I wouldn't dream of contradicting Scarbs. However, you have the incident at LeMans in 1999 with the Mercedes CLR car, where Mark Webber backflipped at Indianapolis corner during qualy. The car was reconstructed that night, modified (not adjusted, modified) for more downforce and put into the track again.
To Mercedes shame, the car didn't make it to Indy's corner: this time backflipped at Mulsanne...
Things wouldn't be THAT bad at this moment, but they got weirder...
Mr. Haug decided to race the remaining two cars with "instructions not to follow other cars closely at humps".
After four hours of race, Peter Dumbreck backflipped, again at Indy, on world TV.
It goes without saying that the Mercedes CLR project was cancelled on the spot.
Mark Webber backflipping over his teammates
I've been discussing (and arguing with zac...
) about the subject of airborne cars, after Kubica's accident, here:
viewtopic.php?p=54313
Zac was the one that pointed me to read about LeMans 1999. Thanks to him, now I think that the problem is this:
It's not a wing (well, not strictly speaking) and it's not through adjustment, so scarbs is (as usual) right, as far as I know. Of course, you could mention that they modified the car
for more downforce (and failed spectacularly).
I've been wondering if the shape of an F1 car shouldn't be like the inverse of the CLR model: an inverted wing, raising the nose, like in this (yes, horrible, I agree) sketch I made quickly:
There is also another problem that I talked about in that thread: the wing is designed to go straight ahead. It's sensitive to pitch (as the CLR shows), but the car could also be sensitive to yaw.
For example, we talked in that same thread about the NASCAR cars of old going airborne once they went backwards (when spinning on the track, of course). Like this:
Sequence I lifted from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt5XCCgwulA
You can (barely) see that the car (Bill Elliot at Talladega) blows a tire in 1, goes sideways (and starts to lift) in 2 and, finally, lifts completely in 3 to crash against the fence. As soon as the car goes backwards, the body works like a wing. I don't think frontal wings have problems with yaw, but definitely could have it with pitch, so it's not only adjustments: the wing can be unstable aerodinamically, so, if the car lifts a little, it can change the force from downforce to lift.
I'm sure scarbs can judge if that could happen in a heavy bump or if F1 designers (probably) are aware of the problem and have worked to avoid it. After all, a bump over a kerb can change the angle of attack a lot more than any adjustment (or so I believe).
