MrT wrote:Scarbs, thanks for the photo.... you can see clearly quite a significant lateral offset so they are going to get a reducing front ride height with steer. I modelled this effect mathematically for a company a year and a half ago, and the results looked extremley interesting.
I would have thought the offset is a set up parameter for different tracks as it is easy to change for and aft offsets with shims and my model suggested some signficant load changes when compared with classical WT. The lateral offset is probably a function of vehicle speed and steer angle compared with the aero load and resulting spring compression, so the wing can be held at the optimum height above the ground...
Am i right in thinking ferrari were the first back in 2000ish to have this set up? Toyota were the first to have a very large lateral offset I think from my research - a year after ferrari initially mounted it to the upright.
Do Super Aguri run this at the moment?
It makes so much
sense to explore this, I'm surprised if the team's haven't tried to make a conscious use of that geometry much earlier. Short of making a model of any sort I pretty soon could accept the principle of how a rearward offset in the pushrod mount to the upright transfers load to the rear according to the steering angle and how the opposite happens with a forward mount ... it took a couple of napkin sketches, but I think I've got it. Of course, without doing any numbers it's not so easy to consider the amount of forces involved. What I'm not getting to grips with is how this will result in the front end being lowered overall through the corners?
Autosport, meanwhile had had a chat with Jenson prior to his taking over the driving duties at Jerez. If it's clear by looking at races that this year has been anything but a tour de force for Honda, it sounds even worse coming from a driver. At least he isn't sugar coating it.
"It's really just understanding a different way of working with aerodynamics. We're not expecting it to be any quicker. ... It might be more consistent and balance-wise it might be better, but you can't expect the team to turn the team around that quickly. ... This car is horrible to drive and I don't enjoy coming to the races at the moment. ... The problem for us now is that we're very slow in a straight line and when we get to a corner then we haven't got any downforce. So it can't be worse."
I've edited it a bit to keep it short, go
here (link to autosport) to read the whole thing.
