BTCC is alright if you like banger racing. Otherwise I see little point to it. It's a shame really because I used to be into it, now it just seems like a load of second rate drivers crashing into each other.

I'd rather have two or three classy overtaking moves in F1 than a whole race full of smashing people out of the way in BTCC.

Quote from tristancliffe :

As long as 'the other Martin' isn't Mark Blundell. Please, no. I wouldn't be able to make much of his whiney voice, and the underlying fact he was never as good as MB, nor as vocally talented. That's why he stands in the pits and makes a fool of himself before and after the race.

I'd settle for hearing him construct his sentences using correct English grammar.

Quote from Becky Rose :

James Allen isn't that bad, the problem is that he's following on from Murray Walker. I for one really miss Murray, but I wont hold that against James Allen simply because he's mortal.

Have you actually listened to what he says? Murray Walker made mistakes during his commentary but he didn't often get things wrong, which is something James Allen does consistently. He comes out with some of the least meaningful comments I have ever heard. Often, when Martin makes an astute observation, James runs with it as though he had thought up the whole thing himself. Then there's his seemingly neverending love for Jenson Button.

Quote :

The one broadcaster from ITV I really hated was that twat Jim Rosenthal, because he really did only talk about football and football metaphors and I never understood a word of it - but that was always bound to happen when I guy gets the job covering an event that he then confesses to never having seen a race before, then strangely retracts the comments the following week, despite having said it in multiple places.

I didn't like Rosenthal when he first started in 1997 but I soon grew to like him. Regardless of however many GPs he'd watched before he started presenting the coverage, I thought he got into the sport and I was sorry to see him leave. Particularly since they replaced him with Steve Rider...

While we're on the subject of ITV coverage, it's really beginning to bug me that they all use 'Grand Prixs' as the plural of 'Grand Prix'. The correct plural is 'Grands Prix', which sounds exactly the same as 'Grand Prix'.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

Just like they did to Honda last year with the fuel ballast thing.

Except that in that case, the penalty was entirely fair.
I agree with speedfreak...they might as well ban anything on the car that moves. Wheels have an enormous effect on the aerodynamics, but they're not suggesting that movable wheels should be banned...

Quote from Bob Smith :

Wrong. (it's not linear)

Got me on that one...I just checked the BF1 rear wing curve and there is a small amount of curvature at higher AOA. I seem to remember plotting some GTR data for patch P and thinking it was linear.

Quote :

GRC does that (in it's own texty sort of way). (100% accuracy not yet guaranteed).

Yeah, I know that, but it would be nice to have 100% accuracy guaranteed, no?

Quote from duke_toaster :

Will be banned instantly I rekon. Basically X-wings again.

Yup, I think so too. The FIA will ban them on 'safety' grounds. I hope so, anyway!

Those fins probably won't add anything to the frontal area of the car (the area they cover will probably already be covered by the cockpit/engine air intake). They will increase the drag coefficient by a tiny amount, partly due to an increase in wetted area (viscous drag) and partly due to any 'lift' generation (induced drag). I say 'lift' but I really mean 'force perpendicular to the fin' and perpendicular to the airflow.
The advantage must come because the tiny increase in drag coefficient is compensated for by a reduction in the drag coefficient over the rear of the car, or they may be sacrificing low-drag for stability.

I don't think it would be that useful to be honest. Aero drag/downforce pretty much changes with the square of speed (ie double the speed, quadruple the drag/downforce) so the graph would just be a simple quadratic. The force/angle of attack function might be interesting to see, though at the moment it's linear.

What would be more useful, in my opinion, would be an arrow on the car showing the centre of pressure. You could then vary the speed slider and see how the aero balance changes.

F1 Sporting Regulations, Paragraph 75(f):

Quote :

The only permitted type of tyre heating devices are blankets which use resistive heating elements.

That's from the 2005 edition but it hasn't changed for 2006.

Quote from Bob Smith :

You used to be able to, but Scawen stopped this ages ago.

(IIRC)

You can't extract the whole setup but you can get quite a lot of the values from a replay if you know where to look

Since McLaren have made such a complete mess of their 2006 livery that I cannot bring myself to drive it, I spent some time this afternoon making a skin based on the orange livery in which McLaren launched the MP-4/21. It's not exactly faithful to the original but I think it does the job.

Credit must go to Gobby since I used the same decal positions as he did on his 2006 McLaren skin. The Johhnie Walker logos on the sidepods are entirely his work...too advanced for me! This skin is posted with his permission.

I use 100 in LFS and 100% in the Profiler with my DFP, no problems at all. In actual fact, unless I'm driving the FXR with its fat front slicks, I almost wish the FF was stronger.
It's not a wear thing...I've been using these settings since I got my DFP.

I always set my wheel rotation value to match the car I'm driving (remember to change the setting in the Profiler AND in LFS). For reference, these are the wheel locks the LFS cars use.

Road cars: 720 deg
GTR cars: 540 deg
Single-Seaters: 450 deg
MRT: 270 deg

Last edited by StewartFisher, Fri 2 Jun 2006, 23:55.

Isn't that what keeps the rain off your head?

Ah...I think I understand the problem...my definition of 'spoiler' seems to be a bit different to yours (and, so it would seem, the rest of the world!). I think of a spoiler as a device attached to the rear of a car along the whole width (like NASCAR) but the S1 cars (XRT, FXO, RB4 etc...) have devices which look more like wings attached to the tailgate (but are still called spoilers). In that case, your explanation is correct. Sorry for the misunderstanding, it's been a while since I drove a road car in LFS

Quote from tristancliffe :

Not according to my Vehicle Aerodynamics lecturer...

That's what my 'Competition Car Downforce' book says, and I think I agree. How would keeping the flow attached longer cause less lift? Lift is generated by the attached flow curving over the convex surface at the rear of a car. Disrupting that flow generates less lift. What mechanism does your lecturer propose?

Quote from tristancliffe :

No, they have spoilers NOT wings. The aim of the spoiler is to keep the air flow attached, and reduce drag and lift, not provide downforce.

Erm...a spoiler causes the air flow to separate earlier than it would without a spoiler fitted. Hence the term 'spoiler' Spoilers reduce lift (in some cases they can even generate downforce) at the expense of adding drag, though the added drag is usually quite small.

Quote from XCNuse :

you cant, going backwards does affects the cars only to an extent at which .. there is no downforce, but no uplift like there should be

I would imagine that an F1 car travelling backwards would generate very little lift and unbelievable amounts of drag. Wings aren't things you can just reverse (especially the highly cambered wings on an F1 car).

Quote from Bob Smith :

Yep, most road cars produce some lift, usually more at the rear than at front.
The effect is minor, but worth including. Should make the road cars a bit more fun at high speeds too. :mischievo

The effect isn't really that minor. A Porsche 911 will generate 600 lbs of lift at 150mph! Have a look here for some data on road and race cars:

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/data.html

Quote from colcob :

The RAF file output gives you total mass (inc driver and fuel) and also sprung mass (strangely including driver but if IIRC not fuel) so I had to do some raf outputs with known volumes of fuel, then take sprung mass and fuel mass away to get unsprung mass.

Wouldn't it be easier just to subtract the sprung mass from the total mass in the RAF file? The fuel load should cancel itself out then.

Quote from wE1l :

Thing is, even before they found out about Ferrari's flexible wings, their wings did flex too. You could refer to pictures in my previous posts for visual evidence.

I've never denied that wings flex...a laminated sheet of carbon fibre a few mm thick is obviously going to flex under load.

Quote :

Ferrari's wing may be a bit more flexible than others', but calling that cheating is a far too subjective view.

But why is it more flexible? The rules say they must be rigid, therefore the teams should never be using their flexibility to gain an advantage.

Quote from wE1l :

I read thoroughly every word of your posts, just can't quite get your logic behind them. So do you think the top planes on other cars don't bend downwards as those on Ferrari do? If they bend too, aren't they gaining an advantage throught it as well? And then all cars are illegal by your standard.

The article on ITV-F1 quoted an 'insider' saying that since Ferrari are getting away with using flexible wings, other teams are going to redesign their wings to flex in a similar way. The problem I have is the rules say that no moveable aerodynamic parts are allowed and now we have engineers designing aerodynamic parts to flex in order to gain an advantage. They're clearly breaking the rules, but they're only doing it because Ferrari have been doing it and aren't being punished for it.

Quote from wE1l :

By that do you mean ONLY Ferrari's rear wing flex? Thus breaking the rules?

As has already been mentioned before, ALL structures flex under load. Thus it is inevitable that wings on all F1 cars will flex. A few years ago some teams started making their rear wings flexible which is why the FIA introduced the current 'flex test'.
What Ferrari seem to be doing this time is to design the wing in such a way to cause the top plane of the wing to deflect in an advantageous way. That is clearly not in agreement with the regulations.

As the article to which speedfreak227 linked points out, it would seem that Ferrari are going a little bit beyond the rules with their rear wing. The issue is not that the whole wing assembly is flexing in order to reduce the angle of attack. The top plane of the Ferrari wing is flexing downwards towards the bottom element in order to seal off the gap between the elements at speed. As far as I'm aware the FIA test only measures the flexure of the whole wing assembly, not the individual elements.
Ferrari are clearly using moveable aerodynamic devices to gain an advantage, which is against the rules. Now that Ferrari have been allowed to get away with it, all the others will have to join them.
It's not about Ferrari thinking harder than the other teams, forcing the others to play catch up, it's about Ferrari cheating and getting away with it. Again.

Quote from skiingman :

NOx includes all of the oxides of nitrogen, some of which do have different deleterious effects than plain N02. Running leaner than stoichiometric creates dramatic (orders of magnitude) increases in NOx emissions.

Running lean does not dramatically increase CO2 emissions as far as I can remember.

Running lean doesn't really affect CO2 emissions at all for the same power output. The air-fuel ratio does affect the composition of the cylinder-out gases (Tristan's graph is very good but his NOx peak is a little too far into the lean region) but by the time these gases reach the tailpipe any partially combusted material (either as hydrocarbons or CO) should have been oxidised (assuming the car has some sort of catalyst fitted) to CO2...net result is that CO2 scales with fuel input, regardless of whether it's rich or lean.
The only way to reduce CO2 emissions is to reduce the fuel consumption of the engine.

Quote from axus :

I'm afraid you are wrong.

mTotal = mSprung + mUnsprung
FTotalFront = distrTotalF * mTotal * g
FTotalFront = distrTotalF * (mSprung + mUnsprung) * g

I have the distribution for the total mass and the distribution for the sprung mass. You are confusing distrTotalF with distrSprungF.

Ah...oops! Sorry, I'll have to lok at it again!

Quote from axus :

When the car is stationary the force exerted against the road by both front wheels is:
FTotalFront = distrTotalF * (mSprung + mUnsprung) * g

Wrong. You're assuming here that the unsprung masses are distributed the same as the sprung mass for each car. The correct expression should be:

FTotalFront = ( (distrTotalF * mSprung) + mUnsprungFront ) * g

The rear unsprung mass acts directly through the rear wheels/tyres and has no effect on the weight supported by the front wheels.
Haven't looked through the rest of your maths, but when I did a similar thing a while ago I found that the front and rear unsprung masses for the cars are different. I'll try to find the values I have and post them here to see if it helps you.

OK, I just found the values I calculated. They are expressed as kg per wheel FRONT / REAR.

XFG: 11.38 / 14.07
XRG: 13.38 / 16.71
XRT: 16.04 / 17.74
RB4: 14.75 / 15.79

I've got more but I'll have to wait until later to post them...let me know if you think I'm miles off
OK, here are the others:

FXO: 14.11 / 18.21
LX4: 12.82 / 13.01
LX6: 14.07 / 14.77
RAC: 14.95 / 16.98
FOX: 13.35 / 16.51
FO8: 17.51 / 22.01
FXR: 23.68 / 23.29

That's all I've got round to doing. If you want some info on how I got to those numbers I'll try to explain but I might have to spend a while looking through the spreadsheet to remind myself

Last edited by StewartFisher, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 20:28.