I was recently asked what was meant by ‘points’ of downforce. One often hears technical directors interviewed on television saying that after a collision resulting in body damage a car may have lost a certain number of points of downforce, but how much is this and what effect could it have on performance?
First, let’s examine how we measure downforce. In the context of a Formula 1 wind tunnel test, a 60% scale model of the car is run in the tunnel at a speed of 50 metres per second (about 110mph), these numbers being the maximum model size and air speed that the regulations allow.
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