F1 reveals first look at 2021 car design in the wind tunnel

Formula 1 has revealed exclusive footage of a prospective 2021 Grand Prix car design undergoing testing in the wind tunnel.

While the sport's future regulations shall be set in stone in October, F1 and the FIA have been hard at work for the past twelve months researching and developing the aerodynamic design that will be put on track from 2021.

Initial studies were conducted using CFD (computational fluid dynamics), which remains at the forefront of F1's research. But for validation purposes, development moved to a wind tunnel using a 50% percent model, with testing conducted under very secret conditions.

F1's development team, led by chief technical advisor Pat Symonds, used Sauber's state-of-the-art facility at Hinwil and its independent consultancy group, with all information remaining confidential and off limits to the Alfa Romeo F1 team.

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We've seen rendering and artists images of potential 2021 designs, but the video offers a first glimpse at an authentic concept, including 18-inch wheels, sidepods and bargeboards and a relatively unsophisticated front wing.

Overall, it's a clean, simple and uncluttered design, and one everyone hopes will allow drivers to race hard and close to each other, in all circumstances.

"The wind tunnel testing we are doing is slightly different to what the teams might do," Symonds told Formula1.com.

"The teams concentrate solely on the forces on the car, through a variety of attitudes as they move the car around.

"While we naturally have an interest in what those forces are and particularly how those forces change as the car moves, we’re even more interested in what is happening to the turbulent air behind the car.

"For that reason, although we are doing most of our development in CFD, and that CFD is using some pretty advanced techniques which aren’t commonly used by the teams, we want to back up the virtual simulations with a physical simulation.

"We also chose to use a 50% model rather than a 60% model and we chose to run that model quite a long way forward in the wind tunnel, so this gave us the opportunity to best inspect the wake of the car."

With regard to measuring the wake behind the car - the turbulent mass of air that typically impacts overtaking and a drivers ability to closely follow another - Symonds explained why is wasn't necessary to place a second car behind the first.

"We did do that in 2008, with the overtaking studies we did then for 2009, and for that, we had to go down to a quarter scale model which really is getting too small," said the British engineer.

"That is what negates us doing it. Even in a big tunnel like Sauber’s, you could only really run one configuration with the cars really very close.

"What we’re trying to do is use CFD as our real simulation tool and this is just the correlation."

Queried on the current status of F1's research and the findings that will hopefully lead to closer and better racing with more overtaking, Symonds said that results were "actually beyond what I thought we could achieve when we started the project.

"With the configurations we have got at the moment, the results are exceptional."

Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA’s Head of Single Seater Technical Matters, confirmed the very positive outcome of the extensive research and development programme.

"There have been no major surprises," he said. "So there is a 5-10% wake disruption, compared to the current levels of 50%, although it depends on the exact configuration you are testing and so on."

Symonds insisted that the findings and data of the ongoing R&D programme have been shared with all the sport's teams, while several outfits also contributed research of their own.

"The teams have been very good, the teams that have had the resources to do it, have worked on a number of projects for us, and they are all fully informed of what is going on," added Symonds.

"We have meetings every few months, we send our geometry to them, they then run that in their own CFD environments and they feedback results to us.

"They have been as involved as they want to be. Some can’t put the resources in.

"All teams results are shared until we get to the cut-off point, where from that point on they have to operate within their declared rules."

Bring on 2021 already!

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