Tire grip and traction are critical factors in a car’s handling. Especially for performance-oriented cars, you need to create more downforce to keep the tire securely stuck to the tarmac. The easy solution is to add more weight to the car to prevent it from sliding away at high speeds. However, added weight directly affects the car’s acceleration and sabotages the handling in other ways. Instead, engineers have come up with spoilers to take care of downforce at high speeds.
A spoiler creates a surface that redirects the wind. As the wind hits the surface and goes up, the spoiler pushes down on the car; this is Newton’s third law of motion. The faster the car goes, the more noticeable the effects of a rear spoiler will be. For example, the McLaren Senna GTR’s massive rear wing is a chief instance of a well-engineered aerodynamic piece that creates a lot of downforce.
Moreover, spoilers are used to scale back drag. Drag is air’s pure resistance towards an object in movement. Rear spoilers enable vehicles to chop by means of drag and scale back the turbulence that comes with it.