First, I’ll explain what the “slipstream” is. A car punches a hole in the air when it moves. This hole is exploited by a car behind to reduce the drag of the following car and gain speed on the leading car.
During open-wheel races such as the Indianapolis 500 or some F1 races (DRS notwithstanding), the draft is so strong— it’s like the car behind gains an extra 200 horsepower!
But during NASCAR races at the unrestricted ovals or during sports car races like the Daytona 24, it’s not anywhere nearly as strong. It takes half of the Daytona oval’s back straight to get to the back of a leading GT3 car and pass him, and you’d be lucky to even get to the leader’s rear bumper at unrestricted ovals like Michigan. If anything, it looks like the leading car _gains_ speed. Why is that?
In: Physics
I am far from an expert, but my understanding is that it is less the car is punching a hole in the air as it is creating areas of low pressure due to drag from the car. Open wheel be cars are much less aerodynamic so there is a more significant low pressure area behind the car pulling the leading car back and pulling the trailing car forward.
As you get a chain of cars it’s just a bunch of turbulence the way down.
With more aerodynamic cars, there is a smaller low pressure zones behind the car. Additionally as another car moves into that spot it actually improves the aerodynamics as the cars are pretty aerodynamically clean.
So the lead car actually gets a reduction in drag as the other car moves into that low pressure zones, getting rid of it, and not it is forming behind the trailing car.
Whereas in open wheel cars you still get significant drag behind the leading car because the cars are not smooth and so you still get a lot of turbulence in that same area.
I’d first question the premise of this: where are you getting this idea that a F1 car has a stronger draft than a NASCAR style car?
The main one is the wings on those open wheel cars produce huge amounts of downforce but with the consequence of huge amounts of drag which you can slip stream in.
A smaller factor at that level is the uncovered wheels and cockpit also generate large amounts vs if they were covered. That’s small vs the wings in top level series, but can be an equal factor in lowblevel series.
dude that’s wild. i guess open wheels just make a bigger hole in the air right? like getting into a comfy space in the pool. closed wheels probably mess with that flow too. but hey at least drafting in nascar is still thrilling
F1 cars and similar have huge amounts of downforce created by their wings. This ultimately means the drag coefficient of an F1 car is higher, so they feel the effects of a wake much more than a NASCAR car.
The downside is that they can’t follow as fast in corners, as the tailing car has less downforce, and therefore less grip at the same speed.
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