We've seen in recent years that despite the budget cuts and rule changes, the order in F1 (Brawn possibly excepted) stays pretty much the same. The end result is that some teams, with the resources and know-how at their disposal, aren't ever in with much of a chance of getting a good result.

Would it be feasible though for a team to channel all their resources into optimising their car for one or two races only? This seems to have happened in '09 with Force India, although perhaps not intentionally.

The upcoming Monaco GP has brought this question to my mind - after all, it's arguably the biggest race of the season, and a win there may please a team's sponsors more than a full season of minor points finishes.

What would optimising a car for Monaco (for instance) involve? My initial thought are that a short wheelbase would be an obvious starting point in the design of such a car. Also, what effect would such optimisation for a particular track have on car performance elsewhere?

As you stated, short wheelbase.

Last year i noticed that the KERS cars were extra good on the slow and twisty tracks. So i would think a rear heavy car would be good for putting the power down early in slow corners.

But im no expert so it might just be that the fast drivers were showing their potential since aero was gone or less important.

Thats because a good car is simply a good car almost everywhere.

At Monaco it's not as tight as you think, comparable to some street circuits - 3 hairpins and narrow being the obvious exception there.

The hairpins are so tight it literally comes down to only the tyres/chassis alignment having any great effect so a status quo remains.

I do wonder if Benz will go back to their SWB for it though.

The tracks are so homogenised these days anyway, especially the new ones.

The wheelbase is quite irrelevant.

Wheelbase length is often seen primarily as a factor in how the car suits fast or slow turns. The common assumption that shorter cars go better around slow tight bends and longer cars go best in longer fast turns. This proves to be largely false, the difference in the longest to shortest cars is only a few percent, certainly not enough to substantially change the cars ability to corner around the hairpin at Monaco. Indeed Monaco proves to be no litmus test for wheelbases as longer cars have frequently won there. I am told that wheelbase changes by a few percent, affect lap times in just thousandths of a second.

Monaco would require a car with good mechanical grip. The cars are run in high downforce setup, so that need to work well too.

There is a common misconception that a longer wheelbase will make a car less responsive to steering inputs. In fact angular acceleration about the Z axis (Yaw) is limited by increasing polar moment and decreasing wheelbase.

The advantage of a shorter wheelbase is mostly the reduction in turning circle - which doesn't help unless full lock is needed at some point on the track.

Hmm, next time I make stuiff up I must remember the old italic blue font setting trick. Alternatively, who said that? It sounds reasonable.

You should remember to click on it too, Greg, when all will be revealed!

Which they actually do at Monaco -
I have proposed before that there
may be a slight advantage by
narrowing the rear track for there
enabling better rear tyre to curb
clearance at the hairpins.

Except when Cheapie is having a laugh...

Missed by THAT much.

I definitely think so. Certain car setups are better for certain tracks.

It depends on track variety.

With current tracks, hardly so.
If we still had super fast tracks such as the 80's Le Castellet layout, yes, it could be possible: a low drag design would excel there and be off the pace at Monaco.

Also, if Nurburgring (NordSchleife) was still on calendar, it would be barely negotiable by current F1 machinery, as BMW demonstrated some years ago: it just requires suspension movement and ground clearances that today's cars do not have.
A soft sprung car, with a real suspension and underbody aero optimized for distant ground, would win there, but would be outclassed elsewhere.

Taking the reasoning to extremes, a rally course and Indianapolis require quite different machinery.