Investigation of Negative Lifting Surfaces Attached to an Open-Wheel Racing Car Configuration 850283

Aerodynamic lift and drag coefficients of various open-wheel racing car configurations were experimentally investigated. These configurations included several basic fuselage shapes which, in view of the current regulations, did not make use of the “ground effect” to provide negative lift. To these fuselage shapes, which had some positive lift, both unswept wings and delta wings were added to increase their negative lift. The experiments were made with one-tenth scale models, but in order to evaluate these results, comparison is made with full-scale wind tunnel experiments. The results of this work show that useful conclusions can be drawn, based on the small-scale tests, about the relative effectiveness of these aerodynamic devices. Furthermore, with the aid of these lifting surfaces an overall lift coefficient of about minus one was found to be obtainable.