What are the minimum and maximum allowable ride heights in the ongoing competition?

[elpelucas]

I have been looking at the 2016 F1 Technical Regulations (12-2015 doc) but I cannot find this anywhere. What are the minimum and maximum distances the body of an F1 car can be from the floor? If you could tell me where this is specified in the Regulations that would be perfect, it's for a project involving ground effect. Thank you.

[hollus]

If by "body" you mean the lowest parts of the car (what you'd see looking at the car from below) and by "floor" you mean the tarmac, there is no minimum distance in the regulations. (Floor as in Spanish "suelo"? In English the floor is in the car).
A car's floor:
The relevant "planes":

They define a "reference plane" and specify that the non-central part of the (car's) floor must be 5 centimeters higher than the central parts. The central parts are where the "plank" is located, a wooden plank made of certain material that can have some titanium in certain areas.
The only think limiting you from running the car even lower is that the plank must not wear off by more than 1mm during the race. You run as close to the tarmac as you dare to.
Of course, as everything in F1, it got more complicated when teams decided to add rake (to tilt the reference plane in relation to the tarmac) to run other parts of the car effectively very, very close to the tarmac.
To summarize, there is nothing in the F1 regulations defining the minimum distance between any part of the car and the tarmac. The whole car is defined in relation to the reference plane, not to the tarmac.

[Jolle]

With floor I asume you mean ground? Well, it's not that straightforward. At the underside you have a wooden plank, which is allowed to loose 1mm during a session/race. So you are allowed to run the car right on the Tarmac, only you can't because you'll damage this plank. There are next to the plank certain rules that require a stepped bottom plus a virtual box where the diffuser must stay in.

[rjsa]

There's no ride height limit, just maximum wear on the plank.

[bill shoe]

With floor I asume you mean ground? Well, it's not that straightforward. At the underside you have a wooden plank, which is allowed to loose 1mm during a session/race. So you are allowed to run the car right on the Tarmac, only you can't because you'll damage this plank. There are next to the plank certain rules that require a stepped bottom plus a virtual box where the diffuser must stay in.

Not disagreeing with you, but where do you get this 1mm allowed thickness loss?

[Jolle]

With floor I asume you mean ground? Well, it's not that straightforward. At the underside you have a wooden plank, which is allowed to loose 1mm during a session/race. So you are allowed to run the car right on the Tarmac, only you can't because you'll damage this plank. There are next to the plank certain rules that require a stepped bottom plus a virtual box where the diffuser must stay in.

Not disagreeing with you, but where do you get this 1mm allowed thickness loss?

From memory when Schumacher was excluded from the '94 Belgium GP, when he spun his Benneton on a curb, that was the explanation at the time.

[machin]

Technical regs. 3.13.1 (d)

[elpelucas]

Thanks for the replies - I'll explain myself correctly.

Yes, by floor I mean ground - sorry! I thought this would have been specified somewhere in the Regulations but from what you guys are saying it's more of a suspension issue? The thing is I have a full F1 model and I need to analyse its behaviour during different right height.

This means that if the current separation of the lowest point in the model and the ground is X, I need to vary it to see any downforce changes. I'm a bit lost and I don't know what's the range there, I assume it wouldn't be big than 5 centimetres?

[bill shoe]

Technical regs. 3.13.1 (d)

Thank you. So the final requirement is something to the effect of "you must have 9mm thickness remaining at the end of the session " rather than "you can only lose 1mm during the session".

Here's the actual regulation I'm trying to wrap my > 10 mm thick head around--

3.13.1(d) Have a thickness of 10mm with a tolerance of +/- 1mm.

[SteveRacer]

I never under stood how the plank was measured after a race. I imagine under normal circumstances there will be some grooves and damage on the plank from running debris over. Watching the cars run one would think that only the very front leading edge would be worn at all. For example, lets say you run over someones front wing debris or ride a curb exiting corner and there is a significant gash running across one of the wear holes. Is this cause for exclusion from the race or does any part of the hole being measure have to measure 10cm to still be acceptable?

[Nickel]

Technical regs. 3.13.1 (d)

Thank you. So the final requirement is something to the effect of "you must have 9mm thickness remaining at the end of the session " rather than "you can only lose 1mm during the session".

Here's the actual regulation I'm trying to wrap my > 10 mm thick head around--

3.13.1(d) Have a thickness of 10mm with a tolerance of +/- 1mm.

According to the wording, you could start with an 11mm plank and wear it by 2mm.

There may be another rule preventing this, but the thought that springs to mind is to run a plank of varying thickness. IE 11mm around the t-tray area, 9mm closer to the back. The back sees no wear, so this would almost certainly still be 9mm at end of session, while the 2mm of wear will be sufficient to rub the t-tray along the ground for a while.

[elpelucas]

I think this is more like a suspension issue rather than a deflection one, by changing the downforce the body would also change its distance from the ground.

[elpelucas]

I've measured the distance between the lowest point of the F1 and the ground, set by the flat part of the wheel.



My question now is what kind of range do I have to perform ride height changes following FIA. Can't find it anywhere.

[rjsa]

There isn't a range. You can drag the plank on the floor all the race if you want, as long as it's thick enough in the end of the race.

[bill shoe]

This isn't the clear answer you're looking for, but a few years ago Lewis Hamilton got a bit whiney at Spa because his McLaren teammate Button beat him in qualy. So Lewis released a data plot that, in his mind, vindicated himself. This data plot showed several channels of data and if I remember correctly one was ride height. So that would theoretically give you a range of ride height of a modern F1 car around a track.

Running ride height changes from static due to chassis movement and aero loads. Overall ride "height" is a multi-dimensional thing that involves-- height, pitch, roll, etc. But the critical limiting parameter to "how low can they go" is probably front ride height.

Then you get into issues of how to drag the plank without wearing it, how to make your car flex in favorable ways, etc. If you throw hundreds of millions of dollars at an issue, you will eventually get some clever solutions...