Why High Downforce Road Cars Suck
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- High downforce will ruin a dedicated road car, here's why!
Why Stiff Springs Reduce Grip - • What's The Best Suspen...
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Downforce is created by using aerodynamic features, like a rear wing, to push a car towards the ground. This force gives the car more grip, which is great for track cars, but not for road cars. With lots of downforce, you have to use a really stiff suspension; these stiff springs are needed because you now have the weight of the car, plus downforce, and you need to counter these forces to prevent the car from being pushed into the ground.
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Here's why modifying your suspension often isn't worth it, for those curious to learn more about suspensions! ruclips.net/video/pyA1DVle8VA/видео.html
The wings some people mount to the trunk lids are comical. If the wings did work. they would either crush or rip the trunk lid off. I told a guy once to stand on his trunk, he said it would damage it ....... he still didn't get it.
track cars sucks on the roads, road cars suck on the track. really good active suspensions could improve both though. adjustable ride height, flat cornering, consistent ground effect at all speeds, no sway bars, optimized contact patch on the tires. adjustable tire pressure could help too
Do some research and learn that's not very hard you can have both worlds do your research
Do some research with dual rate Springs you can have the best of both worlds and they've learned that in F1. One Soft Spring that will coil bound itself quickly when stiff spring as the downforce increases the car will collapse the Soft Spring making it coil-bound the stiff spring will take over and handle the weight of the now heavy vehicle
@@jeremymaline6419 this is just like tuning the spring response curve. smart engineering but very archaic that still exists in F1 only because it is not allowed to have active suspension. the cars would be a LOT faster with active suspension. they would corner perfectly flat and only a few mm from the ground and have tons more ground effect. it was banned because the cars would go WAY faster around corners and any problem with the suspension means the car can suddenly lose most of the down force and crash at very high speeds. also no race car tuned for the track without active suspension has suspensions that are half decent on the road by road cars standards
look at Bose suspension that corners flatter than a F1 and can drive at high speed over speed bumps like it's nothing. many benefits from active suspension on the track, many benefits on the road too but the biggest advantage would be to be able to do both very well
don't forget about the added fuel consumption caused by the additional drag
And increased rolling resistance!
Okay, those are only gonna factor in at high speeds, and the people who would care about downforce in their cars, probably don't care that much about how much mileage they get.
@@crackedemerald4930 it definitely factors in at regular highway speeds. When I drive my track car on the highway I get around like 20mpg. Stock the car is supposed to do 34 Mpg. Granted it is tuned with larger wider wheels and tires so I’m sure that hurts to but definitely a large contributor is the track aero.
Downforce becomes significant at 60mph
@@charlesrodriguez7984 And drag at about 40mph
"Sorry officer, I had to take that corner at 115 mph, otherwise I'd have crashed"
😂😂😂also the pfp🤣🤣🤣🙃🙃🙃
Centrifugal force is bigger than downforce with the speed, so you dont need more speed for avoid a crash
@@llavero5the joke went way over your head
@@llavero5 centrifugal force is not a force, if you can’t turn in time it’s your handling/weight
@@justonyx6721ah a fellow phys 1 student
with great downforce comes great responsibility
Would also be cool if you said "response ability"
@@KF1 which is where the word comes from
Wise words
😂😂😂
@@Mo__Joe This supposed to be a car pun instead
You will not convince me that the park bench on the back of my 99 civic is a bad idea any more than the extreme negative camber.
You can strap a whole house roof on it for better performance than park bench
I took off my park bench after I had to kick off a homeless dude sleeping on it.
Least with the park bench the homies got somewhere to sit
Jesus is coming. Submit to Christ
Don’t ever sell your civic, I had a 97 Accord LX that I bought from the original owner. If I would’ve taken care of it, I might’ve gotten another 100k. You have to appreciate the genius behind them.
Downforce: 2000kg
The car: A Civic
Engine: Type R Engine blessed with Black Magic
If it is used for track where is the problem?
_"I WANNA DANCE"_
@@llavero5 wake up pal, you know about 98% of clapped Civics(or any car in general) are never touching a track
Doesn't really apply when you can do all wheel drive conversion and make it into a budget evo....are just a cheap budget track car with a plethera of cheap parts
Love the "ground effect sucks" 😂😂
A good pun makes my day.
And then an image of toto wolf at the end. Rip Merc x porpoising, ended in Canada
Physicist here. I love some good puns too, but still, I have to - Ground effect doesn't "suck" because vacuum (or low pressure as well) doesn't suck, but the higher pressure around compress or push into the lower pressure area.
Ground even 😂😂
"Fix your goddamn car"
thats why manufacturers put movable spoilers that adjust according to speed. Mclarens for example, have spoilers that rise when needed but are on idle when just crusing down the street to maximize downforce, fuel efficiency and speed
DRSs are good innovations indeed.
for a road car, the right amount of down force would be the one that cancels lift, and maintain stability and consistent ride height and suspension at all speeds. you don't want lift unless you're trying to take off
Like a stock Z33.
Audi TT moment
I wan lift! Because to reduce fuel consumption
@@whyalwaysme1106 technically yes, lift will reduce consumption slightly but since you need high speed to have significant lift you have also a lot of drag and rolling resistance becomes almost negligible plus you don't want to reduce you grip at high speeds because you are increasing your braking distances and stability
Yep, in most cases some rear aero will actually decrease drag as well. Very modest implements though, like spoilers.
".. street speeds are generally too low..."
🤐🤫
Germany's autobahn 👀
@@castleclasher1236 country backroads
Canyon drives don’t need downforce… I’ll just throw my Vette off the cliff I guess
@@coknews4270 And this was exactly my thinking. 🤫
Exactly. He's not living life right...
“I love running over trash on the interstate and destroying very expensive undercarriage parts” - Said No One
"that's stance lyfe bro"
Buddy of mine ordered a c8 when they first came out and optioned all the carbon EXCEPT the splitter bc he knew he'd be replacing it every few years
If your car is rwd, having that rear end pushed into the ground is actually a major benefit to grip.
Only if you drive on the limit
Not at 30mph its not.
watch the video it doesnt matter at road speeds because you would need a pretty massive aircraft sized wing to even generate enough to push down the rear at those speeds
are you saying fwd dont need that rear grip? hell matter fact they prolly dont even need those rearwheels anyways
Pov: you live in the Netherlands and all roads are as smooth as a race track.
thats kinda why you are able to adjust the suspension and or remove the spoiler if you need to on custom cars.
this is where dudes with stance cars combine every aspect of what makes a car ride awfully and combine it into one whip
The Audi TT would flip around at 120 MPH, until Audi added a rear spoiler...
That’s y modern supercars use active suspension that adjusts according to what drive mode the vehicle is in
Bigger wing = Better car. and more stickers too
^^^ Facts! This guy knows what’s up.
Not always
Now I’m gonna get a massive rear wing on my Camry and speed in school zones.
Make sure you're flipping off the highway patrol while blasting past
"Downforce is for people who can't build heavy cars." - Enrico Larifari
“Rizz is for guys who can’t get fat chicks” vibes
@@yjkader employment for people who arent cool enough to drink in the morning
Heavy cars suck
I'm glad you mentioned that mechanical grip actually lowers on the road. Very little people actually talk about it. A road car is best off with softer suspension (preferably adjustable) and good quality anti-roll bars.
I’ve seen Viper ACR extremes on auto cross courses and the amount of grip they have at that slow of speed is crazy. That being said the downforce a mild setup can do on the street can make a difference at 60mph which is canyon speeds, at least where I’m from it is.
This video was made extremely well. I always see people talk about down force and I never cared to look it up (especially since I drive a truck that definitely doesn't need any), but this is the first time I actually understood what it is. This only makes me even more content with a duck tail when I get a sedan or coupe.
The reasons why bunta decided not to put a spoiler on the AE86
realistically speaking, stock 4A-GE is weak by standards (your rear won't go flying unless you try hard enough to), there's no benefit from it having extra downforce
The tofu is gonna be mush with the uncomfortable ride quality.
@@user-oc6of2cd5r what about Wataru's ae86? In turbo spec it supposedly made 250hp (according to the Manga), do you think Wataru's ae86 benefitted from a lip spoiler?
@@r3uvsgaming in short yeah
If I'm not mistaken, there's also minimal lift created from the underside of the car. In Texas, there's tons of very straight high speed highways, the car guys love it, but I hate the car guys constantly weaving through traffic, causing accidents. Most car guys are not aware of all the forces at play or of the fact that you can tune your suspension. All about "stance" 🙄
Minor downforce does in fact can increase the likelihood of over speeding and increase the confidence during the cornering, like maybe 40lbs of downforce at 100mph
Says who?
@@gameonyolo1 said no proof reader.
@@WarHeadUK nah said Denis seow
An excellent summary, although it's worth mentioning as a side point that many road car shapes naturally produce lift, so some mild downforce becomes necessary so that the car is safe at speed, even relatively modest legal road speeds. Notably, the lift is often not the same front and rear, so the downforce can be tuned to account for this, or even to alter the handling balance at speed. This was one of the key differences between the Lotus Elise S1 and S2: the S1 produced a rear lift bias that got worse with speed, making it unstable at high speeds, whereas the S2 reversed this tendency, and the Exige and 2/3-Eleven took this further still. I owned an S2 and a 2-Eleven and can confirm you can feel these effects at road speeds. Caterhams 7s are particularly eye opening much above about 80-90mph, as the front lift is really significant; I've even seen people tilting their front numberplates to try and counter it, and some of the faster models have little winglets on the nose cone to try and reduce things. I have owned and raced a full downforce single seater, so I know how different these road car effects are that I’ve mentioned, but it is nevertheless the same physics going on, just at a much lower level.
Progressive rate springs 👀
It’s so cool seeing VIR. It’s the only time my home town gets recognition
what about an active suspension and aero, where when you need to use it on the track you can enable track mode, stiffening the springs and closing the rear wing's gap.
It doesn’t stiffen the springs. It slows down the speed of compression or rebound of your shocks. Special fluid in the shocks that change viscosity when power is applied to it.
@@altonb93 What you are talking about is a semi active suspension. An actual active suspension has an extra actuator at each wheel that can apply forces and therefore control the movement of the wheel. That makes it feel like it changes the stiffness of the spring. Then there is adaptive air suspension which actually changes the stiffness of the spring so what he says is actually possible
makes car heavier, a road & track car should just be lightweight, better fuel mileage and better performance
@@NicoKyunKyunhave you seen bose suspensions..never made it to market but this is insane. this is what cars should look like In 10 20 years. gliding over bumps or hole, zero body roll. being able to ride quick and comfortably, not cars capable of sub 2s 0-60, or 8s quarter miles at 170mph, that people drive super slow because of traffic and bad roads.
@@geemy9675 yeah i recalled i've watched a video about that, you forgot that it also improves cornering, if only it was fitted to a luxury car at that time, for sure it would find it's way to today's mid range cars
Better send this to a "tuner" who put a big old rear wing on their car...
And this is why rally cars are such a masterpiece
Tires with shallow sidewalls are also a bad idea on road cars..
Awesome to see a real car for a change 👍
A small price to pay to looked better with a wing.
It's ok, one day you will be older than 12
The only people who'll ever care about your wing are other dude-bros. Grats on coming out as gay, I guess?
@@AB0BA_69 The thing that matters most is if I like it or not. Screw others. 10th Gen Civic coupe looks ugly without the SI wing.
@@rookie4582 there hasnt been a good looking civic in years. Yes, I have had one.
@@ian_987 Unfortunate for you
Critical lack of downforce: Centrifugal pull : Crashes : Smiley, Savage....etc.
More fuel consumption, More wear on tires, you're likely to visit track more often. In conclusion, more holes in your pocket.
Yep, learnt this at young age on my first car. Put a huge wing on my car and I did find on the way home I had a 100km zone long smooth bend and and I could literally feel the down force if I was over 120kms . After that I never had a interest of wings, sure they look cool, and if you only get benefits if breaking the law. It's a waste of money that could be spent else were and is more beneficial for street use. Unless you regularly track day.
I had an r34 gt-4 skyline with no wing stock, looked awesome
I have triple layer full-length leaf spring on my truck, and Yes, it sucks for ride quality and grip when empty. But I can carry a lot of weight without squatting. Truck is also lowered for ease of loading equipment etc. To each their own
But this has nothing to do with downforce or racing. Good on you for actually using your truck for work instead of just hauling air.
@@AB0BA_69 yeah I was more remarking on the ride of a stiff suspension. Thanks btw
@@KF1 trucks usually never have a really good ride quality, just for the reason you already mentioned, but they also have a lot of unsprung mass
@@simonm1447 Well put. It was so brutal I had to remove the overload springs. Rear end would squirrel hop if I hit a bump on a curve at speed. Much nicer without the overloads
That’s why you always carry some sort of load in the back. My Ranger is much better at braking in wet weather with just the weight of a camper shell.
You just fixed all my GT tunes with this one, I think I have the oversteer figured out now
Wait you can't have it both ways. Either the springs are stiff because of large downforce or because road cars at road speeds don't create much downforce so the springs are stiff for other reasons such as grip and roll control.
Big difference between stiff and too stiff
this made me think of that one Miata featured on donut media that had a super high wing that's just directly attached to the rear control arms so it doesn't put more load on the suspension.
It's a lot of unsprung weight, but they had to cut costs for 24 hours of lemons
Who said I respected street speeds 😎
Yeah but bumpy road with stiff suspension argument still holds out
@@RCmaniac667 For sure, I was just joking and actually I don't even speed 👁💋👁
Thank you for explaining why you should beware of the wingless STI!
All the more reasons for me to by a ZL1 with the EXTEME 1LE track pack.....lol
Thinking may have changed over the years, but it is common on formuka cars to use soft springs and stiff shocks. Stiff spings cause to much shock to control the unsprung weight resulting in excessive uncontrollable bouncing in high speed corners.
Wouldn't progressive springs help with that problem?
Wow great info! I never truly understood why race cars need stiff suspensions but this makes so much sense.
That and the stiffer the suspension, usually the faster it can rebound after a bump, which means you have more grip/power to the ground
@@zandatsu_cooks also less body roll. Usually you also run higher camber on those type of cars, since cornering performance is more important than tyre wear. For example F1 cars run around -3.5° to -2.5° of camber on the front and -2.0° to -1.0° on the rear wheels, while road cars often run positive camber. For example the Audi A6 runs between 0.25° and 1.25° camber.
@@MartinvanStormOfficialthat is heavily track dependant
Not to mention race cars have solid metal bushings instead of the rubber chassis mounts street cars use. I used solid bushings in a corvette I built as a track car and you could drive over a coin and feel it.
Damn that Viper looks good.
Slippery aero & mild down force
Airplanes : Then why don't you just go inverted like me .
"You'll need stiffer suspension to counteract the downforce" "steet speeds are generally too slow to generate significant downforce" I'm conflicted lol
you still need the stiffer springs, even if you will not reach those speeds regularly. But if you do so, springs will bottom out when they are too soft.
He was talking about Race Cars that ARE generating that Downforce, and that if a Street car had that same Stiff Suspension it would have a negative effect on both Ride AND Handling!
Road cars benefit less from downforce, but it's still something to consider, and that's pretty evident when looking at rally cars
Why would you need stiffer springs on a road car if you are going at speeds that dont give you much downforce?
For faster speeds and outlier cases where the downforce is enough to bottom of the suspension, or even scrape the bottom in some cases
@@Mallchad If they put a Spoiler on a car that doesn't need it they gonna put the rest of the package on too
these cars are more track oriented. but when they get driven like they are supposed to they have to function, so you set it up for this case, which still works on roads but just performs worse in comfort, mechanical grip and such ^^.
you can do a lot to get both done and make both realy viable but you cant make both perfect, one will suffer and as a track toy the normal street will suffer more often then not
So that the capability is there when you do drive at higher speeds, otherwise, why have the downforce features there at all?
Or you could just mount the wing directly to the suspension arms like they did on the eyesore racing Miata and negate the stiff suspension issues.
Unsprung aero!
Don't forget to mention the fact that the stiffer suspension actually means you wear out some of your parts faster as stiffer springs absorbed less Force when you say hit a 5 in deep pothole going 45 down the street
Yay! Thanks for listening to me about making a F1 related video!
Probably not what he had in mind but ok
James May was right about the ride comfort after all when manufacturers release Nürburgring tested cars
Street legal cars have homeopathic downforce, more helping stability than extra grip. And if I had a 2023 GT3 RS, that would not suck.
That's why I love the ABC suspension on my W215. You pretty much get both of the best.
Street speeds = Track Speeds 😇
Also. You don't need to completely eliminate body roll. A little body roll helps press that tire into the ground. Moving the weight where it's needed most. I prefer 50/50 weight distribution due to this fact. No body rolls doesn't really help when my outside tire is where the power is needed
Thank you for using a viper to show this 🙏 great use of vipers time
The stock Spoiler on the back of my Porsche Boxster S used to have a clear and distinguishable advantage, as it was controlled by a button and able to hide or retract at a command. Yes, it was rather preventing a lift, but generously, it made, let’s guess, maybe 50-100 kg difference starting as such a low speed as 70 kph! I can drive a car fast , and I’ll tell you, those 50-100 kg made a huge difference on the handling, on the public roads! Car felt much more stiff (but just enough, with a stock sport suspension), which is exactly what you need from a sports car, even at the public roads. That car was an endless pleasure and my daily driver.
That’s why I’m sure, such a road car as a 911 gt3 (not RS, not gt2) is feeling just great with it’s downforce (which is not so aggressive as of newest gt3 rs with its giant, but reasonable, wing). Also taking into account, that the latter cars’ stock wings are balanced with suspension characteristics and they have soft susp. presets for a city driving.
Fun fact, F1 cars don't have a conventional suspension system with coilovers and whatnot. The "limbs" attached to the wheels and the body of the car are the actual "suspension." I think it has something to do with the vibrations of the car that would cause a lot of issues with conventional suspension springs.
Just apply the down force below the suspension and then the suspension doesn’t have to be stiffer
Or you could directly link the wing to the suspension. Some cars do that and it entirely bypasses the need for super stiff suspension by putting the weight entirely on the wheels
Active suspension helps there
I love a suspension that stiff but not too stiff. I want to feel the roads but also be comfortable.
Plus it creates way more drag, making the car slower and less efficient
Yeah especially living in the city and a bad one at that..the roads make the driving experience horrendous...but man do I love the handling..
This is why I'm surprised the GT3 Touring isn't suspension tuned differently then the winged version. I'm not talking a drastic change but just enough to compensate for the lack of the wing.
That’s why you need active aero!
You can actually mount the aerodynamic features which generate the downforce directly to the suspension in a way which bypasses the springs (or other equivalent mechanisms), but I assume that would also be very impractical for other reasons.
That toto wolff at the end tho 😂u did him dirty
The force is strong with this one.
GM engineers say that my Z/28 spoiler with adjustable height starts making meaningful downforce at 40 MPH. I don’t what sort of figure this is, but I can tell you two things… the rear end grip around corners on back roads is immense at speed, and at the track we gained 3/10ths and 3.7 MPH in the 1/4 by removing it entirely from the trunk lol
Best handling car I’ve ever owned and the ride isn’t all that bad overall.
From Fernando's Hideaway, IT IS MUCH BETTER TO LOOK GOOD THAN TO BE GOOD. But points well taken.
Someone already mentioned progressive rate coils. At normal speeds the aero wouldn't net much of an effect, thus the suspension doesn't need extra damping until beyond that. That, or an active suspension system.
James May has been warning us about this for years.
Still looks sick 🤙
I believe there was a Miata build for some cheap build racing event (I think Donut Media covered it) that had the rear wing basically bypass the suspension. All the downforce would go straight to the wheels while leaving the suspension and car separate.
Sounds pretty smart, i wonder how much weight it added to the car.
Yes, Eyesore Racing's Miata NA.
wow thanks Ive always wondered about these topics as a law abiding max 70 on highways type guy.
If you have stated these facts 10 years ago yeah due to stiff suspension it's really worse but now the options we receive while buying a sports car is crazy
This is why companies like KW , bilstein, .... have street certified dampening kits. These help the roll in turns while being reasonably comfortable, there's a kit for everyone's needs ( didn't say budget 😂) a good kit costs and u will get what u pay for.
For a good one u can count down about 1500€
Everything you said can accurately be simulated in modern racing sims. In Project Cars 2, you can immediately feel the effects of losing a wing at speed 😂. Or Gran Turismo and how some cars will generally be loose at low speed but develop stability at high speeds because of the wing.
That ground effect pun KILLED ME 😂
not in Germany. You want downforce to have enough grip to drive safely at 190 mp/h on the Autobahn. If you dont, corners get really sketchy
God damn that is a beautiful viper
Low profile tyres and big rims also suck on public roads unless they're in high quality, properly made AND well maintained!
I guess that’s where Mag-Ride comes into play.
With great downforce, comes great drag
Great short bud!
Thanks for giving me an interesting short.
It rarely occurs.
Mount the wing etc to a point below the suspension so it's an unsprung mass (yes this has downsides) but now you can get away with soft suspension. So you have best of both worlds, and it works great on the road.
Thank you for sharing this Information about cors and especially down force on road cors
Also they're made to get a bit of lift at higher speeds, by they're natural shape. To decrease roll resistance.
yet my 97 es300 feels glued to the road and glides over bumps and feels great