Quote:
Originally Posted by GuidoK
What I'm saying is who's to tell that those structures generate the same amount of downforce as the RB/Ferrari.
They might be higher off the ground. Or generate less downforce in another way.
That kind of data is not available to you or anyone else.
Point is that the MERC is still a slow car, presumably low on downforce as they loose most in the twisty sectors because their top speed is ok, even better than the top tier cars.
Who's to say that the lack of downforce comes from a floor that generates less downforce and therefore solves the porpoising.
You have no intel on how merc exactly changed their floor and I'm pretty sure they will tell no one.
So nothing is sure in this regard.
Most teams have said that it's a very delicate balance, so the trick is to get the most downforce out of a floor without getting it to porpoise.
That it's a better floor than the previous one.... god I might hope so.
But having it solved, is something I think you can only say when they have a car that is competitive with Ferrari/RB and still doesnt bounce.
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It clearly doesn't generate the same amount of down force because they are still a far ways off.
That's not solving porpoising if you have to sacrifice down force, that essentially is just a band aid like before. Why would you develop an entirely new floor to solve porpoising by decreasing down force when you can do it for free with ride height increases and cut outs. Mercedes spent alot of time and research of these last few races to observe what causes porpoising so they could solve it without losing massive amounts of downforce to solve the issue, hence why their floor does not have relief cut outs to decrease the suction under their car.
Sure Mercedes doesn't expose their data on how they created fixes, but an educated hypothesis can absolutely be formed to make a closer judgement on how they solved it vs. just guessing, for example what I have seen on f1 technical:
1) Down force vs. ride height charts and simulations show the immense losses of down force in conjunction with ride height increases. Yet this still didn't solve porpoising for mercedes when they increased ride height.
2) The new floor skins show only minor adjustments to diffuser kick angle and tunnel height, this doesn't correspond to significant losses in down force that ride height would cause. Aka there is no way the new floor shape would decrease downforce as much as the previous ride height did, as the geometry isn't different enough.
So even if the changes caused a loss in downforce (which they probably do because there is more tunnel volume now) it would be minor compared to the ride height increase done before. This is indicative that they are not trading off down force to solve porpoisng, because the amounts of down force lost is going to be less than the amount they would lose with the previous ride height increases. So clearly they optimized the tunnels to stop stalling air flow, probably sealed it better or manged wake better because wake ingestion as shown by kyle through cfd analysis hurts down force and cause cause the porpoising issue, and optimized downforce generation because it doesn't porpoise with any major amplitude showing it is maintaining the downforce in the optimal window.
The more plausible explanation on how they solved porpoising is they reshaped their tunnels to prevent air flow stalling, and stiffened their floor edges to prevent it from flexing down and causing the rapid increase in down force which leads to the bottom and stalling cycles. This is also backed up by evidence of a reprofiled floor with different tunnel characteristics, and the new edge blade which is suspected to ride on skates to maintain a more level floor edge.
So likely they make less downforce than RB and Ferrari because they are slower, but it is not plausible that they dumped downforce to stop porpoising because that is not a solution in the slightest, that is a band aid, and it is not backed up by how their floor changed.
No, solving porpoising means it doesn't porpoise that's the literal definition of solving porpoising. Sure they don't have the performance yet, but that comes with time as they now understand how to avoid the floor from porpoising.
Just because a car doesn't porpoise doesn't mean it isn't utilizing the full potential of its under floor. It just means you have an understanding of underbody flow conditions to prevent it, and understand how to make downforce in a way you don't upset the suspesion. Saying that having porpoisng means you have full utilization of the underfloor is misleading..... Mercedes was proof of this.
Watch Kyle's video explaning porpoising, and you'll understand why solving it is a massively difficult feat.