Ballast Idea For The Minimum Weight Rule

[gcdugas]

As a purist I abhor the idea of ballast being used to balance the car's behavior. Either design it balanced or suffer with the ill effects of a poor design. No more of this fudging with artificial balancing using weights. And then there is the principle of driver weight inequality.

I would like to propose an idea concerning the minimum weight rule for the cars. I think they should take a weight of the heaviest driver, say 75 Kg for Kubica, and stipulate that all drivers under that weight should have to carry a ballast of the difference between their body weight and that of the heaviest driver (say 75 Kg - 60 Kg = 15 Kg ballast for Nick Heidfeld while 75 Kg - 68 Kg = 7 Kg ballast for Lewis Hamilton). Furthermore the placement of that ballast must be securely placed in two locations immediately to the right and left of the driver's lowest rib shaped like a thin steak thus approximating the same CG location for all drivers and negating any advantage of placing the ballast "optimally". Then let the engineers design their cars to be balanced and as light as they can while still meeting the safety load and crash specs. This way you have a pure engineering challenge and an equality of the human element for drivers. Plus there is no unhealthy motivation for the drivers be dangerously underweight physically as is the current trend.

Personally I find it an abomination for a car to be carrying 70+ Kg of ballast as is the current state of affairs. Balance the cars by design, make them light as you can, equalize the driver's weights and go racing.

This seems so obviously fair and equitable that I wouldn't be surprised that it hasn't been proposed before. Any thoughts?

[joseff]

Assuming Heidfeld carries his 15kg cockpit ballast, his team will still have 50 or so kg (even more next year) to play around with. And everyone will try and as much weight as possible in the preseason, and lose weight after the official weigh-in in an attempt to have more chassis (out-of-cockpit) ballast.

The min weight rule is the raison d'etre of ballast, not car balance. Get rid of that, while maintaining (or raising) crash test standards, and cars will lose ballast.

[gcdugas]

Assuming Heidfeld carries his 15kg cockpit ballast, his team will still have 50 or so kg (even more next year) to play around with. And everyone will try and as much weight as possible in the preseason, and lose weight after the official weigh-in in an attempt to have more chassis (out-of-cockpit) ballast.

The min weight rule is the raison d'etre of ballast, not car balance. Get rid of that, while maintaining (or raising) crash test standards, and cars will lose ballast.

My proposition does away with the minimum car weight rule. "make them as light as you can" Read it again.

[Dukeage]

Driver weight equalization ballast would be a good idea, but reducing the minimum weight would not be cost effective and more importantly would increase cornering speeds.

I'd propose a minimum weight for driver + seat - in addition, there should be a maximum amount of movable ballast, or a specified weight distribution. This would negate the disadvantages of KERS.

[Giblet]

They should just pick a weight, like 200 pounds, and mandate everyone to eat cake.

Short drivers have to wear platforms.

[Dukeage]

As humourous as that last suggestion is, Formula SAE requires a larger than average (90th percentile?) dummy to fit in the cockpit - why not have that for F1?

[tomislavp4]

Well, I rhink it´s a very good idea, better than anything we got now. But as someone said, it would increase the cornering speeds, something that FIA is against obviously

[gcdugas]

Driver weight equalization ballast would be a good idea, but reducing the minimum weight would not be cost effective and more importantly would increase cornering speeds.

I'd propose a minimum weight for driver + seat - in addition, there should be a maximum amount of movable ballast, or a specified weight distribution. This would negate the disadvantages of KERS.

They already expend great sums to make the cars as light as possible. The cost is therefore the same. Then they use the ballast to artificially balance the cars. It is like a well written computer program vs. bloatware. So what you have 2 gig RAM, look how much of a turd IE is vs. Firefox, Opera etc. "Resource hog" is not a term I equate with engineering excellence. F1 is about cunning engineering, not mediocre engineering + some fudge factor thrown in.

Taking movable ballast away (and equalizing the driver mass and CG) would force the cars to be designed with a better natural balance. If cornering speeds get too high they can simply take away some aero. The extra fuel saved by pushing around a lighter car and the brake wear saved would make for better racing as the time spent on partial throttle (where the skill is) would increase. Also the tanks would need to hold less fuel for a comparable length stint.

Right now if you have 75Kg ballast on a 605 Kg car, that is 16% of fuel and brake wear (read: retardation energy) being wasted. How green is that?

[Saribro]

I'd propose a minimum weight for driver + seat

This I like, straightforward and hard to circumvent (as I believe the seat needs to be removable for driver-protection (when removing from crashed car) reasons, so they can't fudge their definition of seat to include the entire monocoque or whatever).
Very nice.

[ISLAMATRON]

gcdugas... have you taken into consideration that different tracks require different balance levels, as well as different driving styles, as well as different tires(from super soft to hard)

some movable balllast is a good idea, no matter how much of a purist you are.

50kg may be excessive but some moveable ballast should exist.

[PlatinumZealot]

If the ballast could sweat maybe it would be fair to use ballast to bring up a drivers weight.
The heavier driver would have an advantage for sweating of more weight, when the lighter driver will sweat less and still have his dead ballast.

[Dukeage]

They already expend great sums to make the cars as light as possible. The cost is therefore the same. Then they use the ballast to artificially balance the cars. It is like a well written computer program vs. bloatware. So what you have 2 gig RAM, look how much of a turd IE is vs. Firefox, Opera etc. "Resource hog" is not a term I equate with engineering excellence. F1 is about cunning engineering, not mediocre engineering + some fudge factor thrown in.

Taking movable ballast away (and equalizing the driver mass and CG) would force the cars to be designed with a better natural balance. If cornering speeds get too high they can simply take away some aero. The extra fuel saved by pushing around a lighter car and the brake wear saved would make for better racing as the time spent on partial throttle (where the skill is) would increase. Also the tanks would need to hold less fuel for a comparable length stint.

Right now if you have 75Kg ballast on a 605 Kg car, that is 16% of fuel and brake wear (read: retardation energy) being wasted. How green is that?

Bear in mind that F1 is not soley about "green". Green technologies should be applicable to road cars, and should also bear in mind that F1 is a sporting event. It's not just watched by the sort of people that read this forum. Most people that watch F1 aren't too interested in the technical elements, they want to see wheel to wheel racing with large numbers of cars and a well managed event. That means cost control.

Cost isn't so much of an issue for manufacturers, who want green technology, road relevancy (justification to the board, as well as being able to relate F1 machinery to their road cars for customers) and a well organized event for maximum publicity. The first two don't really apply to customer teams.

A non-existant minimum weight would see corners being cut safety wise, as well as cost increases. However, the current materials are not road relevant. We don't have mass production road cars now with tonnes of carbon fibre. We won't see them in the short term at least. If F1 were to, like Formula 3, require metallic materials for suspension, you would arguably have more road relevant technology (after all, surely at least 80% of cars cost less than the cost of one F1 corner these days), and there wouldn't be so much CF. If the aerodynamic bodywork parts (obviously not the crash structures) were made of GRP, would there be genuine crash safety implications? It would be considerably cheaper to build.

[Jersey Tom]

As a purist I abhor the idea of ballast being used to balance the car's behavior. Either design it balanced or suffer with the ill effects of a poor design. No more of this fudging with artificial balancing using weights. And then there is the principle of driver weight inequality.

I would like to propose an idea concerning the minimum weight rule for the cars. I think they should take a weight of the heaviest driver, say 75 Kg for Kubica, and stipulate that all drivers under that weight should have to carry a ballast of the difference between their body weight and that of the heaviest driver (say 75 Kg - 60 Kg = 15 Kg ballast for Nick Heidfeld while 75 Kg - 68 Kg = 7 Kg ballast for Lewis Hamilton). Furthermore the placement of that ballast must be securely placed in two locations immediately to the right and left of the driver's lowest rib shaped like a thin steak thus approximating the same CG location for all drivers and negating any advantage of placing the ballast "optimally". Then let the engineers design their cars to be balanced and as light as they can while still meeting the safety load and crash specs. This way you have a pure engineering challenge and an equality of the human element for drivers. Plus there is no unhealthy motivation for the drivers be dangerously underweight physically as is the current trend.

Personally I find it an abomination for a car to be carrying 70+ Kg of ballast as is the current state of affairs. Balance the cars by design, make them light as you can, equalize the driver's weights and go racing.

This seems so obviously fair and equitable that I wouldn't be surprised that it hasn't been proposed before. Any thoughts?

Don't know if I'd call that a "purist" idea as much as just... ridiculous.

[Scotracer]

I fail to see why using ballast as a way to affect ballast as non-purist. It's a fundamental in race car design; in our last FSAE design we had moveable structures to adjust to differing drivers...

[Michiba]

I don't see how adjust weight distribution using ballast is any different to adjusting angles of the wings for more/less downforce.