#Red Bull’s downwash sidepods not why it is dominating F1, says Allison
river swallow
dusk star
I’m SHOCKED. Where’s pmichael so he can argue with James Allison?
To make this a more valuable contribution: coefficient of lift (downforce) is the difference between the positive coefficient on the top of the car and negative coefficient of pressure under the car (or under wings). One definition of coefficient of pressure is 1 - (velocity of air locally / velocity of air in the freestream) squared. So the absolute highest that it can be is 1, when the velocity of air locally is zero, ie the air has stopped. On the low pressure side, it can be extremely negative, because it gets more and more negative the higher the local velocity. This means that in direct contribution to downforce, any part above the car, or the top surface of any wing, has a much much less impact than a suction side (under the floor, under wings). They can peak at -7ish Cp, the pressure side would only be about 0.4.
So, the main impact is in their amplification of the downforce capability of other parts of the car.
narrow herald
Same thing as Mercedes no-pods in peoples opinion I guess, focused only on the one major thing that they see but there are a ton of details that can't be seen that have to work together to make the car fast.