加里·安德森解析2026年F1蒙扎低阻力空气动力学调整
加里·安德森分析了2026年能量受限的新规则下，蒙扎赛道所需的低阻力空气动力学调校方案。
蒙扎赛道的核心在于优化低阻力空气动力学设定，同时尽可能保留下压力。但弯道终究是弯道，过弯速度越快，进入直道的初始直线速度就越好，进而圈速也会更快。
蒙扎自早期以来已经发生了很大变化，但它仍然保留着许多直道，今年赛车的最高时速略超过340公里（211英里），即94米/秒，而每条直道的末端都伴随着不同程度的刹车。
进入某些减速弯时，车速需要降到80公里/小时（50英里/小时），这个减速过程只需一秒多一点，或者用距离来说是在100米内完成，因此车尾的稳定性以及对刹车平衡一致性的信心至关重要。
当尾翼从直道模式（低阻力）切换到过弯模式（高下压力）时，你需要立刻获得车尾的稳定性，因为那正是你全力踩下刹车踏板的时刻。
在那之后，最大的挑战是随着抓地力下降相应地减小刹车踏板压力，然后在入弯时精准地穿针引线。晚刹车一米，你就会损失零点几秒的圈速；更糟的是，如果晚了两米，你就会冲出赛道滑过缓冲区，损失好几秒。
除此之外，后轴上的电池能量回收在制动末段逐渐减弱，让你不得不过渡到前后轴同时使用液压制动，这让情况更加复杂。
由于这些赛车中的大多数都在前悬架采用防下潜设计、在后悬架采用防抬升设计，以控制车身的俯仰姿态来保证空气动力学稳定性，车手在制动过程中获得的反馈非常有限。
是的，尽管我会说动力单元凭借其电能的回收与分配比车手更重要，但我仍然认为车手们对得起自己的薪水。
那么各车队拿出的方案，既要真正有效，又要足够好，好让车手把信心拉满，把刹车点再推迟那么一米才踩下刹车踏板？
迈凯伦终于对它的180度旋转尾翼满意了，也就是所谓的H翼。迈凯伦已经测试过很多次，但迈凯伦擅长的一点就是保持克制：除非确信目标已经达成，否则不会把部件装到赛车上。
我们可以在这里看到迈凯伦尾翼处于过弯模式时的样子，以及把它旋转到直道模式的作动器。
这些改动中，有一些可能是为了适配赞德沃特与蒙扎之间不同的尾翼规格，但看起来连杆的几何结构以及中间连杆的长度——我用白色双向箭头标出的那部分——有所增加。这将是为了改变开口大小，或者加快开启和关闭的速度。
我们很少能拿到翼片处于打开状态时的特写照片来做更多对比，因为当时赛车正以大约300公里/小时（186英里/小时）的速度行驶，也就是约83米/秒。至于翼片的开启和关闭，规则要求翼片必须在0.4秒内打开和/或关闭，也就是一眨眼的工夫。
同样有趣的是，迈凯伦基本上保留了与之前相同尺寸的纵向翼缘板，我用蓝色箭头（见上图）做了标注。这个翼缘板会带来一些阻力，但它的作用有点像拖在车后的降落伞，能在制动时提升车尾的稳定性。
对法拉利来说，在蒙扎夺冠可能和赢得年度总冠军同样重要，但无法在蒙扎登上领奖台的担忧或许同样是强烈的动力，所以通常在意大利大奖赛上，车队会不惜一切代价把所有资源都砸到赛车上。
今年，他们的工作主要是让升级后的引擎达到理想状态。据我了解，作为这项工作的一部分，他们加大了涡轮的尺寸。正如我们在季前测试中所看到的，只有法拉利凭借比其他动力单元制造商更小的涡轮，才能在起步时表现出非常出色的加速。
然而，在那之后国际汽联决定，出于安全原因，在起步灯亮起之前增加五秒的延迟，让车手有时间提高发动机转速以建立涡轮增压——这样一来，实际上抵消了小尺寸涡轮给整套动力单元带来的大部分优势。
法拉利还带来了一些空气动力学方面的改进。导流板（导流板）上的这些垂直小翼在图中以绿色标出（见上图），用于管理F1作为开放式车轮赛事所产生的紊流。在蒙扎，法拉利把三片式部件改成了单片式部件。这可能是一项会沿用到赛季剩余比赛的改进，而不仅仅针对蒙扎。时间会给出答案。
法拉利还对后制动导管的出风口做了更大、更精细的设计。就制动而言，蒙扎是一条很奇怪的赛道，因为由于直道很长，第一次踩下刹车踏板时刹车可能太冷，而当你完成减速时刹车又可能过热。这个问题在第一号减速弯尤为突出，因为那里的减速幅度是全赛道最大的。
能量回收全部通过后轴来完成，直到电池组充满为止，然后衰减到只在刹车的最后阶段才使用液压制动；而为了减轻重量，各车队使用的后刹车都比理想尺寸要小。
增加适合蒙扎的散热当然是好事，但我曾多次说过，不能只是把开口开得更大。更好的做法是加大排气口，并优化制动系统内各个区域——刹车片、刹车盘、卡钳等——的散热。
图中以绿色标出的排气气流导流挡板也做了改动。它现在更高了，这意味着在垂直方向上遮挡了尾管一半以上的面积，但它中央开有一个槽，所以开放面积可能没有太大差别。如果法拉利真的走上了优化更大涡轮的气流路线，这也可能是其需求的一部分。
此外，以品红色标出的该挡板侧面的叶片宽度也有所减小，并通过移除小型端板，可能实现了小幅减阻。
至于其他车队，梅赛德斯移除了尾翼延伸板。不过，同样为了提升后部稳定性，它和迈凯伦一样，保留了尾翼上的副翼折边。
梅赛德斯还缩短了安装后视镜的侧箱导流叶片的长度，图中用洋红色标出。这可能是一个小幅的减阻改进，我用红色箭头标注了这一点，因为它能让一些流过侧箱顶部的气流被吸入侧箱的提前进站区域（提前进站）。
红牛也沿着同样的思路整理了尾翼的后缘。不过，它采用了全长度的后缘也就是所谓的吉尼襟翼（Gurney flap）。执行机构的几何形状也与本赛季早些时候不同，但在维斯塔潘于奥地利和银石赛道弯道入弯时冲出赛道之后，红牛有一场比赛没有使用这种风格的尾翼，同时花了一些时间来更好地理解气流从直线模式转换到过弯模式时的重新附着效率有多高。
威廉姆斯也在 Halo 系统也就是座舱保护架的后缘增加了一些小导流叶片，图中用黄色标出。这些叶片应该能整理从 Halo 圆形侧支撑管流出的气流。
车队还缩短了其导流板（导流板）后缘的长度，修剪处用白色虚线标出。这两项改动可能都是小幅的减阻措施。
正如我在本专栏开头所说，制动稳定性对于蒙扎至关重要，尤其是因为这大概率会是一场一停比赛。这主要是因为当你的赛车停在维修区换胎而损失时间时，对手正以340公里每小时的速度在赛道上飞驰而过。但这也意味着，到了比赛尾声，轮胎早已远远超出最佳抓地力水平，犯错的概率大大增加。
俗话说，别高兴得太早，小鸡孵出来之前别急着数。在赛车运动中，只有当方格旗挥动的那一刻，一切才算尘埃落定。
英文原文
Monza is all about optimising a low-drag aerodynamic set-up, while retaining as much downforce as possible. But corners are still corners, and the faster you can go around them, the better the initial straightline speed will be and, in turn, the laptime.
Monza has changed a lot since its early days, but it still has many straights, with a top speed this year a little in excess of 340km/h (211mph), which is 94m/s, and at the end of all of them is some varying levels of braking.
Into some of the chicanes, that speed needs to be reduced to 80km/h (50mph), and that speed reduction happens in just over a second or, in distance, 100 metres, so rear-end stability and confidence in the consistency of the braking balance is critical.
When the rear wing closes from straight mode (low drag) to cornering mode (high downforce), you need that rear-end stability immediately, as that is when you really hit the brake pedal with everything you can.
After that, the big challenge is to reduce that pedal pressure in line with the grip reduction and then thread the eye of the needle at corner entry. One metre too late and you will lose a couple of tenths of laptime or, even worse, two metres too late and you have a trip across the runoff where you lose seconds.
And to add to that, you have the battery harvesting on the rear axle diminishing near the end of braking, leaving you with the transition over to hydraulic braking on both axles and complicating things even more.
With the levels of anti-dive on the front suspension and anti-lift on the rear suspension that most of these cars are running to control the pitch of the car for aerodynamic stability, the driver has very low levels of feedback during braking.
Yes, even though I would say the power unit, with its electrical harvesting and distribution, is more important than the driver, I still believe they earn their keep.
So what have the teams come up with that A) works and B) works well enough to allow the driver to maximise their confidence to go just that one metre later before hitting the brake pedal?
McLaren is finally happy with its 180-degree rotating rear wing, or H-wing as it’s called. McLaren has tested it many times, but the one thing that McLaren is good at doing is showing discipline: don’t put bits on the cars unless you are confident that the goals have been met.
We can see here the McLaren rear wing in cornering mode and the actuator that rotates it to straightline mode.
Some of these changes may be to suit the actual wing specification between Zandvoort and Monza, but it looks like the geometry of the linkage and the length of the middle link, which I have highlighted with the double-ended white arrow, has increased. This will be to either alter the opening size or speed up the opening and closing.
We don’t get many close-up pictures of the wing in the open state to allow us to do much comparison as the cars are travelling in the region of 300km/h (186mph), or 83m/s at that time. As far as its opening and shutting is concerned, in the regulations the wing has to open and/or close in less than 0.4 seconds, so the blink of an eye.
It’s also interesting to see McLaren has retained more or less the same horizontal size of gurney flap, which I have highlighted with the blue arrow (above). This Gurney flap will be a bit draggy, but it will act a bit like a parachute being pulled along behind the car and improve the rear-end stability under braking.
For Ferrari, a win at Monza is probably just as important as winning the championship, but the fear of not being on the podium at Monza is probably just as strong a motivation, so normally it’s about throwing the kitchen sink at the car for the Italian GP.
This year, it has mainly been about getting its upgraded engine up to speed. I’m led to believe that, as part of that, it has increased the size of the turbo. As we saw from pre-season testing, only Ferrari, with its smaller turbo than the other power unit manufacturers, was able to get off the start line very impressively.
However, after that the FIA decided that, for safety reasons, it would add a five-second time delay before the start lights would come on to allow the drivers to increase the engine revs to build up turbo boost - so, in fact, taking away most of the advantage that the smaller turbo brought to the package.
Ferrari also has a couple of aerodynamic developments. These vertical vanes on the bargeboards, highlighted in green (above), manage the turbulence that is created by F1 being an open-wheel formula. For Monza Ferrari has gone from a three-element component to a single-element component. This may be a development that will be for the rest of the season and not just Monza-specific. Time will tell.
Ferrari has also gone for a bigger and more detailed exit opening on the rear brake duct. Monza is a strange circuit as far as braking is concerned because, as a result of the long straights, the brakes can be too cold when you first hit the brake pedal but too hot when you achieve your speed reduction. That problem is highlighted into the first chicane as it’s the biggest speed reduction.
The harvesting is all being achieved through the rear axle until the battery pack is full, and then diminishes to only hydraulic braking just at the end of braking, and to save weight the teams run smaller-than-ideal rear brakes.
Increased cooling for Monza is no bad thing, but I have said more than once you can’t just put a bigger opening in. You are better to go for a bigger exit and optimise the cooling of the various areas - pads, discs, callipers, etc. - within the braking system.
The exhaust gas direction blocker, which is highlighted in green, has also been changed. It is now higher, which means it is closing off more than half of the tailpipe vertically, but it has a central opening slot, so the open area is probably not much different. It may also be part of Ferrari’s requirement to optimise the gas flow of the bigger turbo, if it really has gone down that route.
Also the vanes on the side of that blocker highlighted in magenta have been reduced in width and by removing the small endplates a small drag reduction has probably been achieved.
As for the others, Mercedes has removed its rear-wing extensions. However, again to improve the rear-end stability, it, like McLaren, has retained the rear-wing gurney flap.
Mercedes has also reduced the length of the rear-view-mirror-mounting sidepod vane, which is highlighted in magenta. This is probably a small drag reduction, which I have highlighted with the red arrows, as it will allow some of the flow going over the top of the sidepod to get pulled into the sidepod undercut.
Red Bull has also gone down that same path in tidying up the wing’s trailing edge. However, it has gone to a full-length trailing-edge Gurney flap. The actuator geometry is also different from earlier in the season, but after Verstappen’s offs on corner entry in Austria and Silverstone, Red Bull took a race off from using this style of wing while putting some time into getting a better understanding of how efficiently the airflow was reattaching when going from straight-line mode to cornering mode.
Williams has also added some small vanes, which are highlighted in yellow, to the trailing edge of the halo. These should tidy up the airflow coming off the round section of the halo side support tubes.
And it has also reduced the length of the trailing edge of its bargeboard. The trim is highlighted with the dotted white line. Both of these are probably small drag reductions.
As I said at the beginning of this column, braking stability is critical for Monza, especially as it will probably be a one-stop race. This is mainly because of the time loss when your car is sitting in the pits having its wheels changed while your competitors are passing on the track at 340km/h. But that does mean that, coming up to the end of the race, the tyres are getting well past their optimum grip level, making it much easier to make a mistake.
As the saying goes, never count your chickens until they are hatched. In motor racing, that’s when the chequered flag is waved.
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