Tech Explainer
How sculpted tunnels under the car use the Venturi principle to generate more downforce than wings — while leaving a cleaner wake that makes overtaking possible.
Pre-2022: Wing-Generated Downforce
01
Under the wide-body regulations introduced in 2017, F1 cars generated enormous downforce from complex multi-element wings. The problem: all that wing-generated downforce also created a violently turbulent wake. A following car entering that turbulence lost 35-50% of its own downforce. Braking distances stretched. Understeer increased. Overtaking required either a large pace advantage or a DRS pass on a straight.
02
Bernoulli's principle: in a fluid flowing through a constriction, speed increases and pressure decreases. F1's 2022 underbody applies this directly. Two carefully sculpted tunnels run the length of the car's floor, narrowing toward a throat before expanding into the diffuser. Air accelerating through the throat drops in pressure — generating suction between the car and the road. Downforce without a wing.
03
At the rear of the car, the tunnels feed into an expanding diffuser. This transition accelerates the flow exiting the underbody, maintaining the low-pressure zone along the entire floor length rather than letting it dissipate. The taller and steeper the diffuser exit, the more air it processes — teams push the geometry to the FIA's regulated limits (175mm maximum height) every millimeter they can.
04
Ground-effect cars generate most of their downforce from underneath — a region that produces minimal wake disruption to cars following behind. The 2022 regulation change reduced a following car's downforce loss from 35-50% to just 4-18%. Race simulations predicted a doubling of overtaking opportunities. The 2022-2024 racing broadly validated this — particularly at circuits where overtaking was previously near-impossible.
05
The Venturi effect is brutally sensitive to ride height. Lower the car by 5mm and downforce increases significantly — but approach the threshold where underbody flow stalls and the entire downforce package collapses instantly. In 2022, teams discovered "porpoising" — a self-excited oscillation where stall-recovery-stall cycles caused cars to bounce violently. The FIA introduced minimum ride height measures. Teams walked the line between aerodynamic gain and driver safety.
Pre-2022: Wing-Generated Downforce
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