Driver position within the chassis

[Sparky]

Many teams seem to be seating their drivers lower and further back in the chassis than ever before. This is to lower the centre of gravity and reduce the turbulence into the airbox.

Surely there has to be a limit to this technique. Will we see nose sections lower, to enable drivers to accurately gauge braking and turn-in points? Will this not effect the passage of air into the under-tray and barge-bard area? What about rearward visibility? Pedal and steering column positioning? Driver extraction (In the event of an accident?)

Are there additional problems to be encountered? couldn't other components be relocated more easily? Do the disadvantages outweigh the advantages?

What say you?

[Franklin]

Back in the early seventies, I saw at several dragstrips a rocket go-kart that would go from 0 to 200 mph in less than six seconds. The driver layed flat on his back with a headrest raising only his head above horizontal. On the other hand, he didn't need to turn corners.

[Crash Test]

Welcome back Franklin!!

Do drivers use their mirrors anyway?

Look at the F1 cars from the early 80's, the driver sat so far to the front of the thing, it was almost as if the designers were trying to impale the drivers foreheads into the scenery...

I think i may be right out of the ball park here, but isn't there some consideration to where the drivers legs are compared to the suspension? Basically when or if the suspension penetrate the tub, they don't want them going through the legs.

One thing i have to say, having sat in a fair few race cars in my time, not many of them have any sort of visibility at the best of times...inclusing tin tops, so unless they increase the height of the dashboard or blindfold the drivers, they should still be able to paddle around the track..

[Sparky]

Well, that's my whole point, Franklin.
If the drivers are positioned any further back, then their ability to control the car and judge their surroundings is reduced. Other elements will have to be revised to enable the diver to control the car. This will have a knock on effect, and pretty soon, it becomes less evolutionary, more revolutionary. The whole car will be redesigned simply to gain a little CofG.

Something else struck me; Surely the weight bias is already very much to the rear. Wouldn't engineers wish to increase the weight over the front wheels in order to assist with weight transfer for braking and help steering turn-in? Wouldn't moving even more weight bias to the rear risk understeer - the enemy of any race driver?

[enzo]

Frankie: Don't know if it was the same guy, but in the mid 70's I saw a hydrogen peroxide rocket go cart do 300+ in 4.5 seconds while shutting it down at the 3/4 mark ! Severe case of lunacy!

Sparky : Actually, the teams are struggling to get more weight over the front wheels - most estimates are that they are about 2-3% shy when comparing contact patch area. As far as seemingly moving the driver back, it may be an illusion based on coachwork proportions, but it might also be that new safety regs have either mandated it, or made it necessary to meet front structure impact requirements.

[THR]

The driver position is not important to the driver, more important to the designer.
when they design the cars, the know the CofG of each part of the car.
gearbox, engine, driver etc.
this can then be placed on a puter, and each part can be moved about to get the lowest CofG
weight distrubtion is 40/60ish, more like 43/57 if u ask me, and varies from each team to another.
the CofG is decided by the masses in the car. and the driver position is the one most moveable part of the car.

[Mackmot]

I thought that they would have the drivers furthur forward over the wheels if it wasnt for the safety rules about not allowing the driver to have their feet any further forward than the front of the uprights or is it tyres or something like that.

In the early 80's they had the driver further forward because this wasnt an issue back then and their feet were right up into the nose.

[Sparky]

THR, I certainly agree that the driver position is more important to the designer, but I wouldn't say that it isn't important to the driver. If you could move the driver forward, without contravening the tub penetration regs, the chances of understeer from a bad set of tyres or a damp circuit could be greatly reduced. Not only that, with his eyes peeking through a small (misted) visor, with his bum 40mm off the tarmac, and sooo far back in the chassis, it's a wonder any driver can see.

I'd want to be up front where the action is, not hiding within the bodywork, straining to see, understeering into a corner that you can only just see the apex, and not forgetting the difficulty in driver extraction with a lower column and nose section. (to see over)

Think of the fifties and sixties, BRM, Lotus Cooper... You could see the drivers, they could see the road, there was no difficulty with driver visibility for other drivers, they knew you'd seen them...

All I'm saying is that the CofG in todays cars is a compromise - if the driver goes any further back (and why? for a 10:90 distribution?) I still can't understand why the driver needs to go any further back, when all the driveline and fuel tank are already back there, surely it would be better to try and equalise the weight forwards rather than backwards?

Understeer, the enemy within every 'drivers' car...

Now who said that? Hmmn... I did!
The drivers are always complaining of understeer from todays cars.
I maintain they'd rather sit up front....

[Neil C]

Look at the Panoz ALMS car. They put the driver so far back he's now behind the engine, where they used to be!

As Enzo says, I believe the move backwards was originally to get the drivers feet behind the plane of the front axle for safety reasons.

The book by Colin Campbell I mentioned before does talk about driver position, weight balance, c.g. and its effect on handling.

[KC]

I saw an article in a mag with the designer of the Panoz roadster, he was desperate to do a mid-engine car like everyone else and Panoz insisted on the current design. The designer said that their car had the same balance as any other car with a mid to rear engine placement but said that there were some non-typical disadvantages to it. Driveshaft failure was the hardest to overcome. They have now since perfected their carbon-fiber driveshafts and also made them simple to replace for races like LeMans. They can also change a transmission in the roadster in less than 10 minutes. He said that the aerodynamics were actually better and engine cooling was easier to accomplish with the motor ahead of the driver. Brabham also commented on how loose he could set up the car because he's right over the rear tires and could tell the instant they got out of line instead of the midengine machines tendency to mask oversteer until it was nearly impossible to catch. He did say that sight lines took some getting used to, but really posed no problems after driving the car for a few days. He also said that the Panoz was easier on tires than any other racer in the series. It can be done and made to work well as in the case of Panoz, but no one in F1 is going to risk everything by going such a radical route. It would take Ferrari and Mclaren at least two seasons to get a roadster to work much less get it to win and they cannot afford to do it.

[Dino IV]

The one word that's still missing is 'ballast' (I don't know if that's the UK-motorsport term for 'extra weight' though ).

With most F1 cars weighing in at well below 500 kg and mentioned figures for the MP4/15 and F1-2000 of below 450 kg, they have a lot of weight to play around with. So the drivers position, little for or aft doesn't pose the most valuable method for perfecting the preferred CofG. I guess, besides vastly regulated by safety measures and tub specifications as enzo already mentioned, there is little to be optimized about the driver's position. The gradually more laid-back position could be mainly because of aerodynamic purposes - reducement of frontal area, drag, optimized underbody-flow, reducement of airbox-intake disturbance by the helmet etc.

To get the weight they want at the front they have to play around with a lot of mostly wolfram-pieces of metal. Placed for instance mostly above the wooden plank in the step-bottom but to get it to the front they place weights under the driver's legs, inside the beautiful curve wich connects undertray and monocoque, at the front of the tub, wherever you got room in the front, fill it up.

Jordan even tried blocks inside the nose-cone a few times last year but the placement was not ideal because of the height of the nose.
Rumours this year are that one team - Prost is most often mentioned - is using wolfram wing end-plates to reduce the pitch of the car, but that's trully an emergency solution for severe handling problems.

I wondered myself if - and if not, why not? -the entire midsection of the frontwing wouldn't be filled with some extra kg's of wolfram. Maybe too much to the front, I don't really know.

Regards,

Dino IV.

[THR]

driver position is not important!!
weight is king!!
KC has it on the button.