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The look of F1 2022 revealed

NEWS STORY
15/07/2021

F1 gives fans first glimpse of the look of 2022 as it presents full size model at Silverstone.

The car was unveiled in the same slick, yet entirely formulaic, style that has become the norm for team launches; strobe lights, smoke (mirrors?), pulsating music and smiling presenters.

Once the car was revealed, we were treated to the sight of the current crop of drivers - all suited, booted and carrying their helmets (!) - as they looked on at the car they will be driving next season, and while we never got to hear the opinion of the likes of Kimi or Seb, others appeared moderately impressed and stuck to the script

Explaining the reasoning behind the rules overhaul, Nicholas Tombazis and Pat Symonds were keen to point out that the quality of the racing may not improve from the outset but will probably take time as they effectively played Liberty’s get out of jail card.

The philosophy behind the aerodynamics overhaul was previously explained in this 2019 video by Rob Smedley at a time it was intended to introduce the new look in 2021, before the pandemic.

Basically the intent is to create more wheel-to-wheel racing and more action on the track. To this effect, the project was run using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and thousands of computer cores on Amazon Web Services (AWS), saving F1 both time and money to deliver the new design.

Currently, F1 cars face a loss of downforce while racing close to each other, with a following car losing as huge amounts of its downforce when racing closely behind another.

This next-generation car will run on 18-inch wheels with low-profile tyres for the first time and will feature wheel wake control devices, a brand-new bodywork design with a new front wing shape, simplified suspension, new rear-end layout, and underfloor tunnels.

The intended result is to significantly reduce downforce loss when following another car closely, in turn creating more intense racing and excitement on the track.

The key goal of F1 in redesigning the car is to increase wheel-to-wheel racing between cars that is currently restricted due to the loss of downforce.

This new design change helps reduce the turbulent airflow from the car in front, in turn increasing the downforce (and, therefore, the performance) of the following car and allowing them to close the gap for a chance to overtake the leading car.

"We want to make it more possible for cars to race each and follow each other and to have more exciting battles," explained Tombazis. "We want to have tyres that enable people to fight each other without degrading or only giving a short interval for the person attacking to attack.

"They are simpler than the current cars because a lot of the small components have been removed, especially in front of the sidepods, the front wings are simpler.

"There is a diffuser going right under the car, a venturi channel type manner. There are tunnels under the sidepods from the front to the back."

The CFD project used over 1,150 AWS compute cores to run detailed simulations of over 550 million data points that model the impact of one car's aerodynamic wake on another. Using the unmatched scalability of AWS, F1 was able to reduce the average time to run simulations by 80%, from 60 hours down to 12 hours.

"Right in the beginning of this project, our main aim was to get cars that race closer together,” said Pat Symonds. "Running in the cloud and running with AWS really removed all the barriers of time and computing capacity and allowed us to run what we want, when we want, and how we want. This is something I think I wouldn't have believed was possible unless I'd been able to really leverage that power of AWS and see where the future might lie."

To redesign its cars, F1 needed to move away from its on-premises technology environment, where it used CFD along with wind tunnel testing to design and test the aerodynamic properties of cars. F1 moved its CFD simulation environment to a high performance computing (HPC) platform on AWS using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances to run complex simulations that visualize the wake turbulence of cars and the impact on following cars. F1 chose to use a combination of Amazon EC2 C5n instances and the new AWS Graviton2-based C6g instances to gain maximum flexibility in terms of pricing and performance.

Along with reducing its simulation time from days to hours, F1 lowered the cost of running these workloads by 30% by using the AWS Graviton2-powered instances.

"The recent release of AWS Graviton2 has allowed us to really optimize other jobs and has achieved about a 30% cost savings for us at the moment. And I actually see that going further. I'm sure we can move towards 40% cost savings compared to our old methods of doing things," said Symonds. "By working with AWS, we really have access to a huge environment, and I'm not just talking about physical environment of compute power, but some really, really great people to work with. Some people who push us just as much as we push them."

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READERS COMMENTS

 

1. Posted by kenji, 16/07/2021 12:13

"Put the 'screen' on it and it will look far better. It's certainly a major improvement on the current crop that's festooned with flip ups and bits and pieces all over, making it simply ugly. Simplistic design is a form of elegance and this car certainly has that .... ATM. Can't say anything positive about the livery though!!!"

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2. Posted by Motorsport-fan, 16/07/2021 9:12

"When the teams come up with there "own interpretations" wonder if we will be back pretty much where we are now."

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3. Posted by Egalitarian, 16/07/2021 7:34

"We all know when car manufacturers test vehicles in the real world they cover the body so as to distract from the actual shape of the vehicle. I'm not exactly sure why one would paint this car to somewhat do the same.
Personally, I like the idea of the tunnels fro the venturi effect. The front wing should be smaller (valuable sponsor real estate acknowledged). I can't stand the flip up at the end of the wings and that weird thing over the front wheels. I'm still not a fan of the halo device. Enjoy your weekend and the so-called sprint race. "

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4. Posted by Endre, 15/07/2021 20:18

"I wouldn't be surprised if the actual cars won't look anything like this. This is what the FIA believes they will look like based on the new regulations, but then the teams take the rule book apart and come up with their own interpretations. "

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5. Posted by Motorsport-fan, 15/07/2021 18:45

"Lets hope its just the colour scheme that makes it look terrible."

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6. Posted by vins0n, 15/07/2021 18:11

"Oh dear. That doesn't look like the pinnacle of motorsport to me. It looks like something from a cheap movie. "

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7. Posted by BrightonCorgi, 15/07/2021 17:57

"Looks more like an Indy Car."

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8. Posted by Fambank, 15/07/2021 17:48

"Ugly doesn´t even describe it."

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9. Posted by Mad Matt, 15/07/2021 16:16

"A bit of an AWS advert there and it's probably worth mentioning that there are other companies who could have provided hardware more appropriate to crunching numbers like this which would have dropped the 12 hours down a lot further.

Mind you it is pretty irrelevant which shop they rented computer time from the real question is did they ask the right questions in the right way and the proof of that will be next year......"

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