'll get rid of that
the drag that's generated there because the whole package isn't as efficient as a normal design would
be when you open it. But on the front wing, what you want to do is try to make sure that the
flow structure to the rest of the car with the wing closed, the front wing closed or open is still
fairly much the same. You don't want to change the flow structure too much because you'll affect
the rest of the car. But what you what you need to do is maybe for some circuits have a degree or
two degree more angle on the front wing. So, your front wing will will be running out a little bit
more angle, but again not to the level that makes it critical for the flaps or it shouldn't be to
level that makes it critical for the flaps because you don't want a big flow structure change when
you open it or or shut it. So, a slightly different compromise, but the adjustment is still very
similar. You just put more angle of attack on the on the wing flaps relative to the main plane
to get that that flow underneath the main plane to be traveling faster.
To stay attached to those flaps, which gives makes a slower pressure, which means it sucks the car
down to the ground. Well, some great answers there to some great questions. Thanks, Gary. And
thanks to everybody who sent them in. As I said, it's podcasts at therace.com. That's podcasts
at the hyphen race.com. If you'd like to fire a question in for a future episode, remember,
they can either be written or by voice notes. Well, we're going to reconvene when will it be. It'll
be after the the doubleheader, the spa Budapest doubleheader that leads us into the summer break.
So, join us then for more from Gary.
The athletic.
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About this episode
Spa looms as the hosts dig into Red Bull’s “revolving rear-wing” troubles and why airflow behavior is so hard to get right when wings move. They connect what happened to Max Verstappen in the British GP to the FIA’s safety scrutiny with Red Bull and Ferrari, and explain the DRS-style tradeoff: less drag, less downforce, and a risk that “the airflow reattaches” too late. Timing, slot gaps, and transient testing all matter.
In this episode of The Race F1 Tech Show, Edd Straw and former F1 technical director Gary Anderson look ahead to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa while revisiting a couple of key technical talking points from Silverstone.
They discuss Red Bull’s troublesome rear wing and the issues that have impacted Max Verstappen in consecutive weekends, with Gary explaining the complexities of airflow reattachment, why the revolving rear wing design itself isn't necessarily the issue, and whether the team should return to a more conventional rear wing setup for Spa.
Gary also shares his thoughts on the front-left wheel shield issue Kimi Antonelli suffered during the British Grand Prix and how he'd react to that if he was working for Mercedes, plus he answers questions from listeners about the fine margins of F1 car weight and design, how driver height and weight affect car dynamics, and how front wing adjustments are made in the modern active-aero era.
Get bonus F1 podcasts, extra content and ad-free listening, sign-up to The Race Members' Club on Patreon today.
