Surely they can’t just crack up the rake? The rest of the aero must be altered to make it work well?
Yep, it’s an intrinsic part of the whole car design.
Mercedes may well be running higher rake, than normal, but this is relatively speaking.
The issue, I’d have thought, with high rake cars is that the aero under the car liable to be far more flaky than air through and over the top. I’m sure it works amazingly in the wind tunnel, but cranking it up on track with suspension movement, direction changes, etc, means that it may not have the drivers confidence. Any interruption in the flow could mean the whole floor losing down force – the higher the rake the bigger the potential gain but less room for error. A lot more detail to the fluid dynamics of it but remembering back to my mech eng days and how sensitive ground effect wings where compared to regular aerofoil wings!
Anyway, waffle over!
