Dick;
Downforce comes at the expense of increased drag, a bad tradeoff in LSR but
in the old Can- Am series downforce was necessary to get good handling in
the corners. Weight was a penalty, reducing the acceleration out of the
corners. Those cars had lots of horsepower and the top speeds at most tracks
were not real high so the extra drag was not as important as the downforce
created by the rear wing and the front body shape. They were open cockpit
cars so they already had rather high drag, even without the rear wing.
Regards, Neil Tucson, AZ
-----Original Message-----
From: land-speed-bounces@autox.team.net
[mailto:land-speed-bounces@autox.team.net] On Behalf Of Dick J
Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2007 12:30 PM
To: lsr list autox
Subject: [Land-speed] Downforce vs Ballast Question
Which is better? It would seem that if you add, say 500 pounds of ballast,
it's a simple addition. If you add a spoiler designed to add 500 pounds of
downforce, then you are adding the effective weight, plus additional drag.
No?
DickJ
In East Texas
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