r/F1Technical • u/AntHoliday2681 • Jan 21 '22
Question/Discussion Why did F1 teams randomly remove their front wing off their cars in the early 80's
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u/flan-magnussen Jan 22 '22
Some contemporary cars such as the Arrows A2 and insta-banned Lotus 88 took this to the extreme and minimized the rear wing as much as possible. Those were pretty wild times for design in F1.
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u/ComanderCupcake Jan 22 '22
The Arrows A2 have both some IndyCar vibes or those cars that break land-speed records
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u/BoostandEthanolYT Jan 22 '22
I think in two parts. One was the airflow on the wing might’ve directed air away from the tunnels. The other thing is from what I’ve heard, the tunnels were adding more front than rear downforce, so adding more front downforce in the form of front wings wasn’t improving performance.
As an anecdote, since rear wings can help improve underfloor downforce, I’ve heard that adding more rear wing angle could actually create more oversteer since more front downforce was produced by the improved floor.
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u/joaovitorblabres Jan 22 '22
Once I heard Piquet saying that in some circuits they needed to use negative rear wings because of the ground effect, it worked so well that they needed to reduce the car's aerodynamic to go faster. I think this is a similar principle, the ground effect worked so well that no front wing would push more air will to go to under the floor. I think that, as the rear nose shape was designed to cut the air, probably the no front wing setup could preduce more straight line speed without losing too much drivability. And, we need to remember that was few computational resources, so they need to test those changes on track.
Maybe I'm wrong, but this is what's looking like what happened.
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Jan 22 '22 edited Jan 27 '22
[deleted]
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u/joaovitorblabres Jan 22 '22
Well, maybe I'm wrong on the thoughts around Piquet's words. To me, it's makes sense the use of a negative rear wing to reduce the downforce as an way to prevent some bump problems, as it was need a smooth area to skirts seal the underfloor, and then creating a more predictable car. So, yes, using negative rear wing will result in a general aerodynamic penalty, but the reduced downforce could result in a more stable car. Removing front wing could not affected that much the aerodynamic and reduced drag was worth the less downforce.
Just to clarify, I'm not a specialist, so I can be really wrong and if you think that I'm, please let me know.
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u/Doyle524 Jan 22 '22
Similarly to my other comment, creating lift with the rear wing would not help keep the skirt on the ground - it would actually mean the car would take longer to drop down into optimal effective position after hitting a bump or kerb. And as I said in the other comment, more rear downforce from a higher-angled rear wing increases the downforce created by the ground effect in general - running a negative wing would have increased the time of lost downforce, not decreased it, as well as reducing the positive downforce created by the ground effect in optimal position, making the car less stable, not more.
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u/Minanator Jan 26 '22
use of a negative rear wing
Just because a wing has an angle of attack that is not pointing downwards does not mean it will have no downforce. It does mean that it will have a lot less drag, though, generally, but depends on the wing.
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u/Doyle524 Jan 22 '22
I think Piquet’s comments have been misinterpreted here.
Negative rear wings, that is to say rear wings actively inducing lift, would create significantly more drag than a wing at 0° to the reference plane, and would reduce pressure to the rear wheels meaning a smaller contact patch and less accelerational force before breaking traction.
What I’m nearly certain he meant was that since the ground effect downforce was usually biased towards the front of the car by the positioning of the compression, and since more rear wing increases the general ground effect of the car by bringing the entire car lower to the ground, and since the downforce created by the ground effect was significantly more efficient than the still-primitive wings teams used (often just a flat plane to collect the air and ram it directly into an angled plane with little to no curve in between to help the flow laminate to the wing surface - see https://i.imgur.com/bi8Nzba.jpg), the teams found that raising the rear wing angle actually increased the front downforce more than the rear downforce, and so to proportionally increase rear downforce and shift the balance of the car toward understeer, they had to counterintuitively reduce the rear wing angle.
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Jan 22 '22
Ground effects. They made more DF like that than they did with wings. Of course it was banned after double chassis designs popped up. But we’re apparently using more ground effects this year making it alot similar to what Indy car did over a decade ago
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u/AntHoliday2681 Jan 22 '22
Thank you all for your replys, you have helped me a lot to better understand how ground effect cars work and, honestly, it looks like a fascinating world which is still pretty much new to me
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u/m4a3e8sherman Jan 22 '22
Isn't that how Jochen Rindt died? Ran a wingless setup at Monza to go faster.
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u/LeoStiltskin Jan 22 '22
Rindt wasn't driving a ground effect car.
Also, not having his belts properly fastened killed him.
Grisly details ahead, don't read if squeamish:
Rindt, like many contemporary drivers didn't like wearing seat belts. They preferred to be thrown from the car in an accident, since the cars were basically fire bombs in accidents. He only fastened his upper belts. When he ran off the track and into the guard rail, since his lower belts weren't attached, his body slumped downward and his belts mangled his face and neck.
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u/Magnet50 Jan 22 '22
Rindt had written a letter to Colin Chapman (who used to say that he built “lightness” into his cars) calling into to question the design and construction of the Lotus cars.
While he did wear seat belts, he eschewed the use of anti-submarine belts (to keep the driver from sliding under the steering wheel because of their seating position). When the brake shaft of his Lotus failed (the car used inboard front brakes) at Monza’s Parabolica, his crashed into the Armco and slid down into the footwell until he caught his neck on his lap and shoulder belt buckle.
A lot of very good drivers died in Colin Chapman’s cars.
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u/wagymaniac Jan 22 '22
A quote from that time: "everybody remember the fast and dangerous car, nobody remember the slow but safer car"
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u/stq66 Gordon Murray Jan 22 '22
Or the other: „either you become WC in Colin’s cars or you die in it. Often you do both.“
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u/Schumacher55 Jan 22 '22
I think there's one by Bernie where he basically told Rindt to go to Lotus to win but to Brabham to live. Turns out he won and died at Lotus. RIP
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u/vatelite Jan 22 '22
To balance the downfloorce which on some circuit puts more force on the back wheels. So to balance it out, tiny wang is out on the front
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u/wagymaniac Jan 22 '22
Wing design knowledge at that time wasn't very developed, those simple wings didn't made a huge diference in handling, then ground effect was discovered and introduced, that made a difference so big, that front wing was almost useless. Still some drivers would prefer more oversteering cars in some tracks so they still added the front wing to suite their driving style.
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u/Dragonfiery_RDF Jan 22 '22
Makes me wonder if this season or maybe the next there would be teams crazy enough to be running no wing at all
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u/Schumacher55 Jan 22 '22
I think it all comes down to center of pressure, the ground effect already produced so much downforce that wings weren't necessary, but by adding them you could shift the CoP forwards or even backwards by using wings who produced lift (I heard about this once but don't remember where).
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u/FunCartographer7372 Oct 13 '23
I think this happened primarily in '82 specifically, though there are some odd examples going back to '79.
While Lotus started using ground effect as early as '77, it took a while for the rest of the teams to catch on, so I think ground effect's initial period where it was used throughout the field was '79-'80. Some cars had good enough ground effect to where the front wing added more drag than gave front downforce benefit, so they'd occasionally remove the front wings, generally at fast flowing circuits.
Then '81 was a change up because they banned side skirts and imposed minimum ride height to limit the ground effect. But Brabham/Piquet's dominant season was because they openly defied the rule and used hydraulics to lower the car to the ground when in motion, but when stationary it rose back up above minimum height and met the regulation. It wasn't even a secret - commentators taked about it on broadcast even - just something nobody knew how to properly enforce. Anyway, other teams added their own height lowering mechanisms throughout the year as a result of Brabham having gotten away with it, but generally throughout the field the ground effect was weakened so I don't think anyone ran without front wings that year.
But then in '82, Brabham's loophole exploitation the year before led them to stop trying to restrict it in the regulations, so ground effect was back allowed to maximum potential. With the continued developments it had gone through over the previous few years, it was the most effective it had been. So this is the year when removing the front wing became most common. But still it tended to be at the fast, flowing circuits. And still not everyone did it.
And then in '83 they doubled back because of the danger level it evolved to, and ground effect was banned outright so front wings were back to stay. And luckily, to my taste, the teams finally started slimming down the hideous, wide, flat sidepods since there weren't any tunnels underneath anymore. Brabham's '83 car is my personal favorite - it was shaped like a rocket on wheels with only small angled side pods between rear wheel into the side of the engine and a long narrow nose and driver cockpit.
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u/no2jedi Jan 22 '22
It wasn't random. A cursory look at the rules back then give a clear reason: ground effect.
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u/BlankSpirit1700 Jan 22 '22
Cuz of the ground effect. Now that it striked me. Is there a possibility we might see this in Bahrain???
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u/Haier_Lee Jan 21 '22
Simply, the ground effects were working so well the front wings weren't needed