Mclaren Mercedes MP4-25

[autogyro]

not exactly concrete, but gives you an idea.

http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/9435/wheelbase.jpg

taken in aus i think.

great pics. Sheesh the RB and the Renault are short. And by contrast the 25 is very long.

Like I keep saying, forth bridges that need to bend in the middle.

[ringo]

To be nit picky, the shots are not really perfect, some of the cars are looking larger in the shots. The wheels are not in a plane paralell to the camera plane, so we cannot say they a perfectly circular in the shots, or that the body of the car lies in a parallel plane.
Are there any specs on the teams websites? The rb6 always looked long to me somehow.

Well whatever the case may be, a longer car can have more body down-force. The floor can start 300mm from the front wheel centre line, and have to end on the rear wheel centre line.
The diffuser can only go back 600mm behind the rear wheels.
It is not clear if the teams are exploiting the limits for the floor length. But a longer car with the proper rake to compensate for the increase in boundary layer thickness, will have more suction area. Maybe not the same quality if the design is poor, but a long car is a cheap way to get floor down-force by virtue of it's size, without much design work.

[segedunum]

I was going to say, these shots are a bit meaningless unless we know they're all at a relative scale. I was also pretty sure RB had a longer wheelbase.

[feynman]

It is not meaningless ... it is clearly better than nothing, which is what we would have otherwise.

That is a small version, the original which is out on the internet somewhere or other, but escapes me at present, is larger and is clearly scaled and registered to the standard-size wheel rims. It is not perfect, we all know that, that's obvious, but we're not after 6 decimal-place accuracy, just looking to get a feel for who's long and who's short. Sometimes good-enough is good-enough.

[megz]

I'm fairly certain the picture in question will be in one of the pre-season testing threads in general chat. From memory both the RBR and Renault were shorter than the likes of the MP4-25 possibly thanks to the slightly reduced fuel cell size given the less thirsty Renault engine.

[PlatinumZealot]

I always took the RedBull as one of the longer cars. could be wrong though.

I don't know if this pictures is conclusive though, it doesn't have all the cars and of course the angles are not 100% matched up:

http://hunnylander.wordpress.com/2010/0 ... 03-mp4-25/

[SoliRossi]

The RB5 was one of the longest cars but the RB6 is one of the shortest.

The Ferrari and Macca are at the longer end of the scale. There are also issues that concern rigidity of design over shorter/longer wheelbase and its generally more expensive to have the rigidity over a longer car and keep the weight down.

SImplistically a short wheel base gives more agression with slow twisty stuff and a long car is better in the quick corners...but this is f1 and its really about what the teams make work and how they work the tyres. It appears RBR have both advantages.

A clearer example is the 08?? macc and ferrari, the macca was short and great in slow corners and the ferrari was long and a fast corner car. there would have been more factors than just wheel base to dictate this but it would have to have had some contribution.

[feynman]

I thought we'd recently all come to the conclusion that, within reason, wheelbase and car length are one of the least important factors affecting a car's performance.

The Merc got stretched to move weight distribution, the ultimate length was immaterial, it was just the easiest means to an end.

It sounds plausible I grant you, short car likes tight and twisty, but I don't believe there is much evidence to support it, there's a whole laundry-list of other over-riding, more dominant factors you'd need to go through before you ended up at car length. (Both with Merc engines, the loooong McLaren was faster round Monaco than the launch-spec very short wheelbase of the factory team's car).

I thought the 08 Macca was all about how effictively it's suspension worked the tyres, the mechanical grip, and the kerb-riding. The 08 Fezza was all about aero and especially at the rear-end, how well it was planted, giving great stability through fast corners.
That's why they worked on different tracks, mechanicals and aerodynamics, not because of a difference in wheelbase that amounted to not much more than a coupla thumb-widths.

[kalinka]

Martin Whitmarsh : “Our development battle continues for this race. We’ll have the usual iterative changes for Turkey, these include some planned aerodynamic upgrades, which we hope will edge us closer to the front."

Any idea on that updates ?

[shamikaze]

I thought we'd recently all come to the conclusion that, within reason, wheelbase and car length are one of the least important factors affecting a car's performance.

The Merc got stretched to move weight distribution, the ultimate length was immaterial, it was just the easiest means to an end.

It sounds plausible I grant you, short car likes tight and twisty, but I don't believe there is much evidence to support it, there's a whole laundry-list of other over-riding, more dominant factors you'd need to go through before you ended up at car length. (Both with Merc engines, the loooong McLaren was faster round Monaco than the launch-spec very short wheelbase of the factory team's car).

I thought the 08 Macca was all about how effictively it's suspension worked the tyres, the mechanical grip, and the kerb-riding. The 08 Fezza was all about aero and especially at the rear-end, how well it was planted, giving great stability through fast corners.
That's why they worked on different tracks, mechanicals and aerodynamics, not because of a difference in wheelbase that amounted to not much more than a coupla thumb-widths.

I follow you completely in this. This is also why I still think RBR6's suspension is not limited to just vertical movement, but more diagonal backwards movement. This would mean that under high load, the wheelbase is a very little bit longer, enhancing high-speed ability. Under lower loads, the wheelbase would be shorter enhancing agility around corners and kerbs. It is well-known and proven that suspension allignment moving diagonal/backwards improves the agility and stability of a car greatly and reduces the rebound-forces. Keeping the video's in the back of the mind that provided a view over the rear-wing where you can clearly see the rear-wing flex downwards on higher speed relative to the sharkfin. Now couple this rear-wing movement to the longer wheelbase under high aero-load, this would greatly increase the efficiency of the diffuser and underside of the car, reduce the AoA of the rear-wing (so as to ever-so-slightly reduce drag, but not much compareed realtive to F-Duct). this could explain why the RBR's are nigh uncatacheable during Qualifying since the difference between high- and low-speed aero-DF would give the greatest difference on low-load fuel-tanks whereas otherwise, the weight of the fuel would negate part of this effect (due to smaller delta between low- and high aero downforce weight on the suspension on top of the additional 150kg of fuel-weight).

This rear-suspension trick coupled with the exhaust-gases feeding into the diffused would certainly given RBR the advantage they currently have and also explain why the keep the rear-suspension under such close guard when on the grid.

Do feel free to shoot holes in this theory

[jason.parker.86]

I thought we'd recently all come to the conclusion that, within reason, wheelbase and car length are one of the least important factors affecting a car's performance.

The Merc got stretched to move weight distribution, the ultimate length was immaterial, it was just the easiest means to an end.

It sounds plausible I grant you, short car likes tight and twisty, but I don't believe there is much evidence to support it, there's a whole laundry-list of other over-riding, more dominant factors you'd need to go through before you ended up at car length. (Both with Merc engines, the loooong McLaren was faster round Monaco than the launch-spec very short wheelbase of the factory team's car).

I thought the 08 Macca was all about how effictively it's suspension worked the tyres, the mechanical grip, and the kerb-riding. The 08 Fezza was all about aero and especially at the rear-end, how well it was planted, giving great stability through fast corners.
That's why they worked on different tracks, mechanicals and aerodynamics, not because of a difference in wheelbase that amounted to not much more than a coupla thumb-widths.

I follow you completely in this. This is also why I still think RBR6's suspension is not limited to just vertical movement, but more diagonal backwards movement. This would mean that under high load, the wheelbase is a very little bit longer, enhancing high-speed ability. Under lower loads, the wheelbase would be shorter enhancing agility around corners and kerbs. It is well-known and proven that suspension allignment moving diagonal/backwards improves the agility and stability of a car greatly and reduces the rebound-forces. Keeping the video's in the back of the mind that provided a view over the rear-wing where you can clearly see the rear-wing flex downwards on higher speed relative to the sharkfin. Now couple this rear-wing movement to the longer wheelbase under high aero-load, this would greatly increase the efficiency of the diffuser and underside of the car, reduce the AoA of the rear-wing (so as to ever-so-slightly reduce drag, but not much compareed realtive to F-Duct). this could explain why the RBR's are nigh uncatacheable during Qualifying since the difference between high- and low-speed aero-DF would give the greatest difference on low-load fuel-tanks whereas otherwise, the weight of the fuel would negate part of this effect (due to smaller delta between low- and high aero downforce weight on the suspension on top of the additional 150kg of fuel-weight).

This rear-suspension trick coupled with the exhaust-gases feeding into the diffused would certainly given RBR the advantage they currently have and also explain why the keep the rear-suspension under such close guard when on the grid.

Do feel free to shoot holes in this theory

Would this explain why the other teams thought the car had a ride height system?

[autogyro]

Who says they have not got a ride height system?

[marcush.]

at the very least they have springs and dampers tuned for maintaining proper rideheight.I ´d call this a ride height system.

[shamikaze]

Would this explain why the other teams thought the car had a ride height system?

Yes, since under high DF, the car will lower due to suspension setup. This is unrelated to bleeding of dampers. This also would make the car have a higher ground-clearance at low-speeds or at standstil (ie parc-fermé), which triggered the whole "ride-height" discussion in the beginnning. Obviously FIA checks the minimal required heights of ground-clearance. Do they also report back when this seems "higher-then-usual". I would expect the RB6 to have a "higher then usual" ground-clearance when empty and the minimal required during "full-load". Also a pull-rod suspension would be more usefull to achieve this compared to the typically in F1 used "push-rod". Again another good reason to guard the back of the car since the devil would be in the detail of this pull-rod suspension.

If they would combine this with the flexing of the rear-wing and possibly allow part of the diffuser to flex with the rear-wing (rear-wing attached to the diffuser and diffuser is mounted where it starts), through specific tubing/forming of your carbon-frame, you could perfectly tune where and how-much (ie under what load) the complete setup would flex. Obviously, they can't flex the sharkfin along with it because that is connected to the engine-cover which would explain what we see in the said video in the RB6 thread. This would be neigh-impossible to detect under static-loads and only visible if you would trail the car very closely at different speeds keeping a very very close eye to the ground-clearance between diffuser and ground and check for any differences.

This is what I think would make their version of the F-Duct/blown-wing very difficult to achieve. For that to work you must have a rear-wing that stays exactly in place at high speed so the precise aerodynamcs involved with F-ducts/blow-wing can work their magic. I for one am very curious to find out how Neway will implement that.

Any of the more educated forum-members to shoot holes in this theory (or confirm it if you will )? As long as not confirmed, I consider this purely academic, but highly plausible

[BreezyRacer]

Will you guys let up on the "ride height system" thing? This is just getting crazy.

You know we've had F1 cars for decades now producing 3-4kg of DF and controlling ride height was never an issue. Now you add 300 lbs of fuel and everything changes? Think about it ..