Formula 1’s top teams don’t have a monopoly on the brightest ideas, and many times in the history of the series, some of the best concepts have come from cars that don’t fight to win.
That has also happened in 2022, where an original design idea that emerged on the Aston Martin AMR22 has now been copied by Red Bull after rival Ferrari also took note of it ahead of its launch.
Aston Martin AMR22 splitter detail at presentation
At the unveiling of the new Aston Martin in February, the team introduced a KEEL spoiler under the nose, which makes use of design liberties in that area of the car to add a touch more downforce.
The idea also appeared in the Ferrari F1-75 at its unveiling and while some assumed the Italian team had also come up with the idea from scratch, that probably wasn’t the case.
Ferrari F1-75 splitter detail at presentation
Team principal Mattia Binotto suggested that the Maranello team had responded too quickly after seeing what others had done to their cars.
“On the F1-75, you already have a detail of a car that was presented in recent days,” he admitted. “And especially in this first phase we will all be watching each other very closely.”
While design convergence in F1 is not new, given that there were only seven days between the Aston Martin and Ferrari presentations, it was an impressive feat for the Scuderia, given that it had to evaluate the solution in CFD and the wind tunnel before manufacturing a real part .
Obviously, it took Red Bull a little longer to examine the merits of that design but, with an ever-evolving workload, teams must find ways to fit new ideas into an already tight schedule, which in the first part of the season will be more about optimization than total revolution.
Internally, that keel houses a host of different components, with teams opting to house some of their electronics there, rather than on the sidepods.
In the case of Red Bull, this prompted the installation of a tall, narrow entrance to help keep those components cool.
Meanwhile Red Bull, like many of the other teams on the grid, has a spring element housed between the chassis and the bib, which obviously limits the shape of the surface .
However, that hasn’t stopped the team from narrowing the main body of the keel wall to make it easier to include the wing elements on either side.
That’s more likely why Red Bull took longer to introduce the design, as it wasn’t as simple as adding the fins to the side of the design they already had.
The fins will alter the local pressure distribution and flow behavior, and the most obvious conclusion is that they will give rise to a pair of vortices that can either explode or minimize the ones thrown up by the lip below, depending on how the team wants them to behave. . This is especially important when we take into account the proximity to the tunnels of the car floor.
It’s also worth noting that Alpine introduced a keel wing at Imola, where Fernando Alonso received a number of new parts for the weekend .
Alpine A522 Floor Comparison
