Downforce.... what is it?

[sudhir 0]

can someone tell me more abt downforce?

what is high,low downforce ? relevance to different circuits..

[jagman 0]

Hi sudhir

Welcome to the forums!

Imagine the wings on a plane, they are designed to keep the plane flying by the way the move the air around them.  The wings on an F1 car are very similar except they are designed to 'push' the car onto the track.

What high/low downforce means.  If a team seys monaco is a high downforce track, that means becuase of its twisty nature the cars need more grip so the wings are set to 'push' the car down harder allowing them to take corners faster.  Of course the downside is that becuase of this it causes 'drag' slowing the cars down on the straights.  You may have noticed Arrows and Jordan trying out new wings on the car for Monaco as they wanted to create more downforce that the usual front and back wing created.

The opposite of this is low downforce where as the cars have less wing set allowing them to go faster down straights but with the less 'push' on the car, they need to take corners slower.

This is all accomplished by the angle of the wings, if you watch CART racing you can even see the pit crews 'adding more wing' by turning a screw to adjust the wing angle.

Of course this is a very basic description of what it all means and its about as much as I understand, but do you get the picture.

cheers

[TotalF1 SamB 0]

There are all sorts of little scientific things that affect the car, through the technical regulations, etc - for example, the closer the car runs to the ground, the car is sucked onto the track more...as Jagman said - the more downforce you get, the more drag - low downforce means the wings are running flatter, and the air can run smoothly over them...high downforce means the wings are nearer being vertical, and the air can't run so smoothly, pushing back and slowing the car down. The engineers have to find a balance between high drag and not enough downforce