(Motorsports news) The current ruleset was introduced in 2022, and it appeared to take a prescriptive approach to designing the rear wing, with the prevalent design tendency generating a curving merging of the top element and main plane into the rear wing endplate.
This was implemented to lessen the turbulence produced by the rear wing; fewer exposed edges meant fewer opportunities for tip vortices, which aerodynamicists might build into the car’s wake to increase downforce generation. The blending of the wing vortices and the diffuser exit created a larger low-pressure area behind the car, which helped to accelerate the underbody flow and produce greater downforce.
The rules governing rear wing design in 2022 sought to put a halt to this, but it failed to limit the engineers’ inventiveness in seeking to extract more performance from the wing.
AlphaTauri’s new wing appears to be the most extreme layout observed thus far, with the upper flap almost completely separated from the endplate to expose the wing tips. The mainplane connection points have been shifted somewhat inboard to maintain that tip exposure, which will generate vortices when the high-pressure air on top tries to roll to the lower-pressure zone beneath.
This will allow it to extract additional downforce from the total rear wing assembly and try to link it to the effectiveness of the beam wing and diffuser. The Hungaroring’s status as a downforce-adjacent circuit to Monaco emphasizes the significance of the development. In their own quest for more performance, the remainder of the field has experimented with the attachment points, with some seeking to expose as much of the wing tips as possible.
Although the front corner of the top flap does not remain exposed as it blends into the remainder of the wing body, Aston Martin’s rear wing is likely the closest to the AlphaTauri design. The Alfa Romeo rear wing has a modest connection point reinforced by a metallic insert, but the wing tip has been extruded down to provide a somewhat more exposed tip to achieve the same look.
According to the FIA regulations, “once the Rear Wing Endplate Body and Rear Wing Tip are fully defined, they must be joined to create one unified volume with no remaining overlapping surfaces.”
AlphaTauri claimed in its pre-race technical notes that “the rear wing tip changes give an efficient increase in loading of the wing elements.” Other changes include a slightly elevated nose and a new front wing, as well as a redesigned floor underneath the car to give the AT04 greater downforce.
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