HOW F1 CARS STARTED TO SUCK! The Story of the First Ground Effect Era (1978-1982)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 มี.ค. 2023
- Clever little pun, innit?
Ground effect. One of those Lotus 'inventions' that took the rest of the F1 world by storm. What had they created? How did it work? How do they copy it? But as with a lot of innovations in F1, they had too much of a good thing, and it had to be stopped. So let's look at how it all changed.
Enjoy! And remember to like and subscribe for more!
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Science hurts my smooth brain. Back to playing Pokemon...
I'll join!
@@Jb33124 the usual potato mochi please!
Somehow I end up doing more calculations playing Pokémon than racing
*shudders* Pokèrus odds
@@Jb33124 yeah but I’ve got a shiny Larvitar on my Renegade Platinum playthrough so I’m already winning.
Auto Union had ground effect on their 1938 speed record car. Bernd Rosemeyer was killed on the autobahn speed record attempt at nearly 300mph when a crosswind gust caused him to lose control...
It’s true that the Auto Union had some form of ground effect, But I remember reading a report on that record attempt.
The theory that it claimed was that the wind either played no role in the crash or was the last tiny push on a car that was already tearing itself apart because of the forces applied to the car from the ground effects.
I really have mixed feelings about the Peterson crash. He did die from his injuries he suffered in the crash, but it was also due to the lack of proper medical attention he got.
He was concious when he was taken to hospital, but the next morning he died of an embolism. Something that was able to happen because reportedly the staff at the hospital he was brought to was absolute chaos. I really feel for Andretti, because he was very bothered by the fact that the medical team allowed that embolism to build up.
Hunt blamed patrese for years for it, iirc.
But yeah, Watkins wasn’t allowed to get to him and that was the main issue. Just the way it was at that point.
@@AidanMillward This crash did make it standard procedure to have the medical car behind the grid at the race start. It's a lot like in aviation that every massive accident has caused a chain of events that made this or that part a lot safer.
@@pilotlasse tombstone technology is the term.
@@AidanMillward Ohh yeah, I forgot about the name, thanks!👍
@@pilotlasse it's why they say rules are written in blood my friend..
Aidan, maybe do a clip on Adrian Newey. And maybe how his experience with ground effects back in the 80ies has seemed to help him with the new ground effects cars of today.
he did already - it’s one of the storytime episodes
I wonder if there are any rock star designers left over from this era & why Merc hadn't called him to help them w the W14...😅😁
@@sashingopaul3111 is there a link?
@@ronmurray7349 you’re only a great if you win championships without Newey. 😏
@@AidanMillward like Schumacher?
The Edison reference is spot on! Tesla did more for him than himself.
Ligier wasn't running stiffer springs, they were flat out cheating with a spring loaded flap in thier tunnels that would open as excess negative pressure built up on the straights. The flap would vent into the radiator outlet giving them not only a passive DRS but also the ability to run smaller cooling inlets on their side pods reducing drag. Giorgio Piola was able to get a photograph of the underside of one of the cars as it was lifted from the track after an accident, he told the car's designer he was on to their little trick and Ligeir removed the system fearing Piola would tell the stewards. Piola never said a word until decades later though.
Just a day before you released this video, I was watching an interview to Carlos Reutemann from Argentinian TV after 1981 season, he was praising his former team (Brabham) more specifically Gordon Murray, for finding the way around the regulations, he said that on some races when the officials measure the distance to the ground on the Brabham was 8 sometimes 9cm...but in race was more likely less than 1.
For the record re Brazilian GP pole (1981-1983):
1981 - 1.35.079 by Nelson Piquet, Brabham BT49C Ford (no skirt, but hydraulic suspension??)
1982 - 1.28.808 by Alain Prost, Renault RE30B (ground effect + turbo)
1983 - 1.34.526 by Keke Rosberg, Williams FW08C Ford. (the first year of flat bottom cars).
For the record again ... the 1984 pole by Elio de Angelis in the Renault turbo powered Lotus 95T was a 1.28.392 showing the massive gains in power turbo had even then. And Alain Prost's fastest lap of that 1984 Brazilian GP told just how much the races were really economy runs and not actual races. Prost's time was a 1.36.449 (would have put him 23rd on the grid) showing how much slower they had to run to finish the races on the limited fuel allowed (220 litres in 1984).
I remember watching an F1 documentary on TH-cam about the turbo lag some of the cars had back then. One of the smaller, back of the grid teams, had really bad turbo lag, apparently it was about 7 seconds!!
Worth noting is that, Rene Prevost, was technically first to come up with idea of ground affect, all the way back in late 1920s.
He desgined a mock-up of a car featuring venturi tunnels, with intent of it potentially making the car more stable, iirc he even recognized the need to seal the flow under the car for maximum effect.
Awesome title Aiden! Totally NOT clickbait while having the intended effect XD
Good of you to include the March 701. It of course played little role in the overall development of ground effects, but there is a common denominator. Mario Andretti was one of the drivers, thanks to STP backing, who took raced the 701. Of course he, like most had little success with the car, but somewhere he gave an interview where he stated that after he joined Lotus, in their lost years, he mentioned to Colin Chapman that the March 701 might have been better if they put endplates on the side wings...
All Hail Colin Chapman! I had a Hot Wheels Chaparral 2E in the late 60s as a kid.
Those Venturi thingies are really mind breaking. I first encountered those when I tried to figure out how carburetors worked and I'm ashamed to admit it took me a looking time to understand those (or at least the most of it).
After that I got the ground effect a bit quicker. But still a big piece of physics (that I totally failed in high school).
Smarter every day has a great video on carbs. They built a transparent one and used a high speed camera to show what's happening inside.
@@StuntpilootStef Just watched that video, it was really impressive, thank you !
The massive downforce was the reason for the stiffer springs - in effect the cars weighed 2 or 3 times as much moving as they did standing still. Naturally this did not help the cars stability over bumps. The other problem with skirted ground effects cars was that if the gap between the ground and the skirt increased (eg, irregular track surface) the downforce would be radically decreased instantaneously. You're going around a fast corner at a speed that would be impossible without ground effect, and suddenly you have no ground effect. That trend had to be reined in.
My favourite era ! F1 was something really special back then .
I totally agree with you. I started watching F1 in 1984, and watched virtually every race live on television, until the end of the 1996 season. Those were the best years of F1 for me. I would then start watching documentaries and race videos about F1 in the 1970's. Which was just as good.
I remember at the start of the 81 season good ol Murray Walker exclaimed the cars are on stilts in reference to the 6cm rule. There is a great documentary from channel 4 or BBC called gentlemen lift your skirts about this, should still be here on yt
I wouldn't argue that the Chaparral 2J was really a ground effects car. I'd define "ground effects" as using profiles on the underside of the car to generate a Bernoulli effect, whereas the 2J and Brabham are using brute-force evacuation to create low pressure zones. The advantage of powered fans is that downforce is not dependent on speed; the Lotuses didn't generate as much downforce at low speed.
IIRC from articles of the time the original idea of the 78 was to be a better version of the March 701's wing-shaped fuel tanks. Everyone at Lotus was surprised by how much downforce the car generated and that's what set them further on the full ground effects path.
The 79 got left behind in 1979 in part because Chapman didn't do robust construction. In an interview, Andretti described a chassis stiffening workaround that added a bracing yoke between the instrument panel hoop and the roll bar - but the car then started popping the rivets holding the chassis together! The Williams FW07 was basically a 79 with structural integrity.
Ground effect is just a catch all term rather than super science.
Hello Aidan: The "ch" at the beginning of chaparral is pronounced as "sh". The only reason I know that is because of hearing about these cars at the time. Keep up the good work.
or if you remember the "high chaparral " youll also know how to pronounce it - Ill get my coat 😅
Another great video my friend
11:25 Great shot of the really good looking 1982 Ferrari. It ended an uninterrupted series of hideous cars starting in 1968 with the introduction of wing aero.
The Brabham fan came about because they used a flat 12 engine so could not have the tunnels under the car like you can with a v engine, if you can find the Gordan Murray interview he explains how the got around the rules to build it.
Which reminds me, I have a direct line to David Brabham, I might have to see what he can hook me up with.
@@ronmurray7349 Brabham managed to prove to the FIA that the fan did more to cool the engine than it did to suck the car to the ground.
@@ronmurray7349 fun fact, in AMS 2 you can actually see this in action! It's quite neat.
Nice one giving the Arrows A2 a mention. My favourite oddball in the history of F1.
Sad not to have a photo of the Chaparral. The most lovely sports car ever. The first of the modern aerodynamic styled sports cars..
awesome info thanks
As someone who deals with Bernoulli equation (and Navier-Stokes equation) for 80% of his academic years (6 years undergrad + 4 years masters study), yea it was hurting my brain a lot.
Adrian! Good to hear you’ve studied acoustics, i did the same at uni - separately, it would be amazing if you began making some of these videos or more into podcast format?
awesome video
Not bad! Ground effect is difficult to explain, and even harder to figure out from some incomplete discriptions you can find on the internet. Basically sqeezing the air between the floor and the ground causes it to speed up. When the air speeds up the pressure is reduced, so now the air pressue above the car is greater than the pressue below the car creating downforce. Then there is the complicated bit about the diffuser which is even trickier to explain....
It’s one of those things that people over complicate because they can.
See also: modes of the major scale.
Master Handbook of Acoustics… OMG - that took be back to school days in Audio Engineering
The weird thing is that none of those infamous crashes - Peterson, Villeneuve, Paletti, Pironi - were due to the cars being too fast. While the cars were making the racing more risky because of their higher speeds, those particular crashes were all freak accidents that could have been just as devastating had they happened in 1983's flat bottomed cars.
thats debatable, peterson yes, that was a startline crash but the 2 ferrari? the ground effect cars made collossal downforce in a straight ling, but that would almost completly dissapear should the car start sliding. i know villeneuve hit jochen mass but still flying into the air like that was a risk the ground effect cars had, would that crash have happend or if it had would it have been at alower speed?
@@theant9821 He flew over a car that was on a cool down lap because the driver moved on his line thinking he was going to go the other way. I really don't think a 1983 car would have made any difference, he went airborne because of contact (see Webber Valencia 2010) noy because of loss of downforce due to sliding.
And Pironi smashed into a slower car because he couldn't see it due to rain spray.
I think Villeneuve was still very angry, due to his disagreements with Pironi, and could be considered a factor in his fatal crash.
Ahh the music and relax (i remember the rock days). Liked and now to watch.
The Suzuki GT3 reference @ 9:09 😂 👍
Thanks so much, again!
Prob best video on the topic. Cheers!
I read about the early 80s Brabham many years ago. I recall the suspension being called "hydro-pneumatic" in that, the shocks had fluid and air in them. At speed the air would compress (with higher aero loading), but the fluid wouldn't, essentially allowing the car to hit a "point of no futher suspension travel" once all the air had compressed. This mitigated the need for the driver to use any controls to manipulate it and freed him up to drive until passing out due to the g-forces.
Funny how 'a little is good, a lot is not' when it comes to ground effects.
Have to find a happy medium
The main problem with the 78 was the Nicholson McLaren development engines which went pop regularly.
Chapman's design for a fan car had twin fans but was never built.
The 80 was designed with no external wings and couldn't be balanced, bit like Merc in 2022.
9:20 is that a Lotus 79 with a Ferrari livery? Beautiful!
It is. RSS made a monster of a car.
One of the biggest advantages with the fan/sucker cars is they “downforce” is still there at low speed. Compared to normal aero that would loose a lot of downforce at low speeds.
Also, ground effect downforce is pretty efficient compared to wings. But, also much more unstable. It’s really dependent on gap to the ground and speed.
Everything ends up being a balance.
I love the title
Just a slight point both Mercedes and Sunbeam did effectively have ground effects on their pre war World Speed Record cars. However this was to prevent lift. The Mercedes only run once at AVUS and broke.
Auto Union also used ground effects to prevent lift at AVUS.
This technology was what I loved about F1 however its all changed now, I began to get board when nobody managed to beat the Merc but every idea was banned as soon as it was made the sport is heading to be a spec race like indy car
Haven't watched the video yet,
so can't also tell if I like it or not.
But I definitely like the title ! ! !
Good vid indeed !
But the parts when spoken
comment comes together
with written on-screen comment
are a little confusing ...
Still : Cheers, M8 ! ! !
They are called Venturi tunnels because they operate using the Venturi effect, not Bernoulli. Wings are what use Bernoulli to create lift on air planes, or down force on cars when you flip the wing upside down. They are related in that they are both based on conservation of momentum.
The Bernoulli effect is still happening under the car. Because the car is moving one way and the road is “moving” the other way, it effectively pulls the air in at higher speed.
Damn goes to show people dont listen and are stupid. He said venturi tunnels OPERATE(USE THE) on the bernoulli principal. 4:19 ffs.
You treat the floor as the under side of a wing so his statement is still correct
@@AidanMillward "So in summary, the Bernoulli effect is a more general principle that applies to any fluid flowing through a constriction or curve, while the Venturi effect is a specific example of the Bernoulli effect that occurs in a constricted pipe or tube that then expands."
In 79 Brazil GP Ligiers were braking their rims because of too much pressure on them generated by ground effect.
Beautiful reference to Gran Turismo 3 🥰
Was actually in karts first when the guy making the expansion pipe exhausts realised that if the first cone section was sucking the exhaust gasses through the engine that if he put that on the floor tray that it would pull a vacuum and suck the kart down
This was mid 70s When the karts where not far away laptime wise to the f1 cars
OK, i do get the part where you are talking about Bernoulli.
But how do i get my head around Helmholtz resonators????
"SHA-puh-rell"
i did a unit on acoustics in university. Never again
Jokes on you I already have the Master Handbook of Acoustics and cooked my brain with it a decade ago. HA!
Chaparral is pronounced Shap, like shack, urr, and the name Al, or calling someone your pal, or talking about your favorite gal. SHAP-urr-AL.
Chaparral pronunciation (AmericanEnglish) "Shap - a - Ral"
That whole science issue musta fried the brain based off that big wiggle you had in the footage
It’s a strange sensation. You have all the grip in the world until you don’t.
It’s like iracing, in a way kekw.
@@AidanMillward I was about to say reminds me of a few cars on iracing. Some of the older (Audi GTO, Lotus 49) cars
Had no idea it was so bad
if you know how to transpose, integration and derivatives, it's not bad
How can you not find a picture of a Chaparral?
Riccardo Paletti's death was nothing to do with ground effect, he slammed in the back of a stationary Ferrari at over 100mph
Riccardo Paletti was killed in his second F1 race at Montreal.
I wished I was good at physics at college...
Alistair Caldwell still claims the McLaren M23 was a 'ground effect' car so beats the Lotus 78 by a couple of years.
I think that's a case of wisdom after the fact. I don't doubt that Mclaren knew something was going on but they didn't have nearly all of the pieces of the puzzle together. I wish I could find the interview where I found the piece about certain Indycar teams in the early 70s, as in a couple of years before the m23 with the skirts came around (think AAR, Penske and some other teams running Mclarens besides Penske), were experimenting with flat bottoms made from plywood and discovering that the closer they could run the car to the ground, the faster it went. I think it was said in that interview that they didn't really understand all of what was going on, just that the car went faster. Before that, the tricks on the nascar aero cars show that the designers and some of the teams something was going on with the underfloor aero.
But in the same way as with the M23 and M26, those indycars didn't have nearly all of the pieces of the puzzle needed. Now, if Alistair Caldwell had extended the flat underfloor and stuck an upward sloped sheet of aluminum with endplates underneath the gearbox and maybe curved the front section of the underfloor under the side pods at a slight upward curve...
There was also a nazi funded land speed car. Built by Mercedes late 30s that un intentionally had ground effect and it would have flipped over backwards. At close to top speed
And I believe the blue bird 7. Also used some form of it as well
It can suck. it can blow. Yet it glides. just like kite. This is. this is the ground effect. Here I Go Again referencing the original Spider-Man theme.
Wright Bros weren’t first… was a kiwi, but the Smithsonian will lose the KittyHawk if they admit it wasn’t first 😂
Shap-er- EL
F1 cars sucked when they got rid the 3 kiter V10s
Shapp-a-rarl.
Shap a rall btw.
Omg I thought I was subscribed to you for at least the past year, but just now I realized that all the time I wasn't🙇🏻♂️
No time like the present!
"sha-pe-rahl"
They need to make the cars smaller! They just look plain ugly as well, I love that the halo has changed f1 for the better but it’s just so damn ugly.
Hillary Clinton and Tenzing Norgay! I know those two!
Wow Shekter's Ferrari is an ugly beast. Imagine that being your last championship winning car for 20 years
Something tells me you have a lot of American subscribers… dude 😂
Yee. Haw.
Um, actually, I'm not sure if you are aware, but it's pronounced "Por-shuh" 🤓
Come on, Aiden. Chaparral is much more famous than Chevron, Lola, March, Leyton House, Minardi, Matra, etc. in the states. You could at least take 10 seconds to learn how to pronounce it correctly. 🤦♂️
Same way you could have spelt my name correctly despite my name being the name of the channel and being displayed in massive letters at the start and end of the video… but here we are.
@Aidan Millward , done deliberately of course to illustrate a point (and illicit a reply from you--which it did brilliantly). I've been subscribed to your channel for years. I just hate to see a legendary (and, indeed, revolutionary) name in motorsport disrespected due to a simple lack of basic research.
@@flyingphoenix113 yeah, course it was 🙃
@Aidan Millward , 😉😁
"Shop-ah-RALL"