Quote:
Originally Posted by Sodemo
But surely in tarmac spec a WRC car only has, what about 3-5cm of effective suspension travel?
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In the early 90's maybe, nowadays they have outrageous amounts of travel even on tarmac specification:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uijwob-DpoU
Petter Solberg described the Rally1 cars as like riding along in a sofa! As you can see even in tarmac 18" specification, they are very soft and glide over the road.
Look at that full droop! Rally1 cars sure are a lot of fun, it's a shame the WRC is quite niche nowadays.
https://youtu.be/uijwob-DpoU?si=G9nKibEm4Gz-ICTm&t=432
It looks like they have at least 150mm (6") of travel, if not a little more. They are much softer than most sporty road cars like a Ferrari 488 or Porsche 911 GT3 or something, the very long front and rear strut suspension allows for a lot of travel, of course.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greem
Personally I don't think bringing the WRC in any spec is relevant.
Mainly because the concept of "grip" at that level of rallying is about 1 millionth that of F1 cars. WRC cars don't have measurable grip, they just have velocity and direction!
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They have a darn sight more grip than a F1 car on such a muddy undulating tarmac special stage at least!
The point was just that because you have a stiff 18" tyre, doesn't mean you can't have soft suspension to compensate. The total wheel rate is the sum total of the tyre's contribution and suspension's contribution after all.
They run 15" tyres on gravel and snow, obviously gravel and snow tyres are narrow and have a tall sidewall so the tyre can try to conform as best as it can to the very uneven and soft road surface.
If 15" tyres high profile tyres also generated more grip or increased performance on tarmac (as seems to be implied in this thread), if Pirelli supplied them with the appropriate compound and width, then WRC teams would run them on tarmac, but they do not as they do not.
