Quote:
Originally Posted by Piwoslaw
Maybe locating vents above the wheel well increases downforce for racing?
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Thermal management is a BIG thing with race cars.
When you're exiting a high speed straight, 'standing' on carbon-ceramic Brembos or Akebonos, brake-fade's the last thing you're interested in experiencing.
According to MOTORTREND, the new Lucid Air Sapphire track car, for instance, can't make two laps at some 2.8-mile race courses in Southern California, without fade setting in.
Copious amounts of air from the forward stagnation point, bathing the rotors, is the 'solution', however, some of that ram air may get 'caught' within the wheelhouses, and depending upon where it impinges, can create both drag and lift.
' Ventilating' an arched-top wheelhouse exposes higher pressure air within the wheel-flop area, to the low pressure of accelerated flow above the arch ( Bernoulli effect ), creating an efficient, passive, extractor; not necessarily creating 'downforce,' so much as just 'killing' lift that would otherwise exist.