BrawnGP

[Scania]

0.02L.... you mean engine size or fuel?

[bmw fanatic]

i think the new BRAWN GP's blistering pace is due to a lack of ballast. i too thought that their radical design had paid off as a result of their headstart on the project(began in 2007) but after watching fernando clinch the fastest time in the closing stages i am more skeptical. Mainly due to the same suspicion that renault have (running without ballast to flatter their pace) the fact that they only attempted to beat their time until the closing stages serves to show that they were mereley mimicking BRAWN GP's tactics to confirm their suspicion and provide a more accurate picture to the engineers. i bet if we looked at the times excluding the last few rounds we will see that the renault could not match the pace of the bgp for the rest of the day when they were running in race spec. the numbers should prove inconsistant.BRAWN GP may be resorting to flattery to bag a sponsor as quickly as possible be4 the season begins. i wish the team all the best and hope im wrong was truly excited by their pace.

[Scotracer]

The lack of ballast hypothesis is pretty redundant.

First: Rubens has said the car was within regulations and that a car with less ballast would handle like a dog.

[RacingManiac]

The lack of ballast hypothesis is pretty redundant.

First: Rubens has said the car was within regulations and that a car with less ballast would handle like a dog.

While I am not disputing that as a whole, I think the accuracy of any comments by any racecar driver at that level has to be taken with some additional thought, since they are not obliged to give out real information, and contractually there are things they can, cannot, and have to, say.....

[jwielage]

First: Rubens has said the car was within regulations and that a car with less ballast would handle like a dog.

I tend to agree. We all know how much time these teams spend in effort to optimize the balance of the car. In order to remove enough balast from the car to make it say 5 tenths faster, would seem to be enough to upset the balance of the car. So any speed gained from the decreased weight would have to be netted against the time lost while cornering a car with a sub-optimal balance. That could claw back the entire 5 tenths to begin with, who knows.

Even if they could run without balast and have a faster time, this strategy would be ultimately counterproductive. Any data gathered would be tainted, and so much time would be lost. The no balast theory just doesn't pass a reasonableness test in my opinion.

[Scotracer]

Quite, RacingManiac. That is possible but my 2nd point kind of makes that suggestion mute as simply removing ballast from an F1 car without HEAVILY reworking the weight distribution of the car by moving hardware around would create something that'd be nearly un-drivable...and the stint times suggest the car is very consistent.

It wouldn't be worth their time to create a car that is radically different, purely to set some faster times for a single test. A waste of time and funds - both of which are a premium for this team.

[bmw fanatic]

The lack of ballast hypothesis is pretty redundant.

First: Rubens has said the car was within regulations and that a car with less ballast would handle like a dog.

are you seriously claiming a car with less ballance would handle badly?????? Forgive for takingRubens's comments with a pinch of salt, afterall what motive could he possibly have?????

[Scotracer]

The lack of ballast hypothesis is pretty redundant.

First: Rubens has said the car was within regulations and that a car with less ballast would handle like a dog.

are you seriously claiming a car with less ballance would handle badly?????? Forgive for takingRubens's comments with a pinch of salt, afterall what motive could he possibly have?????

I am doing just that.

F1 cars without ballast in place have HORRID weight-distribution and the car would oversteer like mad - undrivable. The only way to sort that is a massive rear wing but they've been using the same one all test.

So yeah.

God I hate the internet - conspiracy theory overload!

[bmw fanatic]

First: Rubens has said the car was within regulations and that a car with less ballast would handle like a dog.

I tend to agree. We all know how much time these teams spend in effort to optimize the balance of the car. In order to remove enough balast from the car to make it say 5 tenths faster, would seem to be enough to upset the balance of the car. So any speed gained from the decreased weight would have to be netted against the time lost while cornering a car with a sub-optimal balance. That could claw back the entire 5 tenths to begin with, who knows.

Even if they could run without balast and have a faster time, this strategy would be ultimately counterproductive. Any data gathered would be tainted, and so much time would be lost. The no balast theory just doesn't pass a reasonableness test in my opinion.[/quot

all cars technichally run with a sub optimal balance because 605kg plus the driver is not optimum its mandatory. plus drivers can lose 3 kg of sweat during a race, i doubt that the cars handlindgis that sensitive after all cars are designed to be as light as possible regardless of driver weight and ballast would be removed if possible not added to increase the cars performance particularly its handling.
a

[myurr]

Ok, are you suggesting that there has never been a fast F1 lap set by running underweight?

And you are conveniently overlooking the fact that they don't have to remove ALL the balast. Take a simple example of a 60/40 split of balast between the front and rear of the car then you'd only need the difference, 20%, of the original balast to keep the same weight distribution (okay okay it's not as simple as that, but it serves as an example).

And the balast amounts can't be that much towards the very front of the car as mechanics easily pick up the nose on their own (ie. less than 25kg to be in compliance with EU law).

It's entirely possible for a car to run deliberately underweight, and that would produce good times.

[hulmerist]

but if they did run underweight what would be the point?

it's not like they won't get found out come melbourne is it? they'd look pretty stupid and brawn will know that, there is nothing to gain from doing it, all eyes are already on them anyway, they don't need anymore exposure

and considering where honda were last year anything is a step in the right direction

[jwielage]

F1 cars without ballast in place have HORRID weight-distribution and the car would oversteer like mad - undrivable. The only way to sort that is a massive rear wing but they've been using the same one all test.

The fact that drivers are going to such lengths to lose a couple of pounds would support this asertion. Why else whould these guys starve themselves if the repositioning of a couple of pounds didn't have a significant impact?

[freedom_honda]

F1 cars without ballast in place have HORRID weight-distribution and the car would oversteer like mad - undrivable. The only way to sort that is a massive rear wing but they've been using the same one all test.

The fact that drivers are going to such lengths to lose a couple of pounds would support this asertion. Why else whould these guys starve themselves if the repositioning of a couple of pounds didn't have a significant impact?

while Kimi on the other hand said he cant be bothered.

[Scotracer]

Ok, are you suggesting that there has never been a fast F1 lap set by running underweight?

And you are conveniently overlooking the fact that they don't have to remove ALL the balast. Take a simple example of a 60/40 split of balast between the front and rear of the car then you'd only need the difference, 20%, of the original balast to keep the same weight distribution (okay okay it's not as simple as that, but it serves as an example).

And the balast amounts can't be that much towards the very front of the car as mechanics easily pick up the nose on their own (ie. less than 25kg to be in compliance with EU law).

It's entirely possible for a car to run deliberately underweight, and that would produce good times.

The weight distribution is worse than you think when they are devoid of ballast. They will have probably 80% of it towards the front of the car.

Also, Red Bull have put ballast in the front wing section - they did so in 2008 putting around 7kg in the front wing and then the rest probably in the lower section of the monocoque front section.

[RacingManiac]

One of the thing that will help Brawn in their car balance minus some ballast is the fact that they are not running KERS. And as said, they don't need to get rid of that much ballast to gain a big chunk of time. How much Ballast does a current car run these days? 100kg? 120kg? The virtue of them running without KERS, is that they have 30 more KG to play with, and that plays into their favor to get a decent balance of the car without all the ballast. Besides, bad handling does not equal to slow laptime, not necessarily a direct corelation.

And as Ross said himself, they were focusing on reliability and putting mileage on the car. They could very well be knowingly tainting their data, but as long as they know what they were doing, they could very well still learn something....IMO the sophistication of the multi-DOF sim thesedays you can still correlate the data somehow...