2015 IEEE 54th Annual Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)
December 15-18, 2015. Osaka, Japan
Heave Spring and Ride Height Optimisation of a Formula One Car
Suspension System
Mehdi Imani Masouleh and David J. N. Limebeer
Abstract— The suspension of a Formula One racing car is
modelled using kinematic analysis. A set of non-linear equations
are derived and then solved and fitted to a multivariate
polynomial. This meta-model maps the normal tyre forces and
heave spring stiffness to the roll and ride heights of the car.
Numerical optimal control is used to calculate the minimum
lap time trajectory for a vehicle model which includes the
suspension system characteristics. A parametric study is then
conducted to determine the optimum suspension set-up.
I. INTRODUCTION
With increasing computational power and the introduc-
tion of better numerical methods to tackle optimal control
problems, minimum lap time trajectory calculations have
become more important to racing teams. In some races even a
millisecond a lap can mean a different finishing grid position
and hence the racing teams try to optimise every aspect of
the car to suit the circuit as best as possible.
Lap time analysis has traditionally been conducted using
quasi-steady state methods [1]. Although these have proven
to be a very useful tool in lap time analysis, they all have
an inherent limitation; they assume the lap can be broken
into a series of steady state manoeuvres. This makes them
unsuitable for studying vehicle transient behaviour. Another
pitfall of such methods is that the racing line is typically
required a priori. In order to alleviate these issues an optimal
control formulation can be used.
There are two general methods of solving optimal control
problems numerically, direct and indirect methods. Indirect
methods involve deriving the conditions of optimality [2] and
solving the consequent two point boundary value problem
(TPBVP). This approach was taken by [3] where manoeu-
vrability of motorcycles was studied and in [4] where the
minimum lap time problem was solved for a motorcycle on
Ardia circuit. A downside of indirect methods is the need to
symbolically derive the necessary conditions of optimality.
Direct methods aim to discretise the problem and then
optimise [5] as opposed to indirect methods where optimality
conditions are first derived and then solved by discretisation.
Direct methods involve approximating the infinite dimen-
sional problem into a finite dimensional problem and then
applying Non-linear programming (NLP) techniques to solve
the optimal control problem. Such methods are typically
divided into two general categories, shooting and collocation.
This work was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council.
Mehdi Imani Masouleh (mehdi.imanimasouleh@eng.ox.ac.uk) and
David J. N. Limebeer (david.limebeer@eng.ox.ac.uk) are with the Depart-
ment of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford,
OX1 3PJ.
978-1-4799-7886-1/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
A direct multiple shooting method [6] was used in [7]
to solve the minimum lap time problem for a race car. The
runtime for a full lap of Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona on
a Sun Spark station with six CPUs running at 336 MHz was
approximately 28 hours for the case which converged and 60
hours for cases which did not satisfy the tolerances within
maximum major iterations limit of 200.
A direct collocation method based on the trapezoidal
rule was used to calculate the minimum lap-time for the
Barcelona circuit in [8]. The full lap simulation was solved
in 15 minutes on a quad-core 3.4 GHz desktop station. In
a later paper [9], the minimum lap time strategies for cars
with energy recovery systems were studied. The optimal
control problem was solved using a variable-order adaptive
[10] pseudospectral method.
Suspensions allow the car to heave, pitch and roll relative
to the road. They play a crucial role in the performance
of Formula One cars where aerodynamic characteristics are
sensitive to attitude and height of the chassis. Five link
suspension quarter car models for road vehicles have been
considered in the literature [11]–[13]. In what follows we
will develop a quasi-static suspension model for a racing car
with a double wishbone suspension. Such a model differs to
that of road vehicles in that it employs heave springs and
rockers which couple the left and right wheels.
Including the full dynamics of the suspension in the car
model will result in impractical solution times, as fine meshes
will be required to capture the fast dynamics of the stiff
suspension. Furthermore, this approach will increase the
number of states which in turn will considerably inflate the
number of decision variables in the NLP problem. Therefore,
a quasi static model of the suspension will be considered
and a meta-model will be used to act as a surrogate for
the full kinematic model. This meta-model is then used to
determine the aerodynamic forces acting on the vehicle. A
full lap of Barcelona is then simulated using a pseudospectral
collocation method and a set of parameter optimisation
studies are carried out to find the suspension set-ups which
result in optimal lap times.
This article is structured as follows: In Section II a kine-
matic suspension model is developed from first principles.
Multivariate polynomials are then used to capture the main
behaviour of the suspension for fast calculations. Section III
discusses the vehicle model which is used in the optimal
control problem. The way in which the optimal control
problem is solved is covered in Section IV. The results of
minimum lap time simulations are then presented in Section
V with the conclusion in Section VI.
165
 II. S USPENSION
A typical Formula One car consists of a double wishbone
suspension mechanism with eight wishbones in total (two
on each quarter). Fig. 1 illustrates the front left quarter of
such a suspension system, in a push rod configuration. In
the following analysis we will make use of two coordinate
systems, OC xyz and OW xyz that are fixed in the car body
and the wheel carrier respectively. Throughout this paper the
SAE coordinate system will be used in which the x-axis
points forwards, the y-axis points to the right and the z-
axis points downwards as shown in Fig. 1. The direction of
rotations around each axis is determined using the right hand
rule.
Rods 1-4 make up the wishbones, Rod 5 the steering
track rod and Rod 6 the suspension push rod. Wishbone
elements have one end fixed on the car body, we will refer
to these points as P1 , . . . , P4 . The other ends are fixed in
the wheel carrier, referred to as Q1 , . . . , Q4 . The steering
track rod links the wheel carrier at Q5 to the steering rack
at P5 . The steering rack is linked to the steering wheel by
a pinion which converts the steering wheel rotations into
relative lateral movements of the rack. In this analysis, we
will assume that the steering wheel rotation has a relatively
small effect on suspension movement and hence treat P5 as
a static point on the car body.
The push rod transfers the tyre loads to the heave spring
and the shock absorber, which are both packaged inside the
nose of the car. The push rod links the wheel carrier at Q6
to the rocker mounting point at P6 , which is a moving point
in the car body reference frame (refer to Fig. 2, shown as
P6L for the left rocker). All rods are considered to be rigid,
inextensible and massless links with lengths l1 to l6 . Ideal
spherical joints are used to connect the rod ends to their
RL3 dˆ3
l3
Q3,4
l4
RL4 dˆ4
x Q5
l5
RL5 dˆ5
Ow y RL6 dˆ6
z
l6 l1 RL1 dˆ1
Q1,2 RL2 dˆ2
l2
Q6
respective mounting points.
Points P1 to P5 are fixed in car chassis and Q1 to Q6
are fixed in the wheel carrier. Point P6 is a moving point
in the car body frame. The wheel carrier has a total of six
degrees freedom to begin with, however its movements are
constrained with the presence of the six links. Since only
P6 is free to move in the car body, each wheel carrier will
only have one degree of freedom which can be seen as the
rotation angle of its corresponding rocker.
Since the distance between rod ends are fixed, these
kinematic constraints can be written as
kPi − Qi k22 = li2 i = 1, · · · , 6 (1)
in which the lengths li are constant and Pi ’s and Qi ’s are
both described in car body reference frame. The wheel carrier
reference frame has a translational freedom with respect to
the car body frame given by
 T
D= ∆x ∆y ∆z . (2)
It also has rotational degrees of freedom relative to the
chassis frame which can be described in terms of the
elementary rotations Rx (φ), Ry (θ) and Rz (ψ) such that the
total rotation is
RT (ψ, φ, θ) = Rz (ψ)Rx (φ)Ry (θ) =
 
cψ cθ − sψ sφ sθ −sψ cφ cψ sθ + sψ sφ cθ
sψ cθ + cψ sφ sθ cψ cφ sψ sθ − cψ sφ cθ  (3)
−cφ sθ sφ cφ cθ
in which sφ and cφ are the sine and cosine, respectively, of
φ. The same notation is used for θ and ψ. Therefore a point
xwi that is fixed in wheel carrier frame can be described in
car body coordinates by using
xci = RT (ψ, φ, θ)xwi + D (4)
Fig. 2 shows the rocker assembly. The rocker pivot is
mounted on a torsion bar at PRP (L and R subscripts denote
left and right hand sides respectively) and rotates around the
axis nR . One end of the rocker is connected to the push rod
at P6 and the other to the heave spring at PH . Besides the
coupling which is caused by the heave spring between left
and right rockers, an anti-roll bar is used to oppose excessive
roll. Heave spring stiffness is represented by Kh and the
x
Kh

QGC Oc y
PHL PHR
z
MTL
FTL Ktl Ktr
P6L P6R
PRPR
Fig. 1: Front-left quarter of a typical Formula One car sus- PRPL
pension in a push rod configuration. The OC xyz coordinate FPL FPR
system is fixed in the car body, while OW xyz is fixed in the
wheel carrier with its origin at the wheel’s geometric centre. Fig. 2: Push-rod and rocker set-up. The heave spring has
The reaction force magnitudes are given by RLi with their stiffness Kh . Right and left hand quantities are labelled with
directions given by dˆi for i = 1, . . . , 6. subscripts R and L respectively.

166
torsion bar stiffness by Kt .
The mounting points on the rocker move as it rotates
around rotation axis nR . To describe movements of these
points in terms of rocker rotation angle α and rotation axis
nR we define the rotation matrix R = R(nR , α):
R(nR , α) = cos(α)I + (1 − cos(α))nR nTR + sin(α)S(nR )
(5)
in which the skew-symmetric matrix S(nR ) is defined by
 
0 −nz ny
S(nR ) =  nz 0 −nx  . (6)
−ny nx 0 centre of the wheel and d1GC points from Q1 to the ground
Balancing moments around the pin joint PRP L gives
(FP L (R(nRL , αL )(P6L − PRP L )) × dˆ6 ).nRL
+ (Fheave (R(nRL , αL )(PHL − PRP L )) × dˆhs ).nRL (7)
− Ktl αL − Karb (αL + αR ) = 0
in which FP L is the left push rod force, nRL is the left
rocker pivot rotation axis, dˆ6 is the unit vector aligned with
the push rod, dˆhs is the unit vector aligned with the heave
spring, Fheave is the heave spring force, Karb is the anti-
roll bar stiffness, ‘.’ designates the scalar product and × the
cross product.
Formula One cars typically employ heave springs stiff-
nesses which are non-linear functions of variations in spring
length. The heave spring force Fheave can therefore be
expressed as
Fheave = kh (∆L)∆L (8)
in which ∆L = |PHR − PHL | − L0 with L0 being the
unloaded length.
The next step is to carry out the force analysis on the
assembly. With the aid of Fig. 1 the force equilibrium
equation can be written as
FT L + FLg + RL1 dˆ1 + RL2 dˆ2 + RL3 dˆ3
+ RL4 dˆ4 + RL5 dˆ5 + FP L dˆ6 = 0 (9)
in which FT L is the external tyre force applied at the
ground contact point and FLg is the force exerted on the
centre of wheel carrier due to earth’s gravity and is given by
 T
FLg = 0 0 mL g . (10)
If the chassis roll and pitch are not negligible, the tyre
force FT L and the gravitational force FLg will have to
transformed from inertial frame to car body frame. Here,
we can assume the two coordinates are aligned so FT L
and FLg can be assumed to be in car body frame. RLi is
the magnitude of the reaction force which acts at Qi in dˆi
direction and FP L is the magnitude of push rod force in dˆ6
direction acting on the rocker mounting point. This vector
equation provides three more scalar equations in terms of
left hand reaction force magnitudes.
Equations (9) contains six unknown force magnitudes but
only provides three scalar equations. In order to resolve the
167
total set of unknown forces, three more equations are re-
quired which can be obtained by balancing moments around
Q1 . For the left hand wheel this results in
MT L + d1GC × FT L + d1W × FLg + RL2 (dˆ2 × d12 )
+ RL3 (dˆ3 × d13 ) + RL4 (dˆ4 × d14 ) (11)
+ RL5 (dˆ5 × d15 ) + RL6 (dˆ6 × d16 ) = 0.
In (11) MT L is the external torque acting on the tyre. The
d1i represents the displacement vector pointing from Q1 to
Qi . d1W is the vector pointing from Q1 to the geometric
contact point.
In order to calculate d1GC the geometry of the ground
contact point needs to first be considered. If we let êw to be
the wheel spindle axis in wheel carrier frame then we can
define êcw to be the spindle axis in car body frame given by
êcw = Rz (ψ)Rx (φ)Ry (θ)êw (12)
Provided that the chassis pitch and roll relative to the road
is ‘small’, then unit road-normal expressed in the chassis
frame can be approximated by n̂z = [0 0 1]T . With this
assumption, the vector pointing from the wheel centre to the
ground contact point expressed in the car body frame can be
written as
êcw × (êcw × n̂z )
rw = − Rf w (FT L ) (13)
kêcw × (êcw × n̂z )k2
and finally d1GC can be expressed as
d1GC = rw + d1W . (14)
Since Formula One car suspensions are very stiff, the tyre
squash can have a sizeable impact on the movements of the
chassis. Using a polynomial fitted to experimental data, the
loaded tyre radius for the front wheels is given by
Rf w = 326.0 + 4.00 × 10−3 FT L + 4.075 × 10−8 FT2 L (15)
in which FT L is the normal tyre load expressed in Newtons
and unit of Rf w is in millimetres.
To summarise the suspension analysis, the equations (1)
constitute the kinematic displacements of the links and de-
termine the rotation and displacement of the wheel carriers.
Equation (7) determine the rocker angle. The six equations
defined in (9) and (11) allow the reaction forces in the
links to be calculated. Therefore, there are thirteen non-linear
equations on each side and in total twenty six equations
which need to be solved simultaneously (since the equations
are not independent) for each axle in response to the exerted
tyre force and torque. To this end, a Newton based nonlinear
equation solver such as fsolve implemented in MATLABTM
can be used to determine the twenty six unknown variables.
The result of solving these equations for the case where
the right tyre is unloaded and the left tyre has only a vertical
force applied is shown in Fig. 3. One can see as the load
on the left tyre increases, the left wheel cambers and toes
towards the car and also goes up in negative z direction.
 −4
x 10
2.64 10 10
20
Kh=500 kN/m
9 5
2.62 15 K =750 kN/m
Kh=500 kN/m h

Tyre Vertical Displacement (mm)

8 Kh=1000 kN/m
0 10
2.6 K =1250 kN/m
h
Camber Angle (deg)

7
5

Toe Angle (deg)

−5 Kh=1500 kN/m

Ride Height (mm)

2.58 6
0 Kh=1500 kN/m
−10
2.56 5
−5
−15
4
−10
2.54
−20
3
−15
2.52 −25
2
−20

2.5 1 −30
−15 −10 −5 0 −15 −10 −5 0 −15 −10 −5 0 −25
Tyre Force (kN) Tyre Force (kN) Tyre Force (kN)
−30
−7 −6 −5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0
Vertical Tire Forces (kN)
Fig. 3: Variations in the front-left wheel carrier camber
angle, toe angle, and the tyre ground contact point vertical
displacement as a function of tyre vertical load. Fig. 4: Front axle height ride in mm for different values of
heave spring stiffness as the tyre loads are increased equally.

A. Suspension Meta-model
Including a suspension model of the type described so far for a range of left and right tyre forces and a set of varying
would significantly increase the solution times in context of spring stiffnesses. The solution dataset can then be fitted
optimal control calculations. Therefore we will instead use to a multivariate polynomial using a linear least squares
a meta-model to replace the full model by making use of algorithm [14]. Table I gives the coefficients associated with
multivariate polynomial functions. A map of this kind will the multivariate polynomial descriptions of the front and rear
keep the solution accurate to a high degree whilst decreasing axle ride height and roll angles.
calculation times. Even though the polynomial is of quadratic order, the
The most important factor which influences the suspension maximum error for the front axle ride height across all mesh
movements of a Formula One car is the vertical tyre force. points was calculated to be 0.44 mm and 0.047o for the roll
In order to simplify matters further, the tyre moments MT L angle. Similar results were obtained for the rear axle.
and MT R , along with the x and y-axis components of FT L
and FT R are set to zero. Fig. 4 shows the front ride heights III. C AR M ODEL
when equal vertical tyre forces are applied on each wheel
A vehicle model with yaw, lateral and longitudinal degrees
for a range of heave spring stiffness values. It can be seen
of freedom based on [8] will be used here. This car model
that the ride height increases (in SAE coordinates) with tyre
includes non-linear tyres and a limited slip differential.
load, bringing the car closer to the road. The static front ride
However, instead of using constant drag and downforce
height of the vehicle is defined by hf 0 = −14 mm with a
coefficients, a more sophisticated aerodynamic map shown
rear ride height of hr0 = −74.1 mm.
in Table II will be used. This map is responsive to the front
and rear ride heights, side-slip (β), steering (δ) and roll (φ)
- 1 Fl Fr Kh Fl2
angles. The ride heights and roll angle are fed into this
hf -2.53e1 -3.70e0 -3.70e0 -1.19e-3 -1.07e-1
aerodynamic map by making use of the suspension meta-
φf 6.56e-16 8.57e-3 -8.57e-3 -6.2e-19 2.88e-4 model developed in Section II.
hr -9.07e1 -6.90e0 -6.90e0 -1.83e-2 -9.71e-2
φr -3.95e-16 1.11e-2 -1.11e-2 7.2e-19 6.88e-5 The front and rear aerodynamic downforce terms are given
by
- Fl Fr Fl Kh Fr2 Fr Kh Kh2 1
hf 1.22e-1 9.77e-4 -1.07e-1 9.77e-4 3.13e-6
f
Faz = CLf ρ A u2 , (16)
2
φf 6.49e-18 2.24e-7 -2.88e-4 -2.24e-7 1.8e-22
hr 9.43e-2 4.04e-3 -9.71e-2 4.04e-3 3.01e-5 r 1
Faz = CLr ρ A u2 (17)
φr 1.91e-18 2.28e-7 -6.88e-5 -2.28e-7 -3.5e-22 2
respectively and the drag force is given by
TABLE I: Multivariate polynomial coefficients of the front
1
and rear axle ride height and roll angle. The left and right Fax = − CD ρ A u2 . (18)
wheel normal loads Fl and Fr , respectively, are given in kN. 2
Heave spring stiffness must be given in kN/m. hf and hr are CD is the drag coefficient, while CLf and CLr are the front
in mm and φf and φr are in radians. and rear axle downforce coefficients respectively. The front
and rear downforce are applied at the centre of the front and
The ride height and roll angle of each axle can be solved rear axles. The drag has a negative sign, since it acts in the

168
negative x-axis direction and is applied at the vehicle’s mass
centre.
In [8] a suspension related roll moment distribution factor
was used to resolve the load transfer equations (see equation
(26) in [8]). Since a suspension model was developed here
we will replace this equation with a constraint that keeps the
front and rear axle roll angles equal. This will ensure that the
tyre loads are distributed in accordance with the suspension
specifications. This can be written as
φr = φf (19)
IV. O PTIMAL C ONTROL
In order to calculate the minimum lap time we will set
up an optimal control problem. The states of this problem
are the vehicle perpendicular distance to the centreline, the
angle with respect to the track, the longitudinal and lateral
velocities, and the yaw rate. The controls are the vehicle
steering angle, the longitudinal slip and the normal load of
the four wheels. The static parameters considered here are the
suspension ride height and heave spring stiffness offsets. The
aim is to find the controls and values of the static parameters
which minimise the lap time given by
Zsf
J= Sf (s) ds (20)
control problem is then represented by an NLP problem
whose cost function is obtained by approximating the cost
functional using LGR quadrature. This NLP problem is
subject to the transcribed algebraic constraints and path
constraints of the original problem imposed at the collocation
points.
GPOPS-II uses a segment and polynomial degree adap-
tation scheme [10] so that error reduction can still be
achieved in the presence of non-smooth problem features.
The transcribed NLP problem is typically very large but
sparse. The IPOPT [16] software library (based on interior
point methods) was used here to solve the NLP problem.
Automatic Differentiation was used to provide IPOPT with
fast and accurate first and second order derivatives.
V. R ESULTS
A full lap simulation of Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona
was considered for a car with the suspension meta-model
from Table I and the aero-map from Table II. A map of the
circuit together with the calculated racing line for the car in
its baseline set-up is shown in Fig 5. The corner distances
from the start-finish (SF) line are marked on the figure. A
series of parameter optimisation cases were then studied with
the results summarised in Table III.
1000
3900
4050

s0 4000
3500
3650 4200
where Sf is the reciprocal of the vehicle speed and s0 and 800 3350
sf are the start and end distances. The problem is subject to
state dynamics of the form
dx(s) 600
= f (x(s), u(s)) (21)
ds
Y−position (m)

2750
given in Equations (15), (16), (20), (21) and (22) of [8] SF

and path constraints given in Equations (23), (24), (25), (34), 400
(35) of [8] and (19). The vehicle perpendicular distance to
the centreline is also bounded to not exceed the track width. 1650
The pseudospectral numerical optimal control solver 200 2420
GPOPS-II [15] based on the Legendre-Gauss-Radau (LGR)
collocation scheme was used here to solve the minimum lap
2250
time problem. In this scheme the states are approximated
0 2000
using Lagrange polynomials as basis functions. The state
dynamics are then transcribed into algebraic constraints using 725
1050
800
the derivative of the approximating polynomial. The optimal
−200
−500 0 500
X−position (m)
CLf CLr CD Input
1.2000 0.9494 0.9455 Nominal Value Fig. 5: Racing line with distances from Start/Finish (SF) line
10.0000 1.0000 0.1000 hf (m) in (m) for Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona. The suspension
-5.0000 -22.2222 -0.1000 hr (m) and aerodynamic parameters are set to their base-case values.
0 -222.2222 0 h2r (m2 )
-5.1294 -10.2588 0 β 2 (rad2 ) In case A, the vehicle is considered in its baseline set-
-0.1641 -0.1641 0 δ 2 (rad2 ) up with no parameter optimisation. The calculated lap time
-8.2070 -32.8281 0 φ2 (rad2 ) was 84.59 s. In case B, the front and rear ride height were
allowed to have an offset of between ±10 mm and ±30 mm
TABLE II: Down force and drag coefficients map. respectively. The optimum set-up was shown to increase

169

the front and rear ride heights by 7 mm and 12.6 mm (in
SAE coordinates this brings the car closer to the road). This
resulted in a lap time reduction of 30 ms.
In case C, the front and rear heave springs were allowed
to vary between ±500 kN/m of their nominal value. The
optimiser stiffened the rear axle by the maximum allowed
and softened the front by 500 kN/m. This is due to the
fact that the front lift coefficient increases linearly with ride
height (see Table II) and hence more downforce can be
generated by operating the front of the car closer to the road.
In all the cases investigated here, the front ride height of the
car was constrained to not exceed 15 mm. This prevented
the car from getting too close to the road surface which
could potentially cause excessive wear on the under-body
plank of the car. This explains why the optimiser does not
increase the front ride height by the maximum allowed. The
rear downforce coefficient is a quadratic function of the rear
height ride and by hardening the rear, the car is kept closer
to its optimum operating point for a larger proportion of the
lap.
In case D, both the heave spring stiffnesses and ride
heights for front and rear axles are allowed to be optimised
by the same amount as in case B and C. The results show
that ride heights are increased by 9.3 mm and 7.7 mm at the
front and rear respectively and both axles are stiffened by
the maximum value of 500 kN/m. The difference between
the front downforce coefficients for the baseline and case
D is shown in Fig. 6. The speed profile of the baseline
car is shown on the same figure in black. One can see
that the optimised car benefits from higher front downforce
coefficients for the majority of the lap. It is evident that
at high speeds when downforce levels are significant, the
front ride height increases and supports further gains in Clf ’s.
The total reduction in lap time for case D was 60 ms. The
simulation time for case D was less than 10 minutes on an
8 core 3.4 GHz machine.
VI. C ONCLUSION
The work presented here demonstrates how meta-
modelling can be used to include sophisticated model be-
haviour into racing car dynamic lap time simulations without
losing tractability. A suspension model was developed and
a multivariate polynomial was used to capture its relevant
characteristics. A pseudospectral collocation method was
then used to simulate a full lap of the Barcelona circuit and
time optimal values of heave spring stiffness and ride height
set-ups were found.
Case ∆RHf ∆RHr ∆Khf ∆Khr Lap Time
A - - - - 84.59
B 7.0 12.6 - - 84.29
C - - -500 500 84.21
D 9.3 7.7 500 500 83.99
TABLE III: Lap times for various optimisation cases. Ride
height offsets are in (mm), heave spring stiffness offsets are
in (kN/m) and lap times are in (s).
170
100
Baseline
Optimised
Speed
80
1.7
Front Downforce Coefficients
1.65
60
1.6
Speed (m/s)
1.55 40
1.5
20
1.45
1.4
0
1.35
20
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500
Distance from SF line (m)
Fig. 6: Front downforce coefficients comparison for the
baseline car (red) and the vehicle with optimised ride height
and heave spring stiffness offsets (case D, shown in blue).
Speed of the baseline car is shown in black.
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