That lever that you are refering to was in fact the clutch pedal. No one realized that the cars were automatics and that the drivers were using the clutch pedals for the actuation of the wing. It took a while to be figured out but once the governing body found out, like you said it was banned.

 

Active aero is a great idea, although it's kind of silly (both in terms of drag and dowforce) at autocross speeds. Is anyone seriously worried about drag in 2nd and 3rd gear? How much lift is an M3 generating at 60 mph?

The Chapparal approach was about as smart as it comes, and it kicks this new idea's ass in a few different ways. Bypassing the suspension components and applying the force directly to the hubs/wheels is smart. If these MIT guys could do that with their split wing, it would be slightly less dopey. If they could even move those uprights to the outside of the car, it would be less dopey. As it is, they're putting their 'left' or 'right' pressure down through those center-mounted uprights, each pressing on the sheet metal, latch and sealing gasket of the car's trunk. Are those uprights even 15 inches apart from each other? I would guess that the difference the left or the right side of the car feels is negligible. And in any case, what exactly is the argument in favor of not increasing downforce (and on production-based cars it's simply reducing lift) on one side versus the other? The outside wheel is doing most of the work in a turn. But that doesn't mean it's doing all the work it possibly can. The more you can press down on it, the better. 'Balancing' the dowforce left to right isn't going to give you any meaningful advantage. The more downforce you can put on either side -- on the car as a whole -- the better.

Using servos, switches and a computer is also a little bit shady. We're talking about racing -- high speed and vibration-intense driving. Any of those components could fail, and you definitely want a system that fails back into the aggressive position rather than possibly sticking in passive position. I'd hate to go into turn 8 at Willow with my wing flat and useless after a wire has wiggled loose or a switch has failed. The Chapparal's mechanical activation and dead-man-switch approach is much smarter. It leaves the wing in a functional (and predictable) position unless the driver is actually thinking about disengaging it. There are no bad surprises that way.

Still, the video of that thing flapping around looks pretty cool. (It makes me think about servo-activated 'air brakes.')

 

Well, for the best mechanical grip you want the weight on the wheels to be equal. Yes, when the weight transfers to the outside those wheels have more grip than they did before. But the inside wheels lose more than the outside gain.

That being said ... I think what they are doing here is a suboptimization. I have my doubts that the total overall grip is better with only half the wing activated than it would be with the whole wing activated.

It may be that what they were really trying for was not best grip but something like an aero anti-roll system. That makes a lot of sense to me as a student engineering project, even though it might not be meaningful for a "best lap times" race car effort. But since active aero is banned in pretty much every level of racing anyway, then they can't really be thinking of developing this as a race car technology. Perhaps it is really aimed more as a street car anti-roll technology.

 

Needs a faster track to really show what it can do...

 

^^That's what I was thinking. What is their market for this if active aero is pretty much globally outlawed?

 

Their target market is Time Attack cars and other "unlimited"-style venues. With some tweaks it could be very effective there. Unfortunately I think it's likely to be banned soon after it reaches said level of effectiveness, bumming out both the owners of said wings, and the people making them.

 

Their website says they are developing a lockout. They suggest that you could use the wing controller to find the best wing setup in practice, then lock it into place for the race. That seems of dubious value to me, unless it is no more expensive than a more traditional wing.

 

Here is the vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73-3epSENYg

I am pretty sure he would run the same time without any wing!

 

Oh wait...no...he would run a faster time cause he would have less weight! :

 

Cool idea.