2017-2020 Aerodynamic Regulations Thread

[graham.reeds]

Go karts are driftable in the wet. In the dry you regain grip really quickly and a whole chunk of speed.

[Juzh]

Go karts are driftable in the wet. In the dry you regain grip really quickly and a whole chunk of speed.

If you give them some throttle they're sideways in no time even in the dry. Even non-shifters (~30 bhp) can do this pretty easily.

[graham.reeds]

Go karts are driftable in the wet. In the dry you regain grip really quickly and a whole chunk of speed.

If you give them some throttle they're sideways in no time even in the dry. Even non-shifters (~30 bhp) can do this pretty easily.

Dunno what tyres you use but the karts I race with two GX200 engines (35bhp) can step out in the dry (and people can spin out at ridiculously low speed) but drifting them is impossible. I have a race Sunday so I will try it post qualifying.

[FW17]

Karts don't have a differential reason for it to step out. Cannot compare it to a F1 car.

Maybe a group b rally car which were real short base.

[henry]

Current cars have the same footprint as this

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com ... ass-fd.jpg

But longer wheelbase by about 350 mm.

The cars are more like medium size panel vans, think Sprinter, Transit etc. but with the overhangs reversed, and next year about 70mm wider

[henry]

Is it likely that a 3500mm wheelbase car will have a significantly higher polar moment of inertia than say one at 3000.? Most of the major masses, power unit, tub, fuel, driver and cooling components are all grouped together in the centre of the car.

Is it possible that the reason they might be more tricky to drive is that a couple generated by differences in tyre force over a long wheelbase is greater than that over a shorter wheelbase and so requires more precise driving?

[bhall II]

Wheelbase...



(Roughly scaled based upon known wheel diameters.)

[SectorOne]

Just look at it this way: what's the easiest 4 wheeled thing to drift?
Go-karts.
By FAR.
You can literally mind control those things during a slide. And they're pretty short in length, are they not?

I disagree massively.
Compared to say an older BMW 7-series which you can drift around in your sleep a kart is far from docile when over the limit.

[Juzh]

Just look at it this way: what's the easiest 4 wheeled thing to drift?
Go-karts.
By FAR.
You can literally mind control those things during a slide. And they're pretty short in length, are they not?

I disagree massively.
Compared to say an older BMW 7-series which you can drift around in your sleep a kart is far from docile when over the limit.

Never driven a 7 series but from my experiences racing shifter karts few times a year as an amateur I can say they were VERY easy to drift all day long. You can really pin point those slides into corners as if it were nothing. Kart tracks are usually narrow and twisty and thus it might seem they're hard to control on the edge, but imo that is not the case.

[djos]

Never driven a 7 series but from my experiences racing shifter karts few times a year as an amateur I can say they were VERY easy to drift all day long. You can really pin point those slides into corners as if it were nothing. Kart tracks are usually narrow and twisty and thus it might seem they're hard to control on the edge, but imo that is not the case.

I agree, I used to race basic club carts occasionally with no gearbox and those things were fantastically easy to control in a slide. On my favorite circuit they was a right hand hair pin at the end of a straight that was followed by crazy left turn that had about 3 apex's and the fast way thru most of that section was slightly sideways using your accelerator to steer.

If you didn't do that you didn't have enough rpm up to accelerate Properly down the next piece of straight and you'd get mugged before the next corner.

[Andres125sx]

As stated, karts weight similar to a person, or around a tenth of a F1, and have no differential, so you´re comparing aples to oranges

[mrluke]

I know we are all pro kart drivers and drifting them is dead easy but the point is a 7 series BM with similar power to weight and a fixed diff is much easier to hold at a much higher angle for a longer time.

Look at the size of the cars used in drifting



Theres the odd car with a much shorter wheelbase but long wheel bases are pretty common.

Anyway this is getting a bit off topic

[Holm86]

I know we are all pro kart drivers and drifting them is dead easy but the point is a 7 series BM with similar power to weight and a fixed diff is much easier to hold at a much higher angle for a longer time.

Look at the size of the cars used in drifting

http://speedhunters-wp-production.s3.am ... 00x800.jpg

Theres the odd car with a much shorter wheelbase but long wheel bases are pretty common.

Anyway this is getting a bit off topic

I guess you're right, but my point is still that a shorter car is harder to drive, which would be good for both the spectacle and the aesthetics of the cars

[mrluke]

And I absolutely agree we should be looking to lop 1m off of the cars

[SectorOne]

I know we are all pro kart drivers and drifting them is dead easy but the point is a 7 series BM with similar power to weight and a fixed diff is much easier to hold at a much higher angle for a longer time.

It´s really two things regarding this subject:

The rear tires on a longer car has to travel more distance to cover the same degrees of oversteer, hence being much much easier to control.

The ultimate speed of the person turning the wheel to compensate for the oversteer is basically a fixed number in simple terms.

So you can quickly see that a longer car is simply easier to control then a shorter one assuming tire characteristics, diff settings etc etc etc is either not taken into account or simply ignored for the sake of the argument getting unnecessarily complex.