Staring at the floor

[Richard]

I've gathered some floor pics in one place, I hope they are of use....

Pplease don't repeat the pics in quoted replies, it makes it easier to read the thread. Of course, please do post pics with your comments/annotations/arrows!

Renault



Red Bull







McLaren





Lotus


Williams



Ferrari

[mep]

First thing I noticed is that all the 2010 cars have their CG more rearwards compared to predecessors. When suspended they all hang down on the rear. Older cars hang down on the front:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Ok front tires are much smaller now but I wonder a bit why the old cars had their CG so far on the front.

[Tim.Wright]

You really cant tell anything of the CG location by these crane pictures. I have mentioned this before.

Firstly there are usually important heavy parts missing off the car when it is being craned away.

Second, In that last ferrari picture the lifting point is much further back than they appear to be today (directly under the air intake)

Tim

[MattF1]

Also the cars are longer now so the lifting point has more car behind it relatively speaking.

[mep]

Oh you can tell something about CG location.

The only heavy part missing is the driver and he makes a front dropping car even more front heavy. So not important when the car already is low on the front.
The only good point you could come up with is that the marshals might add some force to the car. On most pics it doesn't look so.

Also the cars are longer now so the lifting point has more car behind it relatively speaking.

Or in front of it. You know wheelbase is related to CG location.
How much longer they are now? A few centimetres max.

[conni]

cg was moved back because the front wings are giving a lot of DF compared to the smaller rear wings so moving cg back helps to balance the grip level

conni

[marcush.]

you cannot tell directly from the pic,thats true,but we have so many shots of the cars in sideview soit will be relatively easy to finf at least the fornt rear split of wheelbase for the lifting point....from there you can start to calculate quite nicely.I would have imagined the teams would position their lifting devices near the cg position to avoid damaging of the car when lfted by third parties and of course ease of handling...but possibly the weight distribution had to be changed that much...due to the tyres quite different to what they expected..

the pic of the mac is quite revealing the marshal is not a very lateweight person ,but he needs a lot of his weight to balance out the car even though he has a big leverage..

[godsire]

Can anybody post here some technical regulations about the floor? I am doing a model and I cannot find any sensible info.
Please, help me

[LegendaryM]

Can anybody post here some technical regulations about the floor? I am doing a model and I cannot find any sensible info.
Please, help me

this might help you if you're making a model - http://www.f1technical.net/features/11634

[Tim.Wright]

Oh you can tell something about CG location.

The only heavy part missing is the driver and he makes a front dropping car even more front heavy. So not important when the car already is low on the front.
The only good point you could come up with is that the marshals might add some force to the car. On most pics it doesn't look so.

Ok certainly you always calulate something but I think it would be too inaccurate to be useful. For a perfect set of circumstances (long-shot, dead side on, all parts on the car and no marshals) you could probably calculate to within +/-20mm

For any of these other pictures, you will never get get better than +/-100mm of accuracy.

Given that all of the cars probaby have a CG within 200mm of each other (educated guess) your error range of +/-100mm makes the calculation completely useless.

Tim

[mep]

Tim.Wright I totally agree with you.
I think your tolerances fit quite good I expect them to be even worse.
I guess the people didn't really understand what I want to point out.
I don't want to compare cars of the same year I compare cars of different years.
You can see even with the bare eye that the 2006 cars had the CG far in the front.
Compared to that the 2010 have the CG behind the lifting point.
That’s no small difference. The CG could have moved by half a meter or so.
Its really a quite significant difference. We even know that from Renault adding a lot of weight to the front of their 2005-06 cars (mass-damper).
I think everybody should have a feeling for a CG even without any calculation.

[Belatti]

one of the reasons for the cg change were widely discussed here and here mostly and has to do a lot with the tyres changes (michelin, bridgestone, slicks and smaller front tyres)

[SiLo]

It has to be purely aerodynamical. The gearboxes are smaller, the rear suspension is probably smaller, the tank os bigger but won't add any significant weigh unless it was full of fuel either. The most important thing to remember is the engine. From 3.0 litre V10's to 2.4 litre V8's is quite a big chunk of weight missing. However, the front wings now produce so much more downforce that they don't have enough at the rear, as has been said, moving the CG rearwards will provide more stability and traction out of corners.

[Pierce89]

cg was moved back because the front wings are giving a lot of DF compared to the smaller rear wings so moving cg back helps to balance the grip level

conni

You've got it backwards. you want more DF on the end that has more weight. Furthermore 07-10 cars have more front DF and more front weight bias than 06 and prior cars because the spec Bridgie's like it that way.

[Pierce89]

Tim.Wright I totally agree with you.
I think your tolerances fit quite good I expect them to be even worse.
I guess the people didn't really understand what I want to point out.
I don't want to compare cars of the same year I compare cars of different years.
You can see even with the bare eye that the 2006 cars had the CG far in the front.
Compared to that the 2010 have the CG behind the lifting point.
That’s no small difference. The CG could have moved by half a meter or so.
Its really a quite significant difference. We even know that from Renault adding a lot of weight to the front of their 2005-06 cars (mass-damper).
I think everybody should have a feeling for a CG even without any calculation.

The 05 -06 Renault's had extremelyrearward weight bias. No reference but if you read around the web it's well known.The mass damper imroved front by cancelling out the oscillation of the cars weight on the tires so pitch control was improved and ride height could be more tightly controlled.