Originally Posted by
tomracing
What you are describing here is a shock absorber issue more than a stiffness thing, yes we are looking for a car that gives predictable results but the biggest problem we have with bumps are the shocks.
Chassis flex works as de-coupling of the the front and rear roll stiffness, a car that has a very large Difference in roll stiffness will benefit from the flex to remain stable.
Basically if we are able to better balance our roll stiffnesses front and rear we would need the flex less and be faster, if we cannot achieve balance by either wrong decisions or design flaws we have to work around we would be slower without the flex.
My 2cts
If you look at it this way, yes we need a suspension model that is engineered better. That's a well known fact.
But I was referencing the way it is used in the current crop of cars. Also, even with an almost fully balanced roll stiffness, the flex in the car is still needed to make the car easier to drive. Oleg Babich published a formula on here to find the suspension stiffness on the modern cars in order to compare them to the stiffness of the A700's suspension.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/43565480/Sus...0Stiffness.pdf
Now, in theory, you could work it out that your front and rear roll centers, camber gains, and suspension stiffnesses, would all be the same. Even with this ability, you would still feel a huge difference and a huge benefit from tuning using chassis flex. This may be a product of the shocks, but that's what we have to work with at the moment.