Ever since Graham Hill arrived at Monaco in his Lotus 49B in May 1968, Formula One was never to be the same again. Colin Chapman had designed a car with modest front wings and a subtle rear spoiler which makes the beginning of the F1 ‘aero’ era.
Prior to this cars had only used mechanical grip generated from the tyres and suspension but now using the inverse of ‘lift’ required for airliners, F1 cars would exploit downforce to allow them to travel more quickly through the corners at each circuit.
Dirty air kills overtaking
The problem with aerodynamics placed on top of a racing car to press it into the track, is the airflow is disturbed and this creates vortices like small tornado’s behind the car.
When another car then comes up behind, the ‘dirty air’ affects its front end aerodynamics making them less efficient which affects both the speed of the car behind and also creates tyre degradation.
As the F1 cars developed more and more downforce, the dirty air grew and eventually meant an F1 car might need to be two seconds a lap quicker than the car in front if the driver was to pull off an overtaking manoeuvre.
Prior to the launch of Mercedes W08 car for 2017, Lewis Hamilton identified the growing problem as he anticipated the upcoming test in Barcelona.
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“Feedback from the engineers is that overtaking will be worse,” the then three-times world champion, said. “The dirty air is far more powerful and more turbulent than it has been in the past. We’ll find out at the first test. I hope it’s better but don’t hold your breath.”
Formula One had been battling this issue for more than a decade and failed to find a solution other than the DRS employed to mitigate this problem.
Back in 2015, Motorsport Magazine interviewed genius F1 designer of yesteryear – Gordon Murray – and asked the South African what he would do to improve Formula One.
Murray immediately began with the downforce on the cars, explaining:
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“The big problem with F1 is that almost always there’s a medium-speed corner leading onto a straight. With the current cars you lose balance and downforce when you’re following another car so you’re never close enough to overtake. If you look back at old films you’ll see that you could tailgate someone through the last corner and onto the straight. Halfway down the straight you could slipstream and pull out.”
“With modern cars the front and rear wings create a big percentage of the downforce. I’m picking numbers out of the sky, but if you’ve got 25 or 30 per cent of the downforce on the front wing, and you’re in the dirty wash of the car in front, you’re going to spoil the downforce and the balance.
“The more downforce you have on a car the more balance is critical. Now losing a bit of downforce behind a car is one thing, but losing the balance is a disaster because you start getting understeer coming onto the straight when the front wing isn’t working. You’re never going to be close enough to overtake,” Murray concluded.
He went on to suggest significantly restricting the aero parts on top of the car and reintroducing ground effect principles which generated downforce from low air pressure in Venturi channels underneath the car.
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These cars ran in F1 from 1978 to 1982 before being banned due to the dangers of huge crashes when the underfloor seal was broken.
Yet as Murray projected, ground effect became the eventual solution the FIA employed to make the racing better and overtaking more possible, but did the new 2022 rules go far enough?
That season the number of overtakes in F1 increased significantly, but this year the drivers have been complaining again of finding it difficult to follow another car because of the dirty air.
Nikolas Tombazis who heads of the FIA’s day to day management of F1 now reveals: “Close following, let’s say the wake, has definitely got a bit worse this year. We knew it would deteriorate a bit when people developed a bit more.
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“There were a few particular areas of the car where some loopholes we didn’t manage to close soon enough,” he admits. “For example, the front wing end plate area was one of them, some of the wheel furniture area, brake ducts and stuff on the inside of the front wheel, these areas made the wake a bit worse.
“I think we’ve learned a bit how to do it next time around but overall, the wake did get a bit worse [in 2023] compared to 2022, still a reasonable amount better than 2021, but there has been a bit of a deterioration in terms of closeness.”
The new FIA regulations banned F1 designers deliberately creating “outwash” created by the front wings and components around the front wheels. Yet in a surprising move they did not allow themselves the wriggle room to ban certain designs which ‘unwittingly’ created outwash as a side effect of solving another aerodynamic problem.
Carlos Sainz now makes a remarkable claim that Formula One drivers are deliberately using the dirty air to affect others performance during qualifying sessions.
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“As drivers, we know that if you do a corner two seconds in front of another car, one second or two seconds in front, you’re going to make him lose a tenth or two in that corner,” said the Spaniard.
“As the weekends have gone on, I see people relaxing a bit on that,” he continued. “When it’s tight in Q1 and Q2 I see people giving a bit of dirty air on purpose in some corners, to maybe make the others lose some time in corners.
“We don’t consider it to be impeding because it’s not like you need to lift,” he admitted. “But you know you’re giving him dirty air and you’re giving him a bad run in that corner.”
Despite the track getting quicker as each lap of qualifying progresses due to the fresh rubber being laid down improving the grip, Red Bull and Max Verstappen in particular have been keen to be first out this season when attempting their final run for pole position.
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The disadvantage of a slightly less grippy track is clearly mitigated for Red Bull by ensuring their driver is not stuck behind another giving him the dirty air effect.
Further this is clearly the reason we have seen the pit lane silly antics where drivers are crawling along to create a large gap to the car going out in front of them.
Tombazis believes matters will settle down for 2024 but strangely fails to address why the FIA have not clamped down in next years regulations on the ‘outwash’ teams are creating
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“I don’t think it’s going to get much worse for next year because I don’t think there’s any other loopholes to scrape though, the front wing area, and so on,” says Tombazis, though he cannot be certain.
“I expect it’s going to stay very similar. I also don’t think it’s got worse during the year, I think it was just this year versus last year.”
Fernando Alonso has called for a return single lap qualifying to resolve the dirty air tricks currently used in those sessions. the drivers would be given an out lap, 1 quick lap and an in lap to qualify and each car would go out in turn rather than as is currently all together.
