© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Back in 2023, Mercedes’ Technical Director James Allison very eloquently explained how he views current F1 regulations and gave clues on where he will look for improvements in 2024.
Last week Mercedes announced that its Technical Director James Allison has signed a new multi-year deal with the team.
This means Allison will be the main person determining Mercedes’ short and long-term direction when it comes to their car designs.
As the team is now fully focused on regaining its position at the front of the grid, fans and observers are obviously very interested to know what his design philosophy is when it comes to Formula 1 cars under current F1 regulatrions.
Well, back at the 2023 Sao Paulo Grand Prix, Allison explained some of his views while talking to the media.
“There is a fundamental difficulty in these rules in that the car will generate more downforce the lower it goes, but not without limit because you don’t want it to just magnet itself onto the ground at the end of the straight,” the Briton said.
“Because at the end of the straight you’re generally not going around a corner and if that’s where your best downforce is, it’s just generating drag.
“So in order to cope with the load that is created at the end of the straights, you’re going to need stiff springs or higher ride heights – but if you have higher ride heights you’re not going to be where the downforce is. So that means stiff springs.
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“Which all means that with these cars there is this sort of treasure of downforce we have near the ground. You can find lots of it there but you also have to survive the end of the straight.
“So there is a sort of a limit because this end-of-straight downforce consumes ride height which then punishes you in the low-speed corners.
“There comes a point where it’s no longer faster [over the lap] to have that end-of-straight downforce because of how much you’re hurting yourself in the slow corners.
“Everyone will be trying to get things that, at the end of the straight, don’t have quite as much load – but which right next door to that [at a lower speed] have lots of load. Because the fast corners are right next door to the end-of-straight speeds.
“So you want it to hang onto an adequate amount in the slow speed despite the fact that the car just wants to sh*t all its downforce away as it raises off the ground.”
Allison then continued to explain where the ‘trick’ lies with the current ground effect cars.
“You can have a car which is a bit more one-dimensional at the sort of one-dimensional tracks where there isn’t a big speed range.
“Then you can maybe set your car up such that the corner speeds coincide with where your good bit is. And you don’t suffer horribly as it drops away either side.
“But when you go to a place which is a bit more of a broad test of a car, an Austin for example where there is lots of fast stuff, some slow stuff and some in between stuff, some decent straights and some bumps, that’s going to test that bit.
“It’s going to need to stay strong in the fast corners and it’s hard to persuade the car to do all of those things with a set of rules which don’t want it to do anything but run near the ground.”
Ultimately, the Briton explained where some of the decisions need to be made, to make the car more competitive.
“Downforce will bring me lap time? Ok, where? Do you want downforce at 80mm or do you want downforce at 30mm?
“You want the car to be good in crosswinds. Ok, but is that 1-deg crosswind, 15-degrees? How much importance are you going to give to 15-degrees versus 5 versus zero?
“These are all conceptual choices. Not concepts as in sidepod concept, [but] much deeper conceptual choices about what you choose to place value upon,” Allison concluded.
