Red Bull’s technical director expects to see the new Formula 1 cars for 2022 hit significantly higher top speeds.
Pierre Waché said that changes to the way this year’s cars generate downforce should mean they generate considerably less drag.
The 2022’s regulations are a radical re-working of Formula 1 cars’ aerodynamics. Designers have been permitted to take advantage of ‘ground effect’ to an extent not seen since the early eighties.
Red Bull chief technology officer Adrian Newey described it as a “huge regulation change, the biggest one we’ve had since 1983, when the venturi [tunnel] cars were banned and flat bottomed cars introduced.”
“The theory is that if you create a shape where, as the downforce is produced, that always kind of produces up-wash at the back of the car, so you get this kind of rooster tail coming up at the back,” Newey explained. However, he said “if that then back fills or side fills from underneath, then the wake from the car goes above…