Of slip and grip
‘The four footprints of your tyres are the only thing that lie between you and St. Peter’
– Mark Donohue.
As far as I am concerned, if you want to know what vehicle dynamics is all about for racing purposes, the above sentence nails it. Mark Donohue was one of the most astute students of the game, who regretfully left the party way too early.
Last month, in part one of this series, in order to understand what Mark was getting at in this sentence we had to understand tyre loads, where they came from and what generates motion in the chassis. We did that by studying the quarter car and beam pogo stick models. Now we understand this, we can bring in some simple tyre models to know what to focus on in vehicle performance. That is what we will be looking at this month.
But first, I need to get a pet peeve off my chest. If I can put my finger on one of the many areas where vehicle dynamics go applies to everything.
