Originally Posted by
JayBee
I completely understand the logic Brandon....but those are just words. I wanna SEE heat to heat laptime differences. I was never able to prove it to myself on the track; and I've played the 'chassis flex game'. I would rather fine tune my suspension components. But to each his own.
The main issue I see with these flexible chassis and top decks is side to side/ fore and aft flex characteristics. The repetitious movement the carbon fiber layers have in either direction weakens (splinters) the layers over time, rendering the advantage useless and introducing inconsistencies that the naked eye can't see.
Oh im with ya on all that.... I fine tune my suspension as much as anybody else I know at the track, but at the same time, I run a very loose chassis that flexes quite a bit to try and maximise traction on our low traction asphault layout. In other words, the flex I have is kind of a fixed setting I use,.. its the base. I tune everything else I have on the car to get the desired affect... and my car seems to drive extremelly well.
It would be pretty difficult to get an actual laptime comparrison between a car with lots of flex, and one with none. It would require the same electronics, same basic car, same driver, same tires, and driven on the same track at roughly the same time.
I first started learning about this stuff back in 2003 ish, when I used to race at SoCal raceway down near Los Angeles. It was an indoor, cool and smooth asphault surface, with very very little traction. You could tune the tail off your car down there, but regardless of what other changes you made, the stiffer you made the car, the less natural grip you had through the track. Losen the car up, and natural grip would come right back.
so.. who knows! Maybe it isn't as important with today's modern TCs.