What'd like to know is where the 100 000 000 $ are supposed to come from? Autosport has some rough numbers:

Yearly budget: 400 m
Prize money for winning WCC: 70 m
Profit per year: 5 m
Santander sponsorship: 18 m
Vodafone sponsorship: ??? (anyone here know?)
Daimler AG: the rest

So even if the first instinct is that money doesn't matter to F1 teams, 100 m is a huge amount!

Norbert certainly won't be able to go to his bosses and say "Hey, I need another 100m because one of our partners got a big fine from a sports organizer because of a PDF and some SMS".

So the money will have to come from the Mclaren company, who make 5m per year.

I reckon they're going to end up paying a lot less, similarly to the organizers of the Turkey GP, who didn't have to pay their fine after showing the FIA that they would be bankrupt if they did.

The unrealistic sum of money just strengthens my opinion that the whole spy drama, with public emails and all, was just a stunt to make F1 more interesting to mainstream media when in truth F1 is a lot less entertaining than GP2.

Last edited by J.B., Fri 14 Sep 2007, 20:07.

Quote from Leprekaun :

Well, I'm not planning on getting into an argument about this but only Mercedes and Porsche really know why the car did that. True, it could've been the reason to why the cars did that but all true racing enthusiasts or racing drivers know that sometimes, you have to take risks. Its up to Tristan if he wants to go ahead with it or not.

You think a club racer should test risky setups because some forum wannabe reckons it might be a good idea?

Tristan: those ride heights are indeed quite high so I guess that the influence on underfloor aero won't be that big. What you are still doing with rake though is changing the AoA of the whole car body which itself acts like a wing.

I'd say give it a try. Although personally I would probably start with the front wing settings. You may lose a bit of overall grip but don't forget that you are also losing drag and maybe improving the lift/drag ratio.

Pretty predictable result. Now let's hope the FIA and the teams stop wasting time on this and concentrate on F1's real problems which is that the on track action is crap.

Last edited by J.B., Thu 13 Sep 2007, 17:44.

This is really a can of worms that has been opened here. I wonder where it will end. Patented and copyrighted car designs? An FIA intellectual property management system?

I fear F1 may become unmanageable. After chassis, tyres, aero and engine, lawyers may become the new major component teams need to consider.

Last edited by J.B., Thu 13 Sep 2007, 17:20.

You said it came with spam. Maybe you could explain what the problem is?

ZP is the only player out there that will give you full control over codec management on your system. It also offers a codec install wizard that will download and install the most important codecs for you. You don't need to do this in case that's what scared you.

In your case you were just supposed to use ZP to uninstall ALL codecs that are on your system. There are probably other ways to do this but you'll have to find out yourself how to if you don't like ZP.

Quote from BlueFlame :

JB - Im not going to install that again, it comes with like 20 other things, and its just a miniture minefield of spam.

BS. If you're incapable of using software properly and distinguishing between good software and crapware then just use vlc and shut up.

Don't come here accusing people of trying to get you to install spyware when you're the one whith the software problem.

Last edited by J.B., Thu 13 Sep 2007, 16:26.

Quote from Chrisuu01 :

Rules:

srearch vor verry starnge video acros the internet

like this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6yzjDXp_og&NR=1

Lol. Reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JUFCMS_910

You need to uninstall codecs when they've messed up your system, not install more. Read the "Clean start" section here: http://www.inmatrix.com/articles/mediasetup3.shtml

I won't comment on the geometry as roll centre heights and the likes are still quite esoteric concepts to me.

But with a car like that I think the most important factor that you are influencing by changing rake and ride height are the aerodynamics of the floor and the diffuser. What shape is the underside of the car? Is it a true Venturi or just a flat bottom with a wing (diffuser) at the end?

If it's a flat bottom increasing rake should increase downforce and shift the balance slightly towards oversteer. The front should be as low as you can get away with. With a Venturi floor (I think) the floor needs to be kept as close as you can to the ground to make the low pressure area under the car work as well as possible.

BTW at paddock you're on the wrong side of the kerb.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

The closer the tyres are to the ground, the more grip you get. Ideally you want them to be touching the ground.

Lol, that clears things up.

Last edited by J.B., Thu 13 Sep 2007, 03:32.

22" screens and aspect ratios. Don't get me started. Or I guess you already did.

But I'll keep it short:

1) if you want a 22" WS that doesn't mindlessly stretch every signal to 16:10, the hp w2207 is the only one that exists. (hard to believe, I know)

2) If you want the GPU driver to take care of scaling: don't get an ATI card.

3) If you want one that will connect to PS3, HD-DVD player, HDTV decoder etc. without distorting the image: there is none in existance! (the AR scaling setting of the w2207 doesn't work at 720p for some reason)

Apart from that the others are right, TN panels are really bad vertically. The image at the top looks quite different to the image in the middle because of the vertical distance from your eyes. And font rendering is also very bad on some screens. On w2207 for example cleartype is unuseable.

My recommendation: get a Dell 24" or 20". They're not TN and everything works as it should. Shame they don't make a 22".

Last edited by J.B., Thu 13 Sep 2007, 01:25.

Moleküldurchmesser σ

Great race. I love seeing LH and FA going head to head without any pesky Ferraris or BMWs in the way.

And we even got to see some real overtaking action. LH's moves are fine with me. The difference between his "chops" and MS' is that he stops pushing before the other driver is on the grass or has to back off.

Any decent version available somewhere? People should use stage6, and leave youtube with its disgusting quality to kids dancing for their webcams.

Quote from FL!P :

Edit: also, remember that McLaren brought FIA's attention on Ferrari's floating plank (or what did they call it?), which forced Ferrari to change it. Obviously Ferrari was gaining some advantages of this (or they wouldn't have used it) and McLaren's knowledge of this detail allowed them to cancel those advantages.

You make it sound like calling out cheaters were a bad thing...

I can't believe how Ferrari can make such a public fuss about the documents that exposed their antics.

Anyway, hoping for a good race today. Been a while since we had a direct LH vs FA battle and both are looking very strong here. Will FA be able to rebuild his reputation of never making mistakes, a reputation that he has struggled to maintain under LH pressure?

Last edited by J.B., Sun 9 Sep 2007, 09:28.

Quote from Shotglass :

(same question for jb btw )

You think I should just believe everything you say? Where's the fun in that?

No but seriously. I went back to reread your posts and realize that you had pretty much said the same things that I came up with later, just in a more compressed form. The question I started out with was whether my claim that preload is nothing but droop limiting was true or false. I guess I could have derived the answer from your posts but I didn't notice this when I read them the first time.

Anyway, loved this thread. This is the sort of thing I come here for.

Quote from dropin_biking :

Well as soon as it crashes, pop off your case cover and feel around the card, is it hot?

LOL of course it'll be hot. Modern GPU's run at around 100°C. You need a sensor readout. ATI tray tools can put it in your system tray.

I just had another read through the FSAE thread. If I do that once a day from now on I should have answers for you soon.

Quote from tristancliffe :

We set the preload with the dampers off the car. Turn the spring platforms until they just touch the spring, then a further 1/4" worth of turning. You can't set the preload on the car with weight on it, because preload has to be unladed.

You're right about that. I'll rephrase my post. Zero droop is indeed considered normal for many single seaters as you can see in both the AtlasF1 and FSAE discussions I linked to.

I don't know why. Aero stability springs to mind but in the FSAE discussion they are talking about FFords.

Either way you are still easily in case 2) conditions in my earlier post. I think with single seaters even preloading until the point where the suspension doesn't move downwards when you lift the car off the ground isn't considered a lot of preload.

Last edited by J.B., Mon 3 Sep 2007, 17:01.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Quite a funny discussion. That shaun chap seems to understand it more than most (but I only skim read it), whilst rms is totally confused.

However, I think reading other forum's discussions is meaningless - I have no idea who to trust. Whereas here I know which people generally have their heads screwed on and who doesn't (e.g. if Harjun came in here telling me that preload was a flavour of ice-cream I'd know to ignore him, but if Mr Fisher told me it was a pop-corn making technique I'd be more inclined to consider what he says (but not beleiving him outright, as it has to correlate to my own research and understanding).

But this is heading in the right direction, so keep it coming guys!

True. But going through that thread helped me realize that I don't 100% understand the issue and made me go a bit deeper. I've come up with something now, hope it's right.

First of all I think it's important to be clear about what exactly we are doing when we say we are adding preload. As far as I can tell there are four main scenarios:

1) You turn the preload nut (see shotglass' pic) but not further than the point where when the wheels are on the ground, carrying the weight of the car, the damper travel just is maxed out but not more.

2) Same as 1) but afterwards you change the length of the pushrod to make sure the static ride height stays the same as it was before the adjustment. This is something you would definitely do with a single seater racing car.

3) Continue adding preload after this point.

4) Again same as 3) but with with ride height compensation.

I found that each of these four cases reacts slightly differently to adding preload.

1)
-static ride height increases
-maximum ride height stays the same
-suspension acts linear (no minimum force needed to make it move)

2)
-identical effect to a mechanical rebound limiter
-maximum ride height decreased (up to zero droop possible)
-suspension acts linear (no minimum force needed to make it move)

3)
-no change to max ride height
-no further change to static ride height (compared to 1))
-minimum force needed before suspension will move

4)
-no further change to max ride height (compared to 2))
-minimum force needed before suspension will move

So in summary preload can be used for a variety of effects. You can change ride height, limit rebound travel and add an offset to the displacement vs force function.

But how to use it? I say have a test, see what it feels like and what the stop watch says. Beats making your head hurt by analyzing it anyway.

Last edited by J.B., Mon 3 Sep 2007, 16:49.

copy pasted from the LSD preload thread:

Quote from J.B. :

Just try to imagine the concept of preload with a linear coil spring. Say you have a spring that is 100mm long and needs 10N to be compressed by 10mm. To preload it you install it in such a manner that it can't fully expand and is compressed to 90mm length. Think something like this with limited travel. The mechanism that is holding the spring in this position will have to deal with 10N force that the spring is exerting. Now if you press down on the device, for the first 10N of force you apply, the spring will not actually compress further, you will only be taking the load off the preload device and moving it your thumb. Only when you get over 10N of force will the precompressed spring beginn to compress further than the 90mm it was compressed to by the preload.

Maybe helps.

Another good discussion: http://forums.autosport.com/showthread.php?threadid=95944

Got me confused, may have to rethink my last post.

Ah yes, this is one of the topics that got me a bit disillusioned about real life racing. Not many people actually know why they are doing the things they do.

EDIT: the following isn't entirely true. See further down in this thread for more details.

What I came up with when thinking about preload is that an easier way to think of it is simply as a travel limiter instead of some kind of magic extra force. Applying preload is simply the exact opposite to a bump stop. A bump stop limits how far a spring can travel in bump direction and adding preload limits how far a spring can travel in the droop direction.

In a deflection over force diagram a normal spring does this

a bumpstopped spring does this


and a preloaded and bumpstopped spring does this


So what you're doing is limiting the droop. A popular setting is zero droop i.e. if the force at the wheel decreases to anything lower than the static forces from the weight of the car, the suspension arm will not extend further as a reaction.

What is this good for? I have no answers myself but here's a discussion on exactly that issue: http://fsae.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/18910968321

Last edited by J.B., Mon 3 Sep 2007, 15:25.

Exactly. He never gets enough credit for this IMO. In the Arrows he was struggling to qualify in the first race and basically won in Hungary. You can never underestimate how much an intelligent driver can help the team work in the right direction.

I'll just throw in a set I made for KY nat. It requires quite a different driving style to most LFS setups as I try to use more realistic brake balance and diff settings. This means it will be much more responsive under turn in and trail braking and on the throttle it's quite catchable.

For me it feels very nice but I don't know how fast it would ultimately be the hands of an alien.