Why F1 ban on wind tunnels won't help budget cap

Formula 1

Why F1 ban on wind tunnels won't help budget cap

F1 will potentially ban wind tunnels in 2030

Ian Parkes & Ewan Gale

Friday 28 May 2021 13:56

Aston Martin team principal Otmar Szafnauer does not believe costs would be cut if F1 banned wind tunnels.

A potential ban on wind tunnel usage in 2030 would mean a switch to Computational Fluid Dynamics [CFD] in car design from that stage, a process that is already used in conjunction with wind tunnels.

F1 entered a cost-cap era this season in an attempt to stop the meteoric budgets used in the quest for championship glory, but Szafnauer has warned against wind tunnel bans as a method of cost control.

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“Running a tunnel doesn’t cost you that much, it’s just the electricity and every once in a while a bit of maintenance and you replace a belt once in a while that is expensive but not all that often," said Szafnauer.

“The expensive bit of running a tunnel programme is actually making the model parts that you have to put in the tunnel, so if you get rid of tunnel testing you would certainly save some money.

“But then there would always be unintended consequences of not getting really what you want on the car, then you run it for the first time and that is not good.

"Then you’ve brought all those parts out. What you did in the tunnel you then do on track and that is 100 per cent car parts and is even more expensive.

“So it won’t be completely 100 per cent saving of what you now spend in the tunnel.”

Szafnauer reveals cost of wind tunnel usage

When pushed for a breakdown of costs, Szafnauer indicated it would likely be a case-by-case, team-by-team basis as to how much financial pressure a wind tunnel programme creates.

"The electricity, the maintenance, the belt changes, that is probably 10 to 20 per cent of it," he added.

"The 80 per cent is what you put in, the parts that you make and the model itself that you put in the tunnel and that can vary.

“Some teams, for example, will make a lot of different parts because they will try different threads in the tunnel.

"If, for example, the one thread is not successful when you do your first run then you might go to a different thread, but you’ve made those parts as if the thread is successful so you can try the next one and the next one.

“So, it could range in the fives of millions a year, in that range. But like I said, it varies by team, it varies by development and where, in the development cycle, you are. It varies by a lot of things.”

Pressed for a cost range, he replied: “Around $10 million [per year]. If you said that you wouldn’t be far off.”