basti313 wrote: ↑12 Nov 2024, 10:37
Triggered by the race in Brazil and this comparison:
viewtopic.php?p=1258466#p1258466
I think we still see the evolution of different concepts:
Soft sprung:
2022 RedBull, current Ferrari and McLaren have a relatively "soft" chassis.
Hard sprung:
Mercedes, RedBull. Completely hard, issues on kerbs, but reaches stability on the aero by this measure.
My take on why they are doing this:
With limited wind tunnel time you can not do all runs you want. On a "hard" platform the chassis movement is much less. So you need to do much less wind tunnel experiments with compressed springs.
On the other hand Ferrari and McLaren, being not 2021 WCC contenders always had more freedom to develop in the windtunnel which allows them also for 2023 to stay on a relatively soft platform.
The comparison is not taking this into account...I think when we compare aero values, the platform needs to be taken into account. Hard sprung gives benefits on aero, but kills drivability.
An interesting point in going through some media:
The Intermediate tire changed the benefit of each platform.
Due to the different ride height and the different tire flex hurt the well dialed in concepts of Ferrari and McLaren more than the hard sprung cars of RedBull and Mercedes in the wet.
I think it would be good if we kept talking about suspension stiffness first and foremost
Chassis stiffness on its own usually means torsional stiffness of the monocoque chassis (bending stiffness is basically a non-issue with CFRP monocoque)
In 2022, all teams tried running much softer suspension in first Barcelona test than they ended up with in Bahrain Q, including Red Bull. It's better ride quality, better kerb riding, better traction etc. When you do that, car starts to bounce around in high-speed sections and especially on straights if you don't lift it up, especially at that time when teams had only a few idea how to mend this issue through aerodynamic design. Overall, it was a better compromise for lap-time to stiffen the car up and run it as low as possible.
In relative terms, RB20 has a very stiff front and it's limiting their kerb riding and bump response. Ferrari and McLaren are indeed fairly soft in comparison, while Mercedes is hard to figure out exactly (for me at least) as they seem to be changing bulk of the car and its characteristic with every update. Whatever the case, I don't think it has anything to do with WT and aero testing and making shortcuts. All these cars are still very high when standing still, so you still need to run loads of reference cases for each ride height.
Instead, I think it's simply about core concept of every car. I don't agree RB18 was soft, although it had a softer rear (in relative terms) than RB19, it was still a very stiff car that was able to nurse the tyres very well in every race of the season. All 3 Ferrari cars so far were softer than RB and even when you compare 2022 and 2024 Monaco pole laps of Leclerc, you'll see SF24 is clearly the softer of the two. F1-75 was running quite high all the time and it still had a lot of floor downforce, so even though it was bouncing on straights it wasn't wearing the plank and it wasn't bottoming out. Other than Barcelona-spec floor, SF24 has bouncing under control but they had to take some measures to mitigate aerodynamic part of the bouncing issues with Monza floor, namely by discarding vertical kicks on the keel - but also by making big changes to the floor edge. All those changes definitely cost them raw downforce, but they got a floor that can probably use all the downforce it can generate across the lap.
Intermediates in Brasil race were peculiar as far as McLaren goes, they still got the pole lap on those and it really should have been a 1-2 for them in my view. Norris was running in dirty air all the time, so was Piastri, they were making mistakes and I honestly don't think it was down to the car for McLaren. For Ferrari, the car is not able to generate heat in the tyres quickly and this hurt them both in Q and R in Brasil. Leclerc never had a decent clean run on Inters in Q2 and Q3, somehow he had to abort half the laps in Q2 and Q3 due to incidents and red flags and this never helped getting those Inters in the right window. On top of that, they admit they made a mistake with setup and they also gambled on different outcome for rain during the race and how they used their tyres.
On the other hand, Mercedes lights up the tyres right away and they were always good in the wet and cold sessions this year. RB20 also lights up the tyres quickly, but it has a much better deg curve in the race than Mercs. Getting tyres in the window and keeping them there is far more important than ride height in the wet if you ask me. All corners are run much slower (some of them over 50kmh slower in Brasil) so the downforce contribution is much, much lower than tyre grip compared to dry conditions.
I feel I may have mislead you, putting emphasis on tyre treatment and whether a car instantly lights them up or gently warms them up. As far as I know this is actually related directly, although not only, to suspension stiffness. Stiffer suspension will put more energy into the tyre, simply because it doesn't take any inertial energy of sprung mass onto itself. So indeed, like you said, stiffer car overall plays a role with tyre temperature and it may have benefited some cars.
