Quote:
Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith
Active suspension virtually eliminates body roll and pitch variation in many driving situations including cornering, accelerating, and braking.
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Exactly. So if you are optimizing your aero (and mechanical grip) WITHOUT active suspension you have to make it work in various conditions of pitch, roll, yaw and heave you end up with a compromise solution. An example is a bumpy track that may preclude having a stiffly sprung car will result in difficulty in controlling ride height or riding higher than you like to prevent bottoming out in some parts of the track.
If you are able to control those and either stop or significantly reduce them, then you can create a more optimal solution. To my example above, you can have a very consistent ride height (heave) as well as less dynamic movement (pitch, roll and yaw) that impacts the multi axis angle of attack of the car vs air. You still can't treat everything as straight line running, but it would help greatly.
I haven't mentioned this in a long time, but I felt that the 2021 regulations should have brought back active suspension as I fell it would remove much of the dynamic black magic/secret sauce that allows the well funded teams to do so well. My proposal was a spec ECU for the suspension, fixed number of related sensors and actuators and potentially using homologated actuators.
Richard