Brand new Formula 1 cars roll out on track for the first time every year for winter testing. As onlookers attempt to gauge the field’s pecking order at the start of the season, the teams fit their cars with metallic arrays dotted with sensors to better understand the aerodynamic performance of their machines. The pitot tubes mounted to these aero rakes are vital instruments for development, serving as the bridge between simulation data and the real world. However, there are a few pitot tubes that are mounted to the car full-time to gather data, like at the front of the monocoque.
F1 testing isn’t the first use case that comes to mind when talking about pitot tubes. The sensors are typically used on aircraft to determine airspeed by measuring dynamic pressure. According to Formula 1, the teams mount aero rakes behind the front and rear wheels to visualize the wake coming off the wings and other aerodynamic surfaces by reading the airspeed at various points around the car. All the pitot tubes are wired to a black box mounted on the car’s bodywork. It might sound like a ton of data to crunch, but the information is processed nearly in real-time, pumping out rendered images and video.
F1 upgrade packages can live or die on correlation
The most important use of this data is correlation. Track time might be a precious resource, but time with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and the wind tunnel is plentiful by comparison. The teams need to ensure that the results from factory work are accurate in real-world conditions. For example, the pitot tubes can detect a wing stall based on a fall-off in the wake’s airspeed that didn’t appear in simulations. Rob Smedley, former F1 race engineer, explained how frustrating it can be when there isn’t correlation to the championship’s website in 2019:
“It’s the biggest pain in the arse, honestly. It’s just a lot of hard work, because what happens at that point is that, instead of pouring time into development and putting lap time into the car, you’re putting all of your engineering skill and talent into understanding where this correlation mismatch is coming from.”
While it can be frustrating to see talented drivers hampered by subpar equipment, the technical arms race has been a crucial element of Formula 1 since the world championship’s inaugural season in 1950. The implementation of a cost cap in 2021 added another layer of complexity. The new restrictions also capped the number of CFD and wind tunnel hours on a sliding scale. The worst team receives the most hours, and the champions get the fewest. No matter how things change, winning a world championship will remain a multi-year effort.
