The reason I ask is that there have been rumours that the BAR's are running up to 100kg underweight in testing. Is that really possible? 100kg's seems like an awful lot...
Obviously it depends on the true weight of the car but wondered if anyone had any knowledge of what sorts of figures the teams are running.
to my knowledge via an F1 supplier (composites), cars can easily achieve 450Kg, but i doubt anyone will confirm or deny how much ballast they actually run.
Considering some of Button's ' stunning'!! lap times, i don't doubt BAR(ge)! are running light at some tests.
Why? well it generates publicity doesn't it, and lets face it F1 is about high speed advertising. The advertisers pay the bills!
Oz
Somebody told me that the R24 is running with about 100 kg of ballast in the barcelona's tests this week, so it means, that this car weights:
600 - 100(ballast) - 75 (driver) = 425 kg!!!.
And obiously the BAR drivers made his lap record with a non-legal weight... Another fact wich demonstartes it, is that David Richars was trying to keep a parter in japan this week.... so he needs to convince this parter with a "winning" car.
Excuse me, but people here are saying too much bullshit.
Cars must weight 600 kg WITHOUT THE DRIVER. Please do not consider everything said relating ballast with driver weight´s because they don´t have nothing to do.
For example in another topic in the forum, the guy said that the cars of Button and Sato had differences because Sato is lighter. Of course he is, but the cars must weight 600 kg without de driver.
"I only race to finisht first, because the second is the first looser" Ayrton Senna
In addition to scrutineering, cars are also weighed throughout the Grand Prix weekend to ensure that they comply with minimum weight requirements (currently 600kg including driver, except during qualifying when it is 605kg). During practice and qualifying cars are called in at random to be weighed. After the race every car and driver is weighed.
How can the qualy car must be 5 kgs heavier than the race car if the teams are not allowed to change anything between both?
And how Rubens Barrichello has spent his whole life complainning that he was 10 kg heavier than his teammates and that would loose him abou t 0.1-0.2 secs/lap?
"I only race to finisht first, because the second is the first looser" Ayrton Senna
About 100 kg, as others said is a figure often referred to as the amount of ballast adopted by top teams. I’ve also read from a couple of different sources that on F2004, about 15 kg are in positions where are easily movable in the pit to adjust the setup of the car.
A problem that raised last year was the possibility that some teams were using fuel as ballast to run under the 600 kg close to the end of each stint. Some also affirmed that Renault last refuelling was usually a bit longer than the first also when the last stint was shorter, and that would have explained the stunning pace in qualifying even with the same fuel load, hence theoretically the same weight of other teams. Geoff Willis was amongst the most active in asking FIA controls. Then FIA announced that they where making random verifications of the car’s weight without fuel on board, this happened at Canada GP IIRC, but rumours of fuel used as ballast persisted for the whole season.
Rodlamas :
The minimum weight includes the driver since 1995. In ’94 it was 505 + driver, (515 kg since Canada GP to encourage teams to adopt safety protections for drivers) and then in 1995, 595 kg including driver.
Obviously lighter drivers still have a small advantage connected with the ballast position, but it’s minimal. The fact that Barrichello spent his whole life complaining about his weight is something new to me, I’ve heard him complaining about lot of things but never about the weight, furthermore, AFAIK, RB and MS are both about 75 kg so the difference must be somewhere else...
About the 605 kg in qualifying, I don’t remember if it was there also before the introduction of the parc fermé rule, anyway to me there are many rules lot more stupid than this one. After all to require at least 5 kg of fuel at the start isn’t stupid, no one would like to have a car without fuel on the grid...
Most of the teams admit to running about 80Kgs, many of them now say they are running heavier component slow down on the car, i.e. sump plates lower half of the monocoque etc. I have the lumps of ballast on the cars and can easily beleive the figure could be higher. I saw the BAR last week, durign the driver change they dropped the floor and exposed the huge slab of "main" ballast, this was placed in the step area approximately under the drivers thighs. The floor also had two sections of ballast in splitter section, two mechaincs held it while the other mechanic finished the pedal change, they were straining forcing the pedal guy to apologise....! I also saw the triangluar lump of ballast to correct Satos weight (About the size of a flat iron), I guess Sato is a fair bit lighter than button judging by its size.
Scarbs, I’ve heard many different opinions about the materials used for ballast, do you know some details ?
According to my data Sato is about 60 kg and Button a bit more than 70 (72), assuming the ballast is made in tungsten (about 19 kg/dm3) the volume of the required ballast would be a little more than 0.6 dm3, a triangle 3 cm thick would have an area of about 2 dm2, say base and height both about 20 cm. Does it sound about right to you ?
Anyway the impressive detail is that, if my data are correct, Sato is carrying about 1/6 of the Button’s weight as ballast close to the reference plane... probably the difference isn’t minimal as I’ve said in my previous post.
100kg ballast looks to me an achievable amount - according to an article I have seen quite a while ago in Autosprint the sum of all components of a modern F1 car is in the range of 370 to 390 kg.
Scrolling on different F1 web sides I could find some more details, but my component list (weight) isn’t perfect - so I am looking for some hints to improve it
barichello may complain because the 10kg can be optimally placed at the bottom or wherever, when his weigh shall be higher up, thus raising the central point of gravity. so stick it.
