F1 myths?

[Greg Locock]

Wings on a car? Oh good lord no. Opel RAK 2 1928.

[KimiRai]

Rain is the great car equalizer, well, no it isn't, the better the car better it will be in the rain all things being equal.

That wouldn't explain Alonso qualifying P2 in Canada last year or the massive gap between teammates that can occur when it rains. We have definitely seen rain give slower cars a shot at a better starting position by virtue of weaker drivers in faster cars being exposed.

The way I understand it is that rain makes the lap much slower which means the amount of laptime drivers can find is increased, so it allows for bigger driver differences like you said. But it being as much of an equalizer is a myth obviously, car differences are still there.

[Rodak]

Wings on a car? Oh good lord no. Opel RAK 2 1928.

Yep. I'm curious to hear what innovations F1 has contributed to road cars. Well, active suspension might be one.... but then they banned it. Rear wheel steering? Yeah, for parking. F-duct? Well..... Seamless shift transmissions? Nice on a race car. 18" tires? Following the herd. Seriously, what useful innovation has F1 brought to road cars? These are serious sophisticated race cars that corner at 5 g's. They have no need to bring innovation to road cars. This discussion is sort of like asking what developments top fuel drag cars contribute to street cars..... Nitro?

[Greg Locock]

High bandwidth active was developed at Lotus, the demonstrator was an Excel, not an F1 car. Low bandwidth active was Citreon in the 1950s. 4 ws has been around since the 1950s (if not before), and the rather dubious high speed advantages have been touted since the mid 80s.

[Just_a_fan]

[Turbochargers - WW2 aircraft.

Way before WW2.

[KimiRai]

Drivers developing cars. One of the biggest myths out there.

[Stu]

…

Yep. I'm curious to hear what innovations F1 has contributed to road cars.
...

F-duct?

Most/many road cars now have small ducts to create so-called ‘air curtains’ around critical high drag points (front tyres, rear wheel arches, front grill/radiator outlet); I would argue that these are the same technology as the f-duct, they just don’t have the driver operation of the system - and when ‘active-aero’ becomes a thing in mainstream cars it will owe more to double-DRS (which again is basically the same thing but more!).

[JordanMugen]

Drivers developing cars. One of the biggest myths out there.

Before data-logging, so pre-'80, how else would the engineers work out what a car needs if not for driver feedback? "I want more front-end", "I want more rear-end" etc?

and when ‘active-aero’ becomes a thing in mainstream cars

Isn't it with good reason that "active aero" fell out of fashion on road cars in the first place?

Mitsubishi GTO complete with "Active Aero" decal on the retractable front splitter

(Likewise also good reasons for 4-wheel-steering, which the Mitsubishi GTO also had, falling out of fashion?)

[Greg Locock]

"Before data-logging, so pre-'80, how else would the engineers work out what a car needs if not for driver feedback? "I want more front-end", "I want more rear-end" etc? "

I'd be intrigued to know. My career in automotive started in1978, and vividly remember being asked to analyse the vibration data from an F1 car, which consisted of a SonyWalkman recording two accelerometers.

[KimiRai]

Drivers developing cars. One of the biggest myths out there.

Before data-logging, so pre-'80, how else would the engineers work out what a car needs if not for driver feedback? "I want more front-end", "I want more rear-end" etc?

I meant on modern times, thought it was implied. My bad.

[Hoffman900]

Wings on a car? Oh good lord no. Opel RAK 2 1928.

Yep. I'm curious to hear what innovations F1 has contributed to road cars. Well, active suspension might be one.... but then they banned it. Rear wheel steering? Yeah, for parking. F-duct? Well..... Seamless shift transmissions? Nice on a race car. 18" tires? Following the herd. Seriously, what useful innovation has F1 brought to road cars? These are serious sophisticated race cars that corner at 5 g's. They have no need to bring innovation to road cars. This discussion is sort of like asking what developments top fuel drag cars contribute to street cars..... Nitro?

The active suspension was adopted from a ride leveling suspension for ambulances.

Very little is “invented” in F1.

Data logging has been around since the 1960s. You can buy Paul Van Valkenburgh ‘s book and he has the data aq printouts from Mark Donahue and the Penske Camaro from 1969 in it.