Ferrari pulled the covers off from its 2019 contender. The prancing horse did so in its annual event at its homebase in Maranello in an event where symbolism was key.
A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
It's not even that simple, road car dampers have multiple valve circuits in them, the trick in F1 is to have interconnected dampers with fluid valves that also have time delayed effects (j dampers/interters/turbines/hydraulic computers using check valving, etc) on the low speed chassis control without wrecking the high speed damping of each individual corner.
Aren't time delays illegal in the suspension system?
This would suggest energy storage.
I guess if the system has inherent hysteresis which is intentional, they can get away with time delays.
I am inclined to guess that the damping is highly sensitive to suspension geometry on a whole other level. Meaning, there are certain accelerative patterns relative to the front and rear geometry when the car is going straight, under high aero loads, and then the brakes are applied. The damping would be tuned to react to this pattern in a certain way.
Is this feasible?
Some interesting rumours on the ferrari... Much of the work has been done on the mechanical side: the SF90 has a new hydraulic rear suspension (tested in the last GP on the SF71H) and a new positioning of the arms of the third element to the front suspension (with its wheel hub completely redesigned) modifying the center of roll to have a car with a better insertion in the curves, better tire management and above all, by combining it with a softer spring setting, which allows them to play with the rake heights both in acceleration and braking (coupled with a strengthening of the braking system), taking advantage of the "suspension jacking", that is the raising or lowering of the suspended mass, to solve some problems on the SF71H, which caused loss of grip (transversal sliding of the tires and excessive wear of the tread) and loss of traction out of corners. To sum up: under the dress, there's everything.
Yes, hydraulic dampers are used on normal cars, but the ones that Ferrari are reputed to be using, have multi valves in them which means that they do not just have a damped rebound, but they can control the rebound in a far better manner
This is available in aftermarket "racing" dampers too. 32 way dampers as they call them. Different damping rates for different rates of suspension bound and rebound.
What Ferrari may be doing is having a very complex, passive mechanical system similar to Mercedes and RedBull. You probably notice it more because it is testing. The teams can run somewhat illegal cars in testing to some extent so some extra gizmos might be on the car to test aero settings. Once the season starts we will have to see if the car stil does this behaviour.
Thanks Vanja, did Ferrari always have that solution (once they started with the "high" sidepod airintakes)? I Never noticed it before It seems like quite a smart place to put it. Although I must admit, can it still perform the function it is intended to do fully when it sits so low. What if another car hits a bump (or is launched in another way) and comes flying in above it.
Thanks Vanja, did Ferrari always have that solution (once they started with the "high" sidepod airintakes)? I Never noticed it before It seems like quite a smart place to put it. Although I must admit, can it still perform the function it is intended to do fully when it sits so low. What if another car hits a bump (or is launched in another way) and comes flying in above it.
That's the lower one. All cars must have 2 side impact tubes. One quite high (around the cockpit entry) and one pretty much on the floor (the one you see on the picture)