Why aren't F1 teams making some things (front wing main profile) made out of steel/titanium either solid or hollow and filled with lead/tungsten to gain weight up front
Shrek wrote:Why aren't F1 teams making some things (front wing main profile) made out of steel/titanium either solid or hollow and filled with lead/tungsten to gain weight up front
What? Why?
If you are serious,
You want to be as light as possible, all the extra weight(required by rules) must go as low as possible, lower CG..
Shrek wrote:Why aren't F1 teams making some things (front wing main profile) made out of steel/titanium either solid or hollow and filled with lead/tungsten to gain weight up front
I got your point. Not sure bout that. But I do know that front wings tend to be quite heavy sometimes considering they're CF. You shouldn't forget about crash safety though.
Remember the f2005 with it's little box wing on the front? it was rumored that was made out of steel or lead.
There was a race where the car was craned off the track. It was so front heavy, that when it was lifted, the front of the car stayed on the ground well into the lift, and Schumi was playing rigger and trying to lift it up.
It was obvious that there was a LOT of weight low down in the front of that car.
Before I do anything I ask myself “Would an idiot do that?” And if the answer is yes, I do not do that thing. - Dwight Schrute
Here is a video about ballast placement for the F60. It shows ballast inside both the wing element and nose cone. I can't personally vouch for the accuracy of the video but it seems plausible. Placement in the nosecone is common.
Current Formula One cars are limited in weight. Due to the requirement of maximum performance, each individual component is designed and built as light as the situation requires. Ballast is considered an afterthought. Ballast is added to tune the car, by relocating mass either forward or back, or lower or higher.
If you went to the trouble of constructing a wing out of a heavy material, that situation is OK as long as the weight built into the heavy wing matches the car's requirements. But for instance, if the engineers determined that the car required it's mass moved rearward? What are you going to do with that heavy front wing? You have to construct a new, lightweight wing. Anyways.
It doesn't make sense to build an entire series of wings that vary in weights. Instead, build a wing as light as possible, and add ballast determined by the reuirements of the day. It's cheaper to construct one wing versus twenty, and taking into account transportation costs, what is cheaper to ship? Twenty wings, or just one with a few kilos of ballast?
Racing should be decided on the track, not the court room.
I also remember, some time ago, that the FIA was infestigating the weight of carparts that could come loose when a F1 car crashes. If I am right, I could remember that they regulated it that the wings (specially the front wing) should not get heavier then a given weight, because of safety.
Also, the wings were not always the lowest parts of the cars, and still aren't. Why would you place weight that far in front when it doesn't improve the CoG.
Even if it did help the placement of the CoG, isn't too much weight on the extremities of the car detrimental in terms of the moment of inertia of the assembly, resisting more to changes in direction around its vertical axis (like turning)?
