Suspension Efficiency

[Tzk]

Now imagine tuning the spring and damper setup with all those variables.

You got the tire stiffness, torsion stiffness of the chassis, possibly anti-squat or dive geometry, stiffness of the rollbar, hydraulic heave elements, and the other springs+dampers on a 3 shock setup.

The complexity must be insane...

@AJI
I remember some f1 car with a single flexible lower wishbone setup which basically connected both wheelhubs and the nose.

[AJI]

I remember some f1 car with a single flexible lower wishbone setup which basically connected both wheelhubs and the nose.

I think the front lower is still a single piece..? Maybe? Someone else can answer that. My point is, single piece or not, it's still a flexible part of the suspension system

[Tommy Cookers]

Kind of crazy to remember, but it wasn't all that long ago that many F1 cars had completely fixed front or rear suspensions!
Just points out that the tires and then chassis flex are both significant parts of the total suspension equation.
We F1 fans don't often think of F1 cars as 'not very rigid in torsion', but compared to a modern tube-framed racing sedan/coupe (Australian Touring Cars, for instance) they are much softer. All that to say that the torsional chassis flex is also part of the suspension equation in F1.

in the late 1950s adjustable ARBs emerged
improving cornering by robbing the better-cornering end of the car and giving the proceeds to the worse-cornering end
aka 'balance'
this required the chassis torsional stiffness to be much greater than the equivalent 'torsional' stiffness of the suspension
fortunately, in those days suspension stiffness was rather low
but eg by the early 80s the skirt ban produced cars with hugely increased suspension stiffness
resulting in the emergence of the 'carbon' chassis as the only means of correspondingly increasing the chassis stiffness

Bugatti made c. 1930 a small race car with rear axle fixed directly to the chassis (no springs)
this has largely eluded history
it raced at Brooklands (Mountain cct) and Monthlery - both supposedly speedbowls
it was a disaster

in the Model T era chassis torsional stiffness was almost zero - by design intent (of the rear)

[Jolle]

I remember some f1 car with a single flexible lower wishbone setup which basically connected both wheelhubs and the nose.

I think the front lower is still a single piece..? Maybe? Someone else can answer that. My point is, single piece or not, it's still a flexible part of the suspension system

That was quite some years ago with the single keel designs and even then they were two parts with very close mounting points (else with a front left problem you had to disassemble right as well).
These days both sides are bolted to the chassis with pivot mounting points.

[e36jon]

Greetings all

Apologies for posting what seems like some false info regarding 'fixed' suspensions. I was working from memory (Less and less a viable methodology.) plus some recent data and got it wrong.

I had seen for sale a lower front double-wishbone piece, from the raised nose, no rake, run as close to the ground as possible era. It did not appear to have flexures at the center points (But probably did.), so I took that as a data point for rigid. The memory part was reading (I thought) about suspensions of that era being super rigid / fixed to maintain that low ride height, and so being dominated by tire behavior (Flex of sidewalls).

I went looking for an example and Google laughed at me, which I should have paid more attention to.

Thanks for being gentle in your corrections...

Jon 'not as inflexible as I thought...'