Talk:FORD FUSION (STEWART-HAAS RACING)/@comment-79.117.140.176-20170221012022/@comment-27510501-20170224104258

I studied aerodynamics over 20 years ago, and wanted to make that my career specialty. I have not applied any of that knowledge for over 10 years, so I'm very rusty! But I'll throw my tuppence in here anyway...

The problem with the explanations like the one given in the video linked here is that they are presenting something that is very complex in a simplified way to explain the fundamental concepts. Airflow is very complex, and it is hard to describe such complexity in simplified terms without omitting important detail. The catch of course is that if you put those important details back into the explanation, you may end up with a description that is about the size of a text book, with pages of mathematics.

Probably the important point to remember is that the "skin friction" of the air on the surface of the car is not the only contributor to the overall drag. As mentioned in the video, there is also a pressure difference between the air at the rear of the car and the air at the front, which also contributes to the overall drag.

As to RR3 exaggerating the effect of drafting, this is likely to be true. For one, this app is definitely not intended to model such things accurately, as it is a game, and will only use fairly crude techniques to model the effect. The performance reductions of damaged cars in-game is another example of a crude modelling technique that can only roughly approximate a real-world effect.

(I use the word "crude" not in a derogatory sense, but a relative sense. Whatever algorithms FM/EA have coded in to model drafting are likely to be crude compared with the highly detailed models required to achieve an accurate simulation.)