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James Allan on RB6 blown diffusor trick


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#201 zac510

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Posted 11 October 2010 - 18:56

Fat Boy, on Oct 11 2010, 17:15, said:

As far as the understeer goes, keep in mind that the driver wasn't complaining of excessive understeer. The only real comments in that direction is that the front would wash out just a little on throttle. It's a feedback loop. Earlier in the weekend, he wasn't complaining of oversteer, but I could see the maintenance throttle pick up of 5-10% in places. I then just started increasing rear grip (increasing understeer) until that went away. What I was left with was a driver that would go to throttle like you see in that second chicane. The time between 0% and 100% was pretty small.


I liked this. You've given the impression that you changed the settings of the car without him knowing. Do you do this kind of thing often, or do you slip it in while changing something else unrelated? I imagine the human nature is more likely to make a driver reject change if he in turn has to change his style a bit, otherwise has no complaints and did not request the change.

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#202 Fat Boy

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Posted 11 October 2010 - 20:19

zac510, on Oct 11 2010, 18:56, said:

I liked this. You've given the impression that you changed the settings of the car without him knowing. Do you do this kind of thing often, or do you slip it in while changing something else unrelated? I imagine the human nature is more likely to make a driver reject change if he in turn has to change his style a bit, otherwise has no complaints and did not request the change.


The driver was in on everything. I usually keep the driver informed on the changes. This particular guy wanted to know so he would have an idea on what he was meant to go try to exploit. He had a lot of faith in me and I had a lot of faith in him. Like I've said, there weren't any gross car issues to deal with. The car was pretty strong right off the truck (which is a big part of a good weekend). We were both just looking for more speed. He just continued carrying more speed on corner entry until an imbalance showed up and I kept trying to keep the rear from wanting to pass the front.

During a race weekend it's pretty rare for me to keep things from the driver. On private test days, I'll often do blind tests when I don't know the answer to a question and have a series of changes meant to address that issue. I use blind tests when the driver can't really be 'wrong' per say. He can just evaluate. In those situations he doesn't have to know all the details and in fact, the details might muddy the waters of the test due to biases. After I'm done with the blind test, I like to go over the changes with the driver to let him know what his feedback was about the different settings. At the end of the day, while it takes a little more work, I think I'm better served by having a more educated driver rather than a 'monkey' that just pushes the pedals.

#203 gruntguru

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Posted 11 October 2010 - 23:02

Fat Boy, on Oct 12 2010, 06:19, said:

The driver was in on everything. I usually keep the driver informed on the changes. This particular guy wanted to know so he would have an idea on what he was meant to go try to exploit. He had a lot of faith in me and I had a lot of faith in him. Like I've said, there weren't any gross car issues to deal with. The car was pretty strong right off the truck (which is a big part of a good weekend). We were both just looking for more speed. He just continued carrying more speed on corner entry until an imbalance showed up and I kept trying to keep the rear from wanting to pass the front.

During a race weekend it's pretty rare for me to keep things from the driver. On private test days, I'll often do blind tests when I don't know the answer to a question and have a series of changes meant to address that issue. I use blind tests when the driver can't really be 'wrong' per say. He can just evaluate. In those situations he doesn't have to know all the details and in fact, the details might muddy the waters of the test due to biases. After I'm done with the blind test, I like to go over the changes with the driver to let him know what his feedback was about the different settings. At the end of the day, while it takes a little more work, I think I'm better served by having a more educated driver rather than a 'monkey' that just pushes the pedals.

A fascinating tale and very informative too. To generalise, I have always felt that priority #1 should be a car that's easy to drive. In this case, some entry understeer seems to be part of the equation that is producing braking -> lateral transitions which are about as good as is possible. He must have been very close to locking the inside front! BTW does this car run a spool?

#204 Fat Boy

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Posted 14 October 2010 - 16:05

This car wasn't running a spool. There was preload in the diff. In retrospect, I could have used more. Like I said, you always run out of time.

I feel having a car that is predictable is really important. I don't know if that's the same as 'easy to drive'. It has to always do the same thing and it has to react in a linear manner. The steering has to be communicative. The driver has to want to be aggressive and the car has to reinforce that feeling.

Incidentally, one of the best drivers in terms of mid-corner patience on the throttle was Bourdais. He would bomb that McDonald's car into a corner and then wait, wait, wait. The front tires would be completely cranked over. If you were looking at it from the outside, you'd say he had way too much understeer. He didn't. He had tons of rear grip and made it work for him on entry and exit. When he went to Toro Rosso, I think that's what he was looking for. Initially, the car had understeer and he was on par with Vettel. They made a change mid-season (at least according to press releases and interviews, who knows if that has any resemblance to the truth) that made the car understeer less. As soon as they did that, Bourdais was lost and Vettel really started to shine. F1 cars do not appear to be tailored to their drivers. They appear to make the fastest car possible on the sim and then tell the driver to figure out how to do what the sim is doing. This in an outsider's view. Well, whatever they did, Bourdais just couldn't wrap his head around it and that was the beginning of the end for him. It makes me wonder what would have happened if they would have set the sim off to the side for a second and tried to make a car he was comfortable with.