modbaraban wrote:…and trying to lessen that issue Ferrari probably tried to move the ballast closer to the center which caused them to understeer as a result, right?
An F1 car has a the engine on the rear, so, if you assume most of the ballast is there to counteract that heavy rear, yes.
Understeering is a little bit more complicated. First, some "Ackerman" explanation, for the sake of it:
Here you have a car in a neutral turning, no oversteer nor understeer. Notice that
for the four "axes" (in blue) of the wheels to intersect at one point, the front tyres have to point in slightly different directions (they are not parallel). This divergence is the Ackerman steering. It was invented back when people used carriages.
Now, when a car is understeering, the geometry is different. If you point the wheels in the same direction, the car rotates around a different point (the point marked with an U).
The slip angle of the front wheels is the angle between the blue and green lines. The tyres are not pointing exactly "into" the curve, they have to slip to take the curve. What you feel is that the front of the car "slips away" from the curve. You expected the car to turn around point N, but it's turning around point U.
To take the curve with the same radius of the previous image, you have to turn the steering wheel more.
As Modbaraban points out (sort of), this happens when there is not enough weight on the front tyres. Notice that it depends on the ratio of front to rear weight. If the front tyres are light, they cannot provide you with the same friction force as the rear tyres. Thus, on a front-driven car, with a frontal engine, you wish ballast on the rear; the opposite of a car with a rear engine.
Now, on a car with oversteer, the rear wheels are light and they slide before the frontal ones. Here is the image:
Notice that the car turns aroun the point O. This means that the car rotates faster than it did on the first image: the radius is less. Notice also that the front right tyre has developed slippage: the car cannot turn around two different points, the four "axes" have to coincide at point O.
Finally, on a power slide, here is the image:
The rear wheels have extreme slip angles, the front wheels have slip angles opposite of their real direction (countersteering).
Finally, here is an image of the force vs the slip angle: as you can see, with a little slip angle you develop maximum force (the peak of the curve). If you continue to "slip" the tyres, the force diminishes. As Jersey Tom explains, the shape of this curve depends on the tyre properties.
It's the same when you slip on your shoes: up to some force, you have maximum support for your feet. If you go over that force, well... you slip.
) we're all wrong.
Kimi has some jinx there, let me tell you. There is another thing: as Alonso's diminishing advantage (from 9 to 3 seconds) proves, any missed overtaking opportunity weights a lot.