The New Cars are Sweet!
If you haven’t seen the new Formula 1 cars this year, I’ll tell you right now….they look fucking amazing. 2022 begins a whole new era for F1 racing, where the cars will be able to follow each other closer than they ever have before and they won’t be taking on as much dirty, turbulent air.
There’s some new eco-friendly-ish fuel this year, the wheels are bigger, and the cars are much safer overall. The engineers have been hard at work this off-season, and I can’t wait to see the results.
As the drivers were sitting in hot tubs with their soulmates sipping drinks with umbrellas, I’m sure it was a more than a headache for team principals and engineers all off-season trying to get the cars up to speed. But I’m sure we the fans will surely benefit from the upgrades that have been implemented.
New F1 Car Regulations 2022
Front Wing Mods
This is the first place that air comes into contact with the car, so it’s a crucial part of the overall aerodynamics of the car. This year is a much simpler design to eradicate the notorious ‘Y250 vortex’. What is ‘Y250 vortex’ you might ask? Well, the name comes from the location that the spinning air vorticies hit the front wing at 250mm on the ‘Y’ or center plane. Look, all you need to know is the new wing makes the ‘Y250’ vortex disappear making it easier to follow cars in front, reducing the dirty air and increasing the speed of trailing cars in the slipstream for much closer races.
Rear Wing Mods
If you haven’t figured it out yet, air is very important to the performance of the F1 car, so basically the update to the design of the rear wing reduces the dirty air that comes off the back of the car which pushes this turbulent air high above the following car to allow the cars behind to follow closer and yet again take advantage of the slip stream of the car in front.
Floor of the Car
The new floor has far more controlled airflow underneath by utilizing two fully shaped underfloor tunnels improving the downforce which will compensate for the loss of downforce by the updated rear wing design. This lessens the impact of dirty air that hits the front wing of trailing cars.
Courtesy of Formula1.com Article 15 July 2021. 10 Things You Need To Know About the All New 2022 F1 Car
Wheels & Rims
Wheel sizes have increased from the 13″ wheels to 18″ wheels this year with low profile tires which make it look fucking fantastic. Teams will also utilize wheel covers over the rims to reduce the aerodynamic shortcomings of the wheel and tire. Small winglets, wheel brows are also permitted for the first time which will curve over the wheels from the inside.
Bargeboards
The bargeboards are being removed, which were introduced because of the previous front wing design. The bargeboards actually created low, wide dirty air which had a major impact on the car following behind.
Eco-Friendly Fuel
This year Formula 1 is switching to second generation E10 fuel, or 10% ethanol where previously they were allowed to use 5.7% bio-components. This is a huge step in moving closer towards fully-sustainable fuel in the future and making the jobs of engineers far more difficult in figuring out how to make this shit work in a high performance engine.
Stronger Chassis
The chassis regulations keep safety at the top of mind. Now, the chassis needs to absorb 48% more energy in the front impact tests and 15% more energy in the rear. The nose section is also longer to help disperse energy from crashes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the new 18″ low-pro tires and wheel covers are going to make these cars looks sexier than ever. The new E10 fuel will have tree huggers like me singing koombaya. The improved chassis will keep fuckers from dying, hopefully. And the removal of the bargeboards, the new designs for the front & rear wing, as well as the floor, this means that there’s going to be a lot more cars running up the ass-end leading cars in which in turn will create closer races.