Ferrari May Hold Aero Advantage Over Red Bull With Rival Rear F1 Wing Concept at Miami GP
Red Bull finally rolled its rotating rear wing into a race weekend at the Miami International Autodrome. Red Bull says the wing has not been copied from or inspired by Ferrari , and that this was a concept the Milton Keynes team had been working on for much longer. Whether you believe that or not, the more interesting question is the one nobody at the team has answered on the record : what does the RB22’s wing actually do differently from the Scuderia’s?
An interesting read comes from an aerodynamicist posting under the handle Dr. Obbs on X, breaking down the geometry of the two wings element by element. Why Red Bull’s is Different The rear wing is capable of a full 180-degree rotation to considerably reduce drag on long straights.
The difference is in how each team has chosen to get there, and what they have given up to do it. Ferrari’s solution is the more conservative one. The upper flap pivots from a hinge mounted in the endplates, which lets the team preserve the relationship between the flap and the mainplane that aerodynamicists actually care about: the overlap at the slot gap.
Red Bull, by contrast, has kept a single central actuator and built the entire mechanism so the flap rotates rearwards underneath the main element. From a side view, the flap appears to lift almost entirely clear of the endplates, remaining connected only by lateral supports, creating a more aggressive interpretation of the concept than Ferrari’s design. Writing about the sacrifice Red Bull has accepted in order to package the rotation around a central actuator, the X user explains: “I believe that one thing RBR is having to do with this design of their flip flop wing, Ferrari may not have to do, is sacrifice the overlap between the first and second elements of the rear wing.
Because the RBR wing rotates backwards under the main element, the leading edge of second element must be stepped back from the trailing edge of the first element (bottom image). “The older design has an overlap at the slot gap that creates a bit more efficient design that isn’t necessary with a conventional DRS actuator style design. “Because the Ferrari wing rotates the other direction, the overlap can be maintained between first and second elements.
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