Originally Posted by ACU:
“I thought RBR cleverness, in the cornering, was to do with shutting down some of the cylinders in the corners, thus having a system that behaves like a traction control system. If you only have half the cylinders working in the corner, you can stamp down on the accelerator, and not worry about your wheels spinning. Once you hit a certain speed, or straighten the wheel the other cylinders 'wake up' and you get full power.
Am I getting mixed up, but I thought the teams introduced interlinked suspension to prevent nose dive under braking? You saying RBR dont employ this sort of system, and 'encourage' node dive whilst braking?
To be honest I dont keep upto date with all the technical side of things - just havent got the time these days. So I am asking a genuine question. Chances are I am confusing the interlinked suspension with what we are taking about here.”
Oh, I'm sure any kind of t/c will help with cornering too but the rake of the RBR also encourages weight transfer which will lower the nose and add downforce, which will help with initial turn-in.
The linked braking systems aren't just to
eliminate nose-dive under braking. It's more about
controlling it.
It's actually kind of interesting because braking is one of the few facets of F1 where electronics aren't permitted.
The rules say that the braking system has to be a closed-loop hydraulic system which is under the direct control of the driver with no devices to offer assistance.
The teams probably think it'd be nice if they could, for example, set up a system which'd automatically set the brake-bias for individual corners but that wouldn't be allowed, which is why you still see drivers being forced to manually twiddle a brake-bias lever to suit various corners.
Anyway, point being that although brakes are all a fairly straightforward, mechanical, hydraulic system you
can use stuff like snubbers and dampers and valves to make some fairly clever things happen.
You could, for example, create a mechanical system which would mean that once you'd pressed the brake pedal it'd lower the front suspension slightly
and allow it to remain lowered for, say, 5 seconds after you released the brake pedal again.
The difference between McLaren and RBR are good examples of different philosophies here.
McLaren seem to take the view that it's best to make everything about the car as rigid as possible so that you get consistent handling regardless of what the car is doing or where it is on track.
RBR, OTOH, seem to treat the car as a dynamic thing which can be altered to suit the situation on track.
An example of this kind of philosophy can be seen in MotoGP.
For years chassis flex was seen as a bad thing, to be eliminated.
Teams worked hard to create the most rigid chassis possible on the basis that if the chassis was rigid they could then control the suspension to make the bike do whatever they wanted.
More recently they seem to have realised that
controlled chassis flex
can be a good thing
if it actually improves the way the suspension, steering and rear wheel are working.
So now they've ended up in a situation where they build chassis' with "sacrificial" spars built into them and, after testing, if it's discovered that the chassis is too rigid they make cuts into those spars to make it more flexible.
Basically, that's where F1 is at with that technology.
You've got teams like McLaren who still think that rigid is best whereas RBR think that it's best to make things more dynamic.
And, when it comes to this stuff, it'd be a brave man who bets against Adrian Newey's way of thinking.
Sorry about splitting this reply into two BTW. DS doesn't seem to like me posting long replies at the moment, for some reason.