What about the problem of interaction between active suspension and downforce? How would you cope with that?
Is the idea to get faster cars in curves? I would say that we're asking enough of the drivers already.
I don't know if the idea of an active element has been answered by active front wings.
However, I'm all in for anything that improves the less than optimal aerodynamic performance of F1 cars and that improves fuel efficiency, Le Mans style.
I would like to call the attention of the forum to the idea of the "non-active" racing cars we have today: they are somehow a call to nostalgia. In NASCAR races the idea is more evident. I
quote:
"... By extension, no wonder stock-car racing — a fast, furious sport contended on a paved roadway with snarling, smelly machines operated by hand — is surging in popularity
at the very time the computerized information revolution is transforming our society from top to bottom. Stock-car racing expresses the industrial age more than does any big sport in America."
It's not amazing to discover than, as said many times in this forum, the raw power of gasoline engines makes unpractical to have cars as advanced as (and I quote myself) "the cars we have in our own garages".
For cars as advanced as 2009 cars to race (and by that I don't only mean active suspension, but active steering, braking assistance, traction control, active aerodynamics, active light beams, accident avoidance, and even parking (pit) help) you need a mental revolution about the role of drivers in a car.
I can remember well when spark advance was considered driver help, for example (around 1920). Who would consider nowadays controlling spark timing by hand?
I (wildly) guess that this kind of car, with active suspension (and active
everything) wouldn't need more than 300 HP to achieve the same performance of a racing car, be it stock or formula.
When will FIA be open minded to this kind of racing cars?
I guess it will happen when all current directives are dead and a new generation, familiar with electric cars or whatever the future has for us in storage become the rulers of the racing world.
You need a different driving approach if you want to extract every drop of a "computerized car": you have to understand car dynamics, as today, but you also have to understand how computers work. This is a way of racing we still do not understand very well. At least, I don't.
Perhaps toto can be so kind as to explain to the forum how he races in his car.
Does he
really race when the car is "helping him"? (I know he can do it, I've tried it, but some people, Max Mosley included, belive you don't). What have you do to extract the last drop of performance from this kind of cars? (I know you have to get some idea of what the computer is doing, and that's an art, altough some people, Max Mosley included, belive it's not).
