McLaren and Toyota Suspension

[West]

Anybody know the disadvantages to mounting the suspension to the side of the tub instead of a keel?

[Scuderia_Russ]

Not really a suspension guy but won't the shorter wishbone affect camber more during compression?

[manchild]

I'd say higher center of gravity and possibly some aero problems since wishbones on keelless car are not horizontal but with upwards angle (from wheel to chassis).

[RH1300S]

Anybody know the disadvantages to mounting the suspension to the side of the tub instead of a keel?

I should imagine that there are considerable structural and aerodynamic advantages to be had. Take a look at a front on shot of an MP420 - sheer motoring porn (well, almost any view of the car ).

Disadvantages? Shorter suspension arms, as said above with move through a tighter arc (giving more camber change at the wheel - but even that depends on what the upper arms are doing in concert with the lower ones), but you could probably argue that they will also be stiffer for a given weight.

I expect getting good front geometry would be trickier, but an F1 car does not have loads of suspension movement, so it should not be too hard to arrange a good camber curve and roll centre location. If you look at it front on, you can see that both upper and lower arms angle downwards, but different amounts, you can mentally visualise the sort of camber change you might get and roll centre position.

[DaveKillens]

Current Formula One cars are compromises, and the front end is definitely optimized towards aerodynamics, versus suspension geometry. Traditionally, the wishbones were roughly parallel to the road surface, and of considerable length. But the trend has been to eliminate/minimize the front suspension arms where they influence the air flow, especially under the nose. each year we have seen designs that have the front uprights mounted on the chassis higher and higher. Under the nose, single and double keels have been tried, each with their own disadvantages. The new Toyota is the most radical, with the lower suspension arms mounted much higher than before.
Aero on the front of the car has to be better, with appreciable gains. But the suspension geometry has been made to suffer. Obviously, it still works, but the engineers at Toyota must have spent many sleepless days agonizing a solution to the geometry.
Shorter suspension arms have to give a more pronounced change in camber, bump steer, and all the other suspension variables. I would tend to believe this setup would be a real wicked car to drive on a rough road surface. We will just have to observe how well the '06 Toyota handles the curbs, as compared to others.

[Lafora]

If the orientation of the suspension arms were the same from the 105 to the 105B, then yes the camber gain and the tire scrub would increase.

But as soon as the orientation of the upper wrt the lower changes, then you've changed your FVSA.

I'm guessing in order to get around the problem, the arms are closer to parallel with each other than they were previously. This would lengthen the FVSA which brings the camber gain and scrub change back down to a more workable envelope.