Originally Posted by
edhchoe
'Rules are there to keep F1 looking like the real thing' reason doesn't explain the solid axle design of majority of f1 cars.
Why we run a solid axle in F1s is fairly obvious to anyone with knowledge of the history of r/c cars. The first F1s came out in the late 70s when your options for electric cars were a solid axle/chassis flex on road design, or the pot metal basic suspension of the Rough Rider/Sand Scorcher and Scorpion buggies at the time. The simpler design was considerably more superior for on road racing. It would be another 15 years before we had something recognisable as a modern touring car.
In the 80s pan car design then went through a bit of a revolution, with full independent suspension and various 4WD systems, and solid axle pan cars with multi link suspensions and independent front ends, but none were superior to the basic pan car design once pan cars had developed to the separate T-piece design. Here in Europe a 4WD, independent suspension chassis can still be legal in 1/12th scale, but no one has built one as it just wouldn't be competitive.
If you have a simple design that proves to be superior why change it just for the sake of it. There have been several RWD independent suspension designs over the years, look at the Serpent Tenforce for example, and none of them have taken off. Even Tamiya tried it, the F201 was Tamiyas attempt to make a basher F1 as while the F103 was popular and worked well on racetracks it wasn't easy to drive on dusty tarmac. Tamiya even included 4WD to make it easy to drive. All it did was kill off TCS F1 racing as the racers weren't interested in a slower, heavier car that needed so much work on it to tune it, and a whole load of parts throwing at it to be competitive.
Having a rule that limits chassis to a solid axle does make sure F1 chassis are similar, so therefore of similar performance. Most places don't allow independent suspension because there is no need to, there are still plenty of options available for the racers. Opening the rules to allow independent suspension could then lead to expensive purpose built race chassis similar to 2WD touring car chassis, not just the FGX, which is why a lot of rules still keep a solid rear axle.