Ballast

[macca]

In Autosport this week one of the current F1 designers says that he thinks it is unsatisfactory for cars to run up to 100kg of ballast when it would be better used for strength and safety, and that most designers are making their cars just strong enough to pass the limited requirements of the crash tests, and unless there is official action it will take another 1994 to change things.

I strongly agree with him; does anyone else think ballast should be banned or limited to, say, 10kg?


Paul

[Kicking-back]

Not a current designer, but the recently retired Gary Anderson.

I don't think the team would make a car any more unsafe deliberately - after all the drivers at the top teams are far too big assets to kill or injure.

And there does come a point where you can make the monocoque too strong - meaning impact is absorbed by the driver and not the car.

[shiny side up!]

I'm not sure banning or limiting ballast would do much good. A team could still design a car as light as possible, and then 'beef up' components that give them a better weight distribution whether it is in the best interest of safety or not to meet the minimum weight. If safety is being sacrificed for low weight / ability to move ballast, I think the answer to that would be more stringent crash testing requirements...

[Adam43]

Shiny has a point. If you are designing your chassis like he suggests (which they would) do that sacrifices safety and itwould also be more expensive.

Shiny has the answer too, do research (whihc they have) and set decent crash test criteria (which they have).

I suppose the large amount of ballast being used at the moment means that possibly the FIA could make the tests more difficult. However they have set decent limits, I think.

OK Ferrari might be well over 100kg of ballast, but what about Jordan and Minardi?

[RWC]

There are alot of possible ways that any safety problems could be addressed.
Simply outlawing ballast or mandating a minimum center of gravity,etc for cars is probably the least sensible.

And remember this comment comes from someone that only ever made one very good design in f1.sorry that's abit beside the point but still funny

[DaveOrama]

YEs the cars all have to pass the crash test criteria, and the achieve those results a certain amount of weight (or mass) is incolved to create the strength needed.

After that the ballast is the to merely make up the minimum weight for the car as dictated by the rules. The better design teams will extract the optimum balance / centre of gravity / roll centres, etc....

[bosch!]

You cant blame the designers, they are trying to design the fastest car they can that comply with the technical regs. Cars are built to just survive the crash tests with a very fine margin which is why many fail, the FIA can and does increase the sererity of these tests from time to time.

What would be an interesting question is if your tub weighs say 90 kilos (i have no idea how much they do weigh) and passes the tests it is then hung with 100 kilos of ballast in race conditions, would it pass the tests at that weight? There have also been concerns that unattached ballast could be dangerous in an accident.

[Mr V]

It's not for the teams (designers) to add extra weight to the cockpit for safety, but for the FIA to increase safety regulations.

Damon Hill once said "ask any driver if they would rather a safer car that was 2 seconds a lap slower, or one that maybe wasn't as safe, but 2 seconds a lap faster, and every driver would take the faster car".

[Kicking-back]

I believe it was Max Mosley who said that, after Imola 94, not Damon.

[Raglanparade]

Either way i dont think safety needs to be improved.
why not just leave things the way they are, and if anything happens it happens. Things are safe enough now and the teams dont need to spend more money wen they are spending so much to meet new rules.

-jason

[RWC]

safety in f1 is generally excellent but for some glaring inconsistancies.
Something heavy coming into the front of the cockpit (or the car sliding upside down into a hard object,etc,etc)will crush a helmet for sure

Also any heavy impact to the bottom of the car will certainly crush vertebra from the G forces as there isn't any room built into this area for impact absorbtion zones

[Mr V]

Originally posted by Kicking-back
I believe it was Max Mosley who said that, after Imola 94, not Damon.

Maybe Damon was repearting what Max said then? But i have a video where Damon says it (1998, wearing Jordan overalls)

[grumpy1]

The ballast is used for the following reasons:
1. To allow the car to meet weight requirements.
2. To aid in the handling of the car.

1. is self explanitroy.
2. The ballast is moved around the car to create greater ground preasure. This is done to improve aero efficancy or create more down force depending on the circuit.Monarco requires high down force so the ballast will be shifted to as close as possible to the nose or rear of the car.Monza on the other hand is low down force so the ballast is distrubuted evenly around the car so as not to affect overall straight line speed.
As for chassis wieghts I also belive there is a weight limit that they have to comply to.
In an ideal world ballast would not be needed but advances in technoligy have allowed designers to use lighter and stronger materials in construction so therefore they use ballast to acheive weight limits.

The Grumpy1

[Adam43]

2. Aid the handling of the car.

I don't think it is anything to do with down-force. It is to improve the weight distribution of the car (I suppose designers will take into account the extra down-force at the front and rear and how this effects the effective weight distribution - of course I just mean grip front and rear at speed).

However ballast postion will not effect the cars top speed.

If the designers want more 'ground pressure' (?) created from aero then they put more wing on (or possibly lower the car - while considering the plank). This does have an effect on top speed.

Simply ballast at the front increases the weight at the front and hence grip of the front tyres, but this is not down force as such. Put it at the rear and it helps rear grip - This is something Brabham tried to an extremem in the turbo era. When ground effect was banned they worried that the power of the engine would be too much for the grip at the rear, so they put the weight as far back as possible to aid traction (remember the arrow shape car with thse short side pods).