FIA steps up illegal floor offensive

[eragon]

Hello Technicians guys!!

Please can you explain better me this matter?

<<The cars will be raised so they can ride the kerbs with the stiffer floor>>
Formula 1 : News FIA - F1-Live.com

What are exactly and with "poor words" the critical points of this question about the illegal floor body in F1?
Which the advantages?
Why whether to make them illegal and not instead to allow them to everybody?
Is it a safety problem of the cars?

Thanks

eragon

[Jeff]

Well, stories about flexible floor and especially flexibility of the front part of the floor, litterally called "T-Tray", have been around for while and years.
It's easy to understand that there is advantage to run a car with the lowest ride height as possible, as this will improve grip, mainly in slow corner.
It has always been a challenge for teams to run flexible T-Tray, but FIA has defined some deflection test, limiting the deformation under a 50 kg force.
Obvioulsy some teams had compensate this deflection test by fitting their T-Tray with a preloaded spring designed to withstand the 50kg force from the FIA deflection test. But running on the track and when the car hits the ground with a higher force than the 50 kg of preload, this will allow the floor to deform upwards.
So far, teams did always stipulated saying this was to avoid any chassis damage.
But now, FIA is well aware that there is clearly an advantage and will take action from Barcelona now on based on the fact that movable aerodynamic are ban.
New rules will see force increase from 50 kg to 200 kg, and no more support allowed.
So at the end, we could expect mainly some performance lost during the next race week-end

[livia]

i discussed this with a friend of mine who's working in a big team...it seams that lots of teams were using the spring since years, and FIA never said anything...why they decided only now that it is a movable aero?

[Scarbs]

There's a debate as what the root issue is with the splitter (i.e. front floor). This could be either, allowing the car run lower ride heights, allowing the floor to lift adding downforce or allowing the floor to drop to reduce drag.
Nowadays the splitter tends to be just a huge lump of tungsten alloy ballast. This of course makes it very heavy leading to issues in mounting the component, this is compounded by the fact that the splitter is low and susceptible to damage over kerbs. Thus teams have used mounting with a degree of flexibility, with Ferrari and BMW these are sprung mounts (see image). They were never hidden ( I spotted them straight away last year) and the FIA scrutineers knew about them. One wonders why Ron Dennis didn’t raise this issue last year (when he was less competitive)..?



Lower ride height
The lower the car can run the better the underfloor work, this produces more downforce with little drag. But as the car are run with some rake (i.e. nose down and rear end higher) the floor tends to be the first thing to strike the ground. This wears the plank and also puts a vertical load into the splitter, the Fia allowed teams to have a flexible mount to prevent damage to the splitter. I suspect this is now the main focus for the FIA to resolve.
Allowing the floor to lift
Should the floor lift more air could pass under the car increasing the flow through the diffuser creating more downforce.
Allowing the floor to drop
Should the floor drop ato the diffuser would be reduced stalling the diffuser, this might also stall the rear wing which would see a recution in drag. From what I've seen of the floor mounts I doubt team are exploiting this

[admin]

Hi Scarbs

Please change image with a smaller one (reduce width size).

Admin

[Jeff]

There is clearly a question mark regarding speed trap data as some cars are overspeeding in respect to the data from the paper ....
Until last year all attention was toward the rear wing which has now been settled, but finger is this year on the front part of the floor.
Some teams have done better job on this than some others.
And so the political game as usual, is to show indirectly the FIA, which feature is giving an advantage to some teams...