Originally Posted by
Zerodefect
Well......it may not be downforce. But lift. And the net effect of reducing lift, is downforce kinda.
Giant flat chassis. Round body. That's a flat bottomed wing shape.
Move the cab forward, into the dirty air of the shock tower, might stall much of that.
And a control surface the size of our chassis, would move a plane quite a bit.
This is exactly why Lemans Prototypes went with the big honk'n fin on the back of the engine cowling. Not only to improve straight line stability, but also to prevent spill over air from sucking the cars off of the ground during high speed spins and sending them air borne.
The side shape of the bodies is one thing that is particularly intriguing to me, specifically for this reason. JConcepts makes a big deal in their marketing about the "JConcepts Chamfer" on all of their bodies. Which seems less than ideal to me, in comparison to something like the Pro-Line Axis body with its square sides, and integrated wicker edge, the flow characteristics at extreme yaw angles are going to be very different. And to me, it would be fun to quantify that in a psuedo scientific way, just to give some value to the designs, one way or another.