What do the Floor Fences in an F1 car do ?

There are a maximum of 4 floor fences allowed and each fence has specific role. In this post , lets visualize the effect of the outermost fence.

The primary job of the outermost fence is front wheel lower wheel wake control. i.e prevent the wake coming from the lower part of the tyre from being sucked into the floor. Why ? Because the wake is lower energy air and if it gets sucked inside the floor the mechanisms through which downforce is generated inside the floor ( we will talk about this in a separate post ) break down and hence the floor is not as effective in producing downforce.

How does it affect the drivers ? 🏎

Controlling the front wheel lower wheel wake has been one of the biggest challenges of the 2022 cars especially in yaw and steer as the wake tends to be sucked into the floor thus resulting in the rearwards aero balance shift which causes the fundamental #understeer issue all cars have been struggling in 2022 as compared to the older gen.