How much movement is permitted?

No they are not banned.

Well they are banned.
Only permitted ones are driver movable front wing flaps which are allowed to be changed twice per lap and the movement is rotation rather than vertical.

How the flexible floor issue played out.

Thanx for this info, Buttoneer.



Thinking about the movable elements...

You can adjust the angle of attack of the front wing's winglet twice per lap.

Have RB rid the capacity on this year's car?

If not, there is no surprise that it looks moving up and down, for 6 degrees.



Active suspension is a bit far fetched, seeing that FIA put their head in the car already several times.

I have noticed that exact same thing during the race, onboard with Vettel. I will have a look if i can find the footage.

I think what is discussed is, how far a wing can bend through the downforce, not vibrating / flexing through bumps.

Someone also mentioned this on scarbs site in the comments. Here's the exchange;

@TimT

This is more then 10mm, id guess it is easily 30mm or more?

And i didnt even took snap from under breaking, its during accelerating through the corner.

What is the stipulated limit when the car is in motion? The only limit I know of is the static load test.

No, you mean the fixed point of height, being the wheels remain there whilst the wing and body moving DOWN.


Most of the movement is the car being compressed with the downforce of the wing, just remember its about 4 tons of downforce, and that definately will make the car lowered. So relative to the suspension arms there is substantial movement

However there is SOME wing flex, relative to the nosecone, but its so minor its negligible. Its only in cases where vettel hits a kerb or something or there is a sharp change in loadings, but the wing definately doesnt move more than 1cm. The reason why a carbon fibre wing which is normally so light would flop a tiny bit is because of the actuators to change the angle of attack for the upper and lower elements, and also the endplates which carry heavy tungsten blocks for weight distribution.

Good try but you need to take into account the lowering of the car due to downforce (have a closer look at the angle of the suspension arms), and aligning the pics properly so that it doesn't exaggerate things...

This last picture is quite interesting

That wouldn't explain the vertical movement at the end plates

That would be true, if the suspension was completely stiff, but its not. Its more appropriate to look at the difference in height between the left nose camera and the wing element. You'll see that the difference in height remains the same, which means the wing does not flex at all.



Diagram: top: maximum velocity, bottom: low speed chicane into turn 2 after the 270* corner.

Analysis: blue blocks are identical in dimensions, copied and placed right under the front nose camera, distance remains the same meaning that relative to the bodywork of the nose the wing does not move at all!

You need to also look at the position of the wheels, however this is an unfair comparison as the car is turning, meaning that there is more load on one tyre than the other meaning suspension position is exaggerated.

EDIT: If the wing was to flex that much; more than 10mm, it'd be a safety issue. Autoclaved carbon fibre DOES NOT deal with torsion or bending well relative to other materials such as steel or magnesium. If it was to move that much you'd see wing failures, virgin GP style where the wing just simply SNAPS. There is a titanium skid pad under the wing however but that is just to prevent the carbon fibre from shattering upon touching the surface of the road if it ever does.

the rules are verry clear about this and wings are tested on this
they put weight on the wings to see how mutch it moves so i dont think it more flexibel than others
but on the other hand i noticed that the floor goes upwords
i mean the front of the floor is realy low but at the back its mutch higher
idont now if goes the same for other cars but its realy low in the front while a mclaren is almost on the same high in front and the back
maybe im just seeing things and im wrong but it got my atention last race

Nope you're right. Its partially because RB shifted their gearbox higher to increase the size of the diffuser, and in order to maximise front wing downforce (and try to generate front wing ground effect through the tiny venturi-like channels). Virtually all teams have the rear of the car higher than the front, and i think this is true for virtually all cars in general.

In denail ... i see, now

The camera doesnt move, nor is the chassis. You do understand this right? So the angle of the arms / wing just shows howmuch this movement there is compaired to the chassis. Or are you suggesting a flexible floor?

That is good analysis.

It goes some way towards showing that the RBR advantage is through something that has been done with the suspension. My bet all along has been for a variable spring and damper system.

The suspension has nothing to do with it, the frontwing and chassis ( on which the camera is mounted ) is intergral. If you take a point on the chassis and compair this with the frontwing you see how much movement there is on the wing, the suspension has nothing to do with this.

thx to clear that up
maybe thats reason why the redbull can bottom out in qualifying there front is a lot lower
like mclaren are front 10 rear 15 high
red bull front 5 rear 15 high

I reckon its the extremely high nose concept being used properly and the fact that the rear uses a pullrod package as opposed to a pushrod. The high nose means that weight transfer is at an angle which presses the tires down more than say sideways pushing suspensions of other teams since their uprights are rather low. The pullrod just allows for the heavy damper roll bars, springs to be positioned right on the floor of the car. With the rear being less torquey because of the lower centre of gravity, thats where I think the RB6 really gets its speed from.

Variable spring/damper would be entirely illegal mind you its active suspension in its primitive form.

Without traction control, maybe the renault engine which is alleged to be 60 hp down is in some way a benefit as the car that way is way more balanced and less likely to go sideways the the reduced torque, hence cornering speed.

Fair enough, my mistake to relate the wing to the suspension arms. But I do think you need to align the pics properly - each comparison image is slightly higher or lower so that the difference is exaggerated, funnily enough, to support your argument...




Oh so you mean like this?

I'm sorry but I didn't quite understand that. The camera is mounted on the nosecone which doesn't move, and is technically part of the chassis. So if the wing doesn't change position relative to the camera, therefore the wing has not moved at all. You cannot use two screencaps and compare based off the dimensions of the screencaps. It seems anyway that one image is higher than the other.


Better image.

Two images you showed us combined, with the fixed points being the chassis and the F1 logo/replay logo. 50% opacity on the top image. The wing and camera overlap perfectly meaning that they've stayed in the same position.

I don't think that it would be illegal if it was done in a way that was within the rules. I think that your description of the pull-rod system is a very astute analysis of what is happening with the attitude of the car.

Do the regulations state that coil distribution on a spring must be uniform? That was my idea for a variable spring. Maybe variable is the wrong term. Dampers can be made variable too. Take an I,J or K type damper with an actuator in it. There is a rack and pinion inside that absorbs energy by transferring it into the actuator. If the teeth of the rack and pinion were not uniform, but graduated in some way, it would provide a damper that behaved variably.

Oh the pull rod has nothing to do with the height, just that it helps the car in my view.

Ah I see what you mean, something like a CVT? That'd be possible. Nope, interestingly the regulations don't even state what materials the springs should be made of, let alone the coil distribution or size, thickness any of these factors.

No. I think that you have nailed the advantage that the push-rod gives the RB6.

I saw something on another site that asked whether RBR is using the exhaust to stall the diffuser.

I see.

I wonder how the FIA does the scrutineering though. The only part that does a lot and can't be analysed without destroying are the springs...

I have tried to superimpose the 2 images from the straight and the corner.
Endplates clearly seem to be moving but still hard to quantify by how much
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/268/88104740.gif

Look at it without prejudice and you might realise that the aerodynamic load is comrpessing the car down on its springs rather than the wing flexing. If the wing were flexing it would do it more at the ends, therby changing the droop angle on the wing, and I can't see that in this clip.

You will also notice in the above posting that the poster in an effort to forward his argument ignores the clear angular change of the top wishbones...

Seems very similar to the sort of movement we saw from Mclaren's bridge wing back in 08. And that was not considered illegal, even though it clearly moved a good deal and in predictable ways.

Considering that precedent, this wing seems absolutely fine.

Wing angle is mostly why the wing looks so different. I'd grab screenshots from entrance into corner before braking AND the moment before braking, thats where the most dramatic speed difference lies. The wing is flexing in your superimposition but maybe slow it down so that we can actually observe where everything is?... Its clear that is some flex but i didn't deny that. Its just not to the extent that you first perceived it.

Below is the slow version @ .5 fps

They didn't call it illegal, though they did make all with the bridge wing add a support in the middle to stop (or limit) the flexing.

Why are people clinging on to the 10mm rule? Whether the flex in the video is over 10mm is irrelevant.
In a FIA test done while the car is standing still a certain amount of weight is placed on the wing and it must not move more than 10mm. If a load twice that is applied on a straight then the wing can move more. The 10mm is the amount the wing is allowed to move with that specific weight, in that specific test. Nothing says a wing cannot flex over 10mm on the track. Absolutely nothing. Just a misinformed conclusion.

This was directed at the people pondering with all seriousness whether the flex crosses that magical 10mm line.

For this comparison to have any proof, you need to compare to still while not turning in and compare it with other cars. It seems to be legal to me, but still interesting to see how much it flexes and how much the car dives under aerodynamic loading.

To me that looks like it's not only flexing down but also flexing back which would indicate that it's been designed to do just that. Stiffer at the front and more flexible at the back to reduce down force and there for drag giving higher top speeds while maintaining a high down force level around slow to medium speed turns.
But although it appears to flex by a hell of a lot more than 10mm at the back of the wing it's still debatable weather that's illegal or not but from what I've seen of other cars the front wing appears much more stiffer than the RB6.

Sorry if someone already mentioned the bleeding obvious, but - couldn't that be the adjustable flap of their front wing?

I mentioned it. Got a call that it does not explain the position of the endplates.


Animation thing is quite irritating to me, as it is not possible to compare exactly where the nose is. Tire is looking towards the other ends as well.

At this end there is nothing concrete I must say.

As some already repeatedly mentioned, the car passed the FIA tests many times. Otherwise the car will not be contesting after all. So the car is legal full stop.

In the Vettel´s pole in Melbourne the flexion is even more exaggerated...
Melbourne

Still can't see anything wrong with it. I think your all barking up the wrong tree with this.

My view: It is indeed flexing, I don't know if that was more than 10mm or not, but if it was more than 10mm, I think there is a high chance that the force experienced by the front wing is more than the force applied by the FIA test.. The car passed the scrutineering after all..

You guys are missing totally the fact that 10 mm IS NOT the final limit. As it is said in the rules 10 mm AT 50 kg of force, applied at a certain predefined area of the wing. If, at high speed the load on the wing expressed in force per square centimeter exceeds the equivalent load of the test, the wing may deflect even more and this does not mean it is illegal.
I tried to explain this at the beginning of the thread, but it seems everyone is eager to find and prove something illegal on RBR car. But with such an approach and logic, every single car on the grid should be declared illegal.
Through the years this has been discussed till exhaustion numerous times but periodically someone relatively new starts it all over again.

Although I agree that there appears to be no limit to how much a wing can flex after 500nm is applied, I have yet to see a video that shows any other car that has a front wing that flexes that much. As for it's illegality it has passed scrutineering so I'm sure it is legal but perhaps the op has found something that benefits the RB6 in a big way over it's rivals and there's no reason why that can't be discussed.
I've tried to discredit this wing flex idea myself but try as I might I can't find another video that shows (or appears to show) so much flexing of the front wing

OK Could you please analyze the movements of front suspension uprights, upper arms, chassis role pitching and the bending front wing?

This isn't correct.

Flexible bodywork is not permissible. One of the tests is to place the 50kg weight on the wing endplates and ensure that it does not flex more than 10mm. If the wing is designed to flex in a non-linear fashion so that a 51kg weight it will create movement of 20mm, your reasoning suggests it is OK. Charlie Whiting made it clear in his reply to Paddy Lowe (regarding the Ferrari flexible floor) that this is not the case and the device would breach the rules.

The tests are used to ensure compliance with the ban on flexible bodywork and may be changed at any time to ensure continued compliance with that basic aim.

So what happens now? Why isn't the wing banned? I demand action now! I think RB should have all of it's CC points discarded. Gee imagine if it was Ferrari, the guillotine would be called for...