How does DRS in F1 provide such a boost?

Question

I see it as a small flap that opens up and it speeds up the cars by a large margin. How does something so small like a flap provide that much of a boost?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

I’m not sure if this is ELI5 enough and also I go over the surrounding topics as well but I numbered each area if you want me to explain a part better or simpler

1. it’s important to understand how much downforce the cars produce first. Basically the cars are designed like upside down airplanes. We don’t want them to fly in the air as they speed up, we want them to be sucked to the ground so they go as fast as possible around corners and such.

2. Whats theorized but very difficult to actually produce due to engine engineering, is that the cars produce enough downforce that if they were upside down (and that downforce was now keeping them in the air instead of on the ground), they could basically drive up side down at around 120 mph.

3. If you think about this it’s actually very simple in a way at least to explain. All they have to do is create more downforce than their weight. If the total weight of car and driver is 1500 lbs, then all they need to produce is 1500lbs of downforce. And then flip that upside down.

4. That was a little bit of a side-track but I think it helps to show just how much downforce the cars generate with their aerodynamics.

5. Think of air as water instead. As you move something quickly through water, there starts to become a resistance on the object because of how much water it’s displacing.

6. This is the same with air. The more air they displace with their aero, the more resistance there is on the car.

7. Most of the aero on those cars is designed to allow the car to go fast through the corners. Well you don’t need that on a straight, but you can’t just take something off the car on the straights and put it back on in the corners. So they created a way to kind of do that with the rear wing. They lose downforce when they use DRS but also lose the resistance that it caused as well. They still have enough downforce that it makes them move quicker until they get to a corner.