Red Bull Competition: flying Red Bull Formula1 car

I've made something very crazy and unusual for the Flite Test Red Bull Air Race Plane DIY Competiton 2018: a Red Bull Formula1 car which ist supposed to fly!

The Idea was to make something fly that is not supposed to fly, like a car where the aerodynamics are made for maximum downforce. But If you invert all the downforce surfaces, you get lift. Radio Controlled funktions are throttle, elevator in the front spoiler, ailerons in the rear wing and working steering. I made the elevator in the front because this increases lift when you give up-elevator and I can get the nose better off the ground. I also made flaperons so that I can get the thing in a car mode where front spoiler and rear wing move Up to create downforce like in the real car.

Heres a link to the forum thread: https://forum.flitetest.com/index.php?threads/rbarpdiyc2018-flying-red-bull-formula-1-race-car.54281/

The real life counterpart this is based on is the Red Bull RB6, a Formular 1 racer from 2010. I tryed to make it as scale as possible.

The build started with the bottom plate. Its one of the most important pieces since it holds everything together and is something like a base.

The next parts were the parts of the nose and the front spoiler.

The dry fit shows the gigantic size of this Thing next to the UMX Aero Commander

The next days I cut out more pieces for the basic shapes. Here are some pics:

Now the main body was done, so I hast to move on to the wheels. They are build exactly like Bushwacker wheels, only the dimensions chainged. The rear wheels are a little bit wider than the front wheels.

And now it started looking like a real F1 Car

The axles are made out of landing gear wire and Lego bricks. The Combination is surprisingly simple, strong and works great. For the steering I used control horns, pushrods and a servo from an RC car.

The rear axle is straight and its supported with a few plywood pieces.

Now I installed the electronics and the rear wing:

Now I added the final details like air intaktes and landing gear struts. And that just looks amazing!

Here are two videos:

It drives really nicely, but sadly its too underpowered for take-off. When you drive fast in airplane mode, you can feel the wheels lose traction. I tryed many different batterys from 3s 600 to 4s 2200. So I had to put more motors and a wing on. Sadly it destroyed the beautiful shape, but it was the only solution to increase the Chance of a real flight.

This ended up in a crash, because on take-off,it came off the track and ran into high grass.

The demage is not that big, I can easily repair it. If it does fly, I'll update this article.

UPDATE! repaired it and it made a two second flight and then crashed in a similar way than before. It was clearely noseheavy and had some other mistakes, but with a few modifications, I might geht it in the air.

More Update! We're getting closer guys, we're getting closer! Here are two videos: still not good, but it flyes better and has less demage with evry try.