F1 considering to introduce wheel arches.
So as most of you are probably aware F1 is considering to introduce wheel arches somewhere during the 2023 season.
Here is another article on the matter:
https://the-race.com/formula-1/f1-wh...a-2021-fiasco/
Some take away's:
Tombazis also stressed that there is no desire to design the wheel arches “to be removed or fitted in a rush”, meaning that they would only be put onto the cars before sessions or races or during red flag periods.
He also stressed that if the race starts wet and then dries up, the wheel arches would remain on the cars to the end of the grand prix.
So if there is heavy rain say half an hour before the start and than no more rain, they either will postpone the race or fit the arches and have to run the wheel arches for what might be an 80% dry race. Doesn't sound like a great plan to me.
Pirelli is indicating that if with these arches they are going to run in much wetter conditions, they need to know in time because the current full wets are not designed for these conditions because currently the cars without arches would not run in those conditions.
“If the idea is to have a device that is avoiding to have spray in the air and the visibility is much better so they are running in full wet conditions, we need this information to design tyres to cope with these conditions because the intermediate tyre is not a tyre for heavy rain conditions, the aquaplaning resistance of the intermediate is not designed for that.”
It all sure does sound quite rushed to me.
Rather see they indeed research how much is caused by the wider tyres and how much is caused by the ground effect aerodynamics and only after thoroughly analysing the finding, decide on what would be the best cause of action.
If it was found that the amount of spray of these wider tyres does play a big part then it would be interesting to model what the effect of a 5cm narrower tyre would have. Not only would a narrower tyre sling less spray into the air it would also be 5cm further away (at equal car width) from the most active upwards aero.