Ferrari have spent the last few races watching helplessly as a
once-commanding championship lead for their driver Fernando Alonso has
been turned into a narrow deficit by the revived steamroller that is Red
Bull and Sebastian Vettel.
Where Red Bull have significantly improved their car,
Ferrari have effectively stood still, and they have been quite open
about the fact that they are struggling to introduce new aerodynamic
developments.
This, they say, is a result of a lack of correlation
between the results they are getting from their wind tunnel, a crucial
tool where new parts are tested, and the effect when those new parts are
put on the car on the track.
“I don't think the problem Ferrari are trying to fix can be fixed
”
That is a major concern - and
especially so because it has been going on for two years, with Ferrari
intermittently thinking they have got to the bottom of the problem, and
then realising again that they haven't.
An F1 car's performance is 80% dictated by
aerodynamics. They are developed by a wind tunnel and by using a
computer programme known as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) .
If a wind tunnel is running correctly, it is the best
way to develop a car, while CFD is a good tool for understanding airflow
around the car.
A wind tunnel is a complicated device used to simulate a complicated phenomenon.
In effect, a racing car is travelling at a speed over
the track but the mass of the car is moving slower because it is pushing
air in front of it, with the exception of the parts that are producing
downforce - such as the front wing, diffuser and rear wing, which
energise airflow and make it go faster.
What you're trying to do is minimise the amount of air
the car is pushing forward and maximise the speed of the airflow over
it, because that creates downforce.
Ferrari's wind tunnel at their Maranello factory
In a wind tunnel, you have air being blown by a fan,
the road rolling and the car sitting still. It's a very different
environment from the track.
You want the airflow in front of the car - what is
called the boundary layer - and the rolling road to be at the same
speed.
To do that is an absolute nightmare, and they never will be the same.
Another problem is that the size of the models the
teams use has increased over the years - most now use a 60% scale model -
but the size of the wind tunnels themselves has not.
That can mean that the airflow coming off the car hits the wall or the roof, which changes the airflow over the car.
The result of all that is that, in reality, the wind tunnel and the track will never completely correlate.
To successfully read the wind tunnel results,
therefore, the group of people running it has to understand what is
important - you need the people there to see past the raw data and
understand what it means.
In short, I don't think the problem Ferrari are trying
to fix can be fixed. And they created another problem for themselves by
going to use another wind tunnel - Toyota's in Germany, left over from
the now defunct Toyota works F1 team.
Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg study Mercedes' wind tunnel model
So they have results from one wind tunnel, different
results from another, and more results from CFD and they're standing in
the middle scratching their heads.
Shutting down their own wind tunnel, as they are going
to do, is the right thing. It takes out of the equation one extra thing
that can mess them up.
Before India, they also went off and did some
straight-line testing. That is very important - you can do a ride-height
map and match that to the wind tunnel, you can see when the diffuser
and front wing stall more accurately.
You'll see a lot of stuff that will help you understand
the aerodynamic map of the car a bit better but you won't see what
happens when the driver turns the steering wheel, and that is the
important bit. It defines how fast a car goes around a corner.
It's very difficult to simulate how the airflow works
as a car goes around a race track, so you need a group of people who can
read the data you do get and understand the off-sets. Otherwise, you
are wasting all your time at a race track and you'll never get it
sorted.
I still believe Ferrari missed the basics of the
aerodynamic package of the car this year - the exhaust outlets still
compromise the airflow too much in the important 'coke-bottle' area
between the rear tyres.
When they changed it for the Spanish Grand Prix in May,
they made it better and said there was another step to come. But they
haven't taken that next step. Red Bull, by contrast, have developed
their car from being not so good at the start of the year, to one that
was better and which they could develop further.
Red Bull have been making small changes all the time.
You had to look twice to see the change they made to the rear of the
sidepods in Korea, but the effect of it was big enough to justify a
completely new rear bodywork package, which is not cheap or easy.
Alonso optimistic on title chances
And the small amount of change needed to make the
'coke-bottle' work better, Ferrari could do that tomorrow, and make 10
times that change, but they haven't. So there is a lack of vision there
in terms of seeing where they're trying to get to with the car.
And that's the main problem. Ferrari lack a visionary - someone like Red Bull's chief technical officer Adrian Newey.
That doesn't mean they can't build a good car. They
have - it started bad and it got better. Since the Spanish Grand Prix it
has been there or thereabouts, but never actually the quickest.
Combined with Alonso's consistency it was enough to
build a decent championship lead by mid-season. But as Red Bull have
come on strong, Alonso has lost his advantage - not helped by being
taken off at the first corner in two of the last five races.
But as this year has proven, whether that is enough to beat Red Bull over a full season is another matter.
They might have to take a step backwards to go
forwards. They stated ahead of this season that they had taken a
deliberately aggressive approach to the design of their car. But I don't
understand what that is.
You only design something that is going to be better - stiffer, lighter or produces more downforce.
If it isn't at least one of those three things you can be as aggressive as you like, you're not going to progress.
Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel headed McLaren's Jenson Button and
Ferrari's Fernando Alonso in first practice at the Indian Grand Prix.