Aero drives me nuts. Yes there is science behind it, but the methods are often well beyond the means of joe blow racer. It seems like a lot of the time all that we can do is bite what others have done… but when aero parts all work together, biting bits and pieces isn’t necessarily a good idea. Yes it actually is rocket science.
The best approach is probably just to throw the wildest looking shit you can imagine on your car and pray for success… or at the least intimidate your competition with your talk of vortices running down the sides of the car sealing the underbody or the three additional points of lift you imagine you lost by cutting louvers into your wheel arches… never mind the 50grams of fiberglass you shed! Basically you win if it looks cool… because there is barely ever a good way to tell if it actually works.
Yes aero is the worst part of car building… but here I am again building another splitter, and this time in won’t be no subtle street attack piece… though luckily rules and regulations prevent me from thinking too hard about it. But… why the hell does the splitter on the THI Exige have a leading edge that is rolled upwards? It reminds me of the skidplate I had on my Celica.
Nevermind that this Exige is one of the most developed time attack cars on the planet… I’m sure they just curbed a flat splitter one day, thought it was cool and built a new one to accentuate that look. Or maybe it really is just about ground clearance!?!?!!
The reason I’ve heard for having an upturned leading edge on the splitter is to reduce “”pitch sensitivity” aka. loss/gain of front downforce due to the car pitching forwards under braking on anything softer sprung than a formula car.
With that said, “yea”, this stuff is way over my head/abilities/experience as well so I also have to admit I’m just parroting what I’ve heard.
Interesting. I also found this in a RaceTech Magazine article about the car. “The leading edge is turned up to create a nice radius so that the air that encounters it doesn’t get detached from the flat floor that follows, basically simulating a thicker splitter with a generously radiused leading edge. At the sides of the splitter we have some big fences to trap the air and generate downforce.”