Quote:
Originally Posted by Born Racer
I wonder whether banning so much testing actually sped up the accuracy of F1 teams' CFD, but perhaps they would have caught up by now and even had better CFD due to a constant corrobation and feedback loop of CFD - testing - CFD - testing.
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In short yes. But since I am unable to keep it to the short answer...
I expect with the heavy restrictions of on track testing, that it has improved the CFD capabilities of teams as they had really no other options than to improve that skill. I have no doubt that over the past handful of years those doing CFD continue to get better at it. I think they recently increased the quantity (regulation change) of CFD compute capabilities, so that should help even the lowly teams.
Overall, I think if they allowed more on track testing, it would increase the bandwidth of that feedback loop, or better yet allow for more iterative loops. You see teams today running all types of systems to measure aero during testing and potentially even during free practice at races.
On the surface, you would think they are testing new parts to see if they perform as expected. Quantitative measure such as reduced lap time or downforce levels. And they do. They always have the clock to look at lap time performance or load cells to measure downforce.
But I suspect a great deal is to see how close reality is to the CFD predictions. Is the Flow-Vis paint showing the air moving as predicted. The aero rake structures are measuring a sampled grid of pressures in a specific plane (such as just before or after an aero device) to see if the air is moving as predicted. Basically compare the data points to what the computer says it "thinks" it should be.
The more iterations you can do, the more you can refine whatever is going on with your model. Right now they are limited as to how many iterative loops they can do. So during the season they end up bringing stuff to the track in which their level of confidence may not be great. Bolt it on and cross your fingers. That is why you see ideas tried in free practice that never gets raced. Or one car running new aero and the other not. Or sometimes even large updates that are reworked after a failed weekend.
Richard