Remove Power Steering from the Cars??

[Giblet]

I like manual boxes, and a clutch, but just changing from power steering to regular, is an arbitrary thing to do.

[Jersey Tom]

The main reason I think this could be a good idea would be that it would really make it difficult for the drivers, especially to last the whole race.

And why exactly would that be good?

It would also make engineers think about suspension geometry and making the car easier to drive.

Maybe. Maybe not. There are some things outside of the tunability of geometry.. ie longitudinal belt package deformation.

I'm just not seeing what the point of this would be. Just tests drivers' arm strength, not skill.

Agree with Giblet on this one.. seems like an arbitrary decision, not really driven by a need.

[sebbe]

I'm all for it. Add to that foot operated mechanical clutch and manual mechanical gearbox.

I keep repeating that as the cure for the sport, for years and years, but no one listens. As long as the cars are electronically controlled like PlayStation console, there'd be no overtaking and true showing of driver's skills.

Yea baby! Let's go back to the good old days of F1.

JM Fangio continues to be THE DRIVER.

Let's see if nowadays sissies can win 5 WDC...

It might ruin any future prospects for female drivers.

We don't need those on a F1 track

[RacingManiac]

If you take the downforce and fat-tires out of the equation too, maybe. F1 cars with a super tiny cockpit with small steering wheel with little leverage cornering at 3-4G will need some insane amount of force to operate the wheel. Even at the lower speed corner at 1-2 G with large input it'll still be tough.

[Roger the knife]

The need for power steering is caused by the exaggerated steering geometries teams run theses days, lots of castor and trail. In the old days of Group C cars, no one had power steering, the cars had prodigious amounts of downforce, really big tyres, they were enclosed, and raced for 1000K. If they took power steering off, they'd soon work out how to get round it. I say get rid of it.

[RacingManiac]

They can do it does not mean its practical(or easy to do without it), and you still have a lot more room than a single seater cockpit. What's achieved by removing it? So we have more passing at the end of the race when the driver can't make a corner? Why do they bothered then with adding AC to closed top sportscar when you can just let the driver sweat it out and dehydrate them?

[mike_dangerous]

Does anyone remember a few years ago when Justin Wilson drove his Minardi for much of the Malaysian Grand Prix without power steering. He eventually had to give up and missed the next race because he did his shoulder in. Maybe its not such a good idea...

[horse]

Fairuz Fauzy was getting around OK in the Lotus in the wet when it had no PS. So why not just take it out and put sprinklers on the track at the same time? Every race a wet race with no power steering. It would certainly be fun. Not sure if it would be F1, though.

[mike_dangerous]

Wilson lasted 41 laps of Sepang out of 56 and retired because of the physical stress, and being 6'4" he must be fairly strong. It was 2003...

[manchild]

Does anyone remember a few years ago when Justin Wilson drove his Minardi for much of the Malaysian Grand Prix without power steering. He eventually had to give up and missed the next race because he did his shoulder in. Maybe its not such a good idea...

Car with broken power steering requires much more strength than car with no power steering. That's just not a reference.

[mike_dangerous]

Ah, good point, didn't think of that...

[noname]

You can't test driver's skill on a car that has steering wheel with 28 knobs and switches, computer controlled gearbox change/clutch/throttle sequence, differential slip, aided steering etc.

even 100s of knobs and switches will not remove the need to have enormous feel of the car - level of grip, distance when to start braking, when to stop, amount of throttle to apply, ability to manage the tires, etc.

using all this electronic "gizmos" may not be as demanding physically as operating gear stick and kicking the clutch pedal, but it is not as simple as one who knows F1 cars from the playstation's games may think.

if it was so simple there would be much more drivers capable of driving those bolids really fast and not so much interest in motorsports.

[RacingManiac]

Does anyone remember a few years ago when Justin Wilson drove his Minardi for much of the Malaysian Grand Prix without power steering. He eventually had to give up and missed the next race because he did his shoulder in. Maybe its not such a good idea...

Car with broken power steering requires much more strength than car with no power steering. That's just not a reference.

Electric one is worse I think compare to hydraulic.

[Belatti]

In TC, there is no power steering. The president of the ACTC said: "this series is for machos".

There, the drivers with advantage are the ones with real strong arms, cause large camber angles are good for several tracks. Average drivers cant handle more than 6 or 7 degrees. Guillermo Ortelli, that would be the "Schumy" of TC, can use up to 9 or 10 degrees of camber, depending on the track.

TC Races endure 45 min though.

[Edis]

Why don't throw out the engine and give them pedals instead too?

No serious, this is plainly stupid. There are no reason to remove the power steering, and it would also be impossible for a driver to handle the length of a grand prix without power steering. Today the powersteering can be disconnected in case of a failure, but if it fails, it usually means that the driver is forced to retire anyway. And in rally for instance, if the power steering fails, they tend to be driving so slow that they are out of the competition anyway, unless they can get if fixed very soon.

Racing is also about driver skill, not about who has the most physical strength.

By the way, mechanical gearchanges and clutch operation wouldn't change much. There would be wires to the paddles and the hand operated clutch instead of electrical wires, but that's about it. You can't get the genie back into the bottle...