Quote:
Originally Posted by Armco Bender
It looks like the new series will be just another Formula Bland with aero cars that drive around on rails and can't pass.
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You looked wrong, the FT5000 car has a deliberately smaller diffuser than the original Formula Nippon car, while the S5000 car has no diffuser at all. These are low downforce cars.
Besides Japan's Super Formula is very high downforce, massive diffuser (creating cars that are fast and exciting to watch, challenging to drive) *and* they can pass just fine!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DW5-zrSvlY -- plenty of close racing and passing!
Anyway, downforce makes racing cars fast. Essentially free grip in exchange for a penalty in drag on the straights, that is easily overcome by a faster cornering speeds to give a faster overall laptime. I don't understand why people are against downforce on racing cars -- provided there isn't outrageous development, the costs of adding downforce are minimal (just a few bits of honeycomb and carbon fibre, that's all, or even aluminium, just as good)?
It doesn't cost much at all for the amateurs who have put huge wings and diffuser on their Formula Libre hillclimb cars, like below, for example. A few bits of aluminum or some in-kind carbon supplies, and plenty of spare tinkering time.
The costs of their downforce add-ons is really minimal in the scheme of amateur motor racing (yes, of course, you couldn't have such liberal regulations in a professional series).
