Just_a_fan wrote: ↑17 Jun 2018, 10:19
The high take cars tend to squat their rears as speed increases which allows them to shed some drag at high speed on the straights. This also means the suspension can be soft enough to help traction. The low rake cars can't afford to squat much at speed because they don't have the same "spare" ride height. Thus they need to run firmer suspension to stop the rear bottoming out at high speed. This firmer rear end hampers traction.
I get what you mean as basic principle, but what it actually is not that simple, more than just simply being soft or hard or having more or less space to go down. F1 cars, particularly Mercedes have such sophisticated suspension system and Merc always had very soft/flexible suspension that moves around a lot yet car is always on the same state, as if active suspension. In this past year or two trick suspension is banned but still its suspension is more advanced than most others and the car characteristics is always this same "very soft yet stable". High rake setup cars has to squat to negate its deficit of higher drag rather than can afford to. All cars except Merc is wide nose - high rake - shorter wheelbase concept but cars lower than the top 3 are all bouncing a lot, up til last year McLaren for instance had such stiff car that it was bouncing a lot on bumps. RBR and Ferrari were managing well, but last year's Ferrari of higher rake car was no match to Merc, RBR even this year's still tend to spark more than others. Also what modern suspension does is it does not squat on corners but only do so on straight, raked cars are designed to work and produce df in that setup hence you dont want to squat on corners, and the higher the rake the more so. Considering all these, lower rake setup may have more leeway/margin in terms of suspension.