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.....Scotracer wrote: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.
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.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 wrote: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.
I am doing just that.bmw fanatic wrote: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 wrote: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.
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.jwielage wrote:First: Rubens has said the car was within regulations and that a car with less ballast would handle like a dog.
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?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.
while Kimi on the other hand said he cant be bothered.jwielage wrote: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?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 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.myurr wrote: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.