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Ground Effect: Lotus' Incredible discovery revolutionised F1

submitted by Aard Vark

(oritteropo)
8 years 1 month 2 weeks ago

YouTube description:

Maximum Down Force Minimum Drag - Lotus Ground Effect. Clive Chapman son of Lotus founder and F1 legend, the late Colin Chapman, describes how a chance discovery changed F1 forever. Featuring the Type 78, the title winning Type 79, and the ultimate Ground Effect Car the Type 91. Mario Andretti won the F1 title in the Type 79 and the first time he drove a ground effect Lotus, described it like being painted to the track.

5 Comments

This is a fantastic explanation/video if you're at all interested in racing or engineering.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Saturday, March 5th, 2016 2:50pm PST - promote requested by artician.

I understand it down force is one of the contributing factors to rather bland and uninteresting racing because you lose a lot of the extra grip it affords you when you are chasing close to somebody else. So basically Lotus ruined F1 yeye.

AeroMechanical says...

Nah, it was always the same. The lack of overtaking is commonly blamed on high downforce, carbon brakes, and super short braking distances, but it actually wasn't any better before they put wings on cars. Same thing: the rich, fast teams qualify and start at the front and stay at the front and get richer and faster...with the occasional fall from grace (Mclaren) or rise from obscurity (Brawn->Mercedes). As cool as they are technologically, development series like F1 tends to result in boring races.

ed: Oh, and using ground effect has been banned since 81(?). Interestingly, Indycars use the ground effect (though without the skirts so it's not as effective as the F1 ground effect cars), and by virtue of being a (mostly) spec series, has much better races.

I understand it down force is one of the contributing factors to rather bland and uninteresting racing because you lose a lot of the extra grip it affords you when you are chasing close to somebody else. So basically Lotus ruined F1 yeye.

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