What is 'flo-vis paint' - the fluorescent paint on F1 cars at Bahrain testing?
It is known as “flo-vis paint” and you will see many F1 ca🌱rs smeared with it du🌟ring testing.
The paint is a fluorescent powder mixed with a light oil and is used to 🦩help unders🍸tand a car’s aerodynamics.
Rob Smedley, an ex-Ferrari and Williams engineer, explained: “You paint it liberally on the car, the car then goes out and as it’s moving up to speed and goꦗing through a cornering condition, the paint dries as the light oil evaporates and you end up being able to visualise, very clearly, what sort of flow structures you've got.
"When we then analyse that – we’re usually looking for things like separation, as in where the flow's separating and we’re not getting decent flow structures across the surfaces of the car. That can then tel🌞l the aerodynamicists a lot about what's going on upstream of that, and hopefully that helps them to rectify certain problems on the car.
“You’ll often then see the teams looking to cover a car that’s beꦑen running flow-vis with screens when it comes back inꦕto the pits.
“The dream for the other teams is to try and get bits of informatiꦫon about a competitor, so the screens just stop rival♉s getting pictures of your car with the flow-vis paint on it, which is going to tell a competitor a story about your car, or maybe tell them information which is key to what they want to do as well.”
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from America⭕n sports, to football, to F1.
