German Car Zone

Sunny · 12-28-2007, 11:54 PM

Steel brakes are probably safer than the carbon brakes currently used. The steel brakes would just gradually fade at their limit, not catastrophically disinegrate the way carbon brakes do.

Imhotep Evil · 12-29-2007, 06:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 450SEL6.9

I think F1 should at least experiment with the ground effects cars, if only in simulation. I'm interested to know if the advances in safety will allow a rethink the possibility of bringing back the aerodynamically clean cars. The ground effects cars will never be the safest possible car on the grid, but with the inroads made toward driver safety, surely it's worth an experiment/simulation.

Champ Car with new DP01 uses ground effects.
DP01 Undertray:

Quote:

As far as I know, the bottoming and takeoff problems for the ground effects cars cannot be engineered out. Rightly or wrongly, I liken it to rollovers caused by vehicles with a high(er) center of gravity. Again, as far as I know, there is no engineering solution, i.e. a SUVs will always have higher COG, short-and-narrow wheelbase SUVs higher still. You can make the modern SUVs safer and better protect them from rollovers by widening plus lengthening the wheelbase and adding electronics, but they will still have that higher COG.

I would argue that the ground effects cars' risk, like the SUVs gravity problem, can never be truly solved by engineering because they will always be more dangerous. However, the risks can be balanced. Tracks can and have taken out the bumps. Interlagos looked as flat as my first girlfriend's chest this year. Perhaps emergency electronic measures can somehow kick in when sensors recognize a looming loss of the ground effects downforce.

The active suspensions (provided they were top notch and worked) were the only thing that could control the ride height/clearance and terrain changes air flow disruption.
The active ride cars were true monsters for all the electronics they had.
So far ground effects seems to have worked well in Champ Car as tough they have more downforce then F1, they also have more overtaking (even excluding the "push to pass" tech and the no defending rule).
In F1 we could at least move the front wing lower in ground effect and use a more potent diffuser like in the late 80s - early 90s F1 or the current GP2 car (witch even has small fixed skirts on the edges of the floor in order to add more underbody downforce).

The 2009 50% less downforce solution seems to me super stupid because not only F1 had cars with equal or more downforce that today and more overtaking, but also that small amount of downforce coupled with the power to weight ratio is a safety menace. The tires, suspension and steering will be put to such a stress that freak accident resulting in nasty injuries or even fatalities would not surprise me.

F1 doesn't need more B* stupid/theoretical fixer up solutions, F1 needs slicks and clean ground effects based aero.

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F1's overtaking problems and their causes and popular myths