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That RCR story from Ansys might have actually revealed why RCR has been more successful recently and also possibly why SHR dominated in 2018. Specifically related to this image. Let's dig in a bit and examine what's going on.
Their story: https://www.ansys.com/about-ansys/advantage-magazine/volume-xiv-issue-2-2020/simulate-compete-repeat
Their story: https://www.ansys.com/about-ansys/advantage-magazine/volume-xiv-issue-2-2020/simulate-compete-repeat
The piece that we are specifically looking at is the shock mount location marked here and how it's location affects how the front end of the car moves.
As pointed out here, locating the shock mount there was actually first done at Hendrick but SHR appears to have perfected it and then the others including RCR picked up on it and designed their own version. https://twitter.com/KyleTJeffries/status/1304901533042118656?s=20
We'll use a picture of the HMS road course car that I posted yesterday just to show the traditional location of the shock mount towards the rear. You can see how much further forward the mount is in the RCR image.
Sounds like there were a lot of takes on this solution and JGR even developed something unique around the same idea. https://twitter.com/KyleTJeffries/status/1304916310531477510?s=20
So let's dig into why that shock location is important and why it was a genius idea to move it. Many people think that making a race car stiffer will make it faster but when you're dealing with aero and specifically strict aero rules, making it flex can often make it better.
With the shock mounted towards the rear, the front of the car would not flex very much but with the upper shock mount moved more towards the front it allows the front of the car to flex or to have compliance which allows for better control of the location of the splitter.
This allows for the front of the front clip being able to flex quite a decent amount and the ability to adjust the car to be lower and optimize the location of splitter where it could change dynamically but not drag on the track.
This was very important once NASCAR mandated the completely flat splitters as teams that figured it out would be able to optimize around the new splitter design and still optimize for aero.
The effects of of this flex or compliance are somewhat hard to spot with the naked eye but you can see hints of it by looking at onboard video like this one of the #4 car in 2018. Just watch the relation of the fenders to the roof and how the car flexes.
Unfortunately I can't find another onboard from the same race but here is the #2 car from the year prior and you can see how the whole car moves as a unit and doesn't flex like the #4 car above.
It's a little tough to see with the naked eye but if you watch old onboard especially those form 2018 and compare the #4 to some other cars then differences can be spotted.
The basic idea here is to optimize the front of the car to flex in order to move the splitter to optimize for airflow under the car and in order to do that it has to be combined with some of the underbody aero tricks I've referenced in the past. https://twitter.com/BoziTatarevic/status/1288249785456242689
The RCR pictures from earlier also help us see why the underbody aero is so important. https://twitter.com/KyleTJeffries/status/1304905385409736704?s=20
So to summarize, HMS figured out that making the front of the car flex might be helpful for aero but didn't seem to ever implement it. SHR did figure out how to implement it sometime around 2016 or 2017 and it helped them absolutely dominate in 2018.
Other teams like JGR caught onto it in 2018 and worked on their own solutions some of which were eventually outlawed while other like RCR figured out their own version that they were able to keep and showed to us in the pictures from the Ansys story.
It's completely genius and these pictures coming out are one of the only positive aspects of new parts being frozen for the current car as it's giving teams some freedom to share things that they usually wouldn't.
This is also shows how much RCR has improved over the past few years and what they’ve been able to pick up from other teams and combine with their other efforts like using startegy tools from @rho_dot_ai.
