GP2 Forum

I was watching the 2 spins by Alex Albon and the crash by Danny Ric on the free practice of the Styrian Grand Prix and I got wondering. I did not study Physics nor Engineering, but I follow F1 and car racing for some time now, so it's almost the same

The polar moment of inertia is that concept that I know vaguely what it means thanks to car racing. It's included in RRemedio's Slot and Tyre Editor.
I got thinking: isn't the polar moment of inertia of current F1 cars closer to DTM/Touring cars than to "traditional" F1? These spins made me think that after the driver goes over a narrow limit, it's impossible for him to hold the car with a counter-lock of the steering wheel. The car is lost for good as inertia takes control of it like it happens when a DTM car loses the rear.

What do you guys think, especially RRemedio who surely understands the concept?

I study engineering and physics (I am an engineer for a major auto manufacturer in real life). The moment of inertia is something I have thought about tinkering with. I was hoping that raising it would make the car less likely to get unstable in height transition sections (found in many of the original tracks).

To understand this- there are many excellent videos on youtube you can view.

Think of moment of inertia as the want for an object to change it's spinning speed when a force is applied to it.

If you are at rest, and a force is applied to spin you- you will slowly speed up and turn faster as the force is applied. A lower M.O.I. just means that you are easier to get spinning quickly (or easy to stop from already spinning)

Has anyone tried this with the physics editor?

Hello samsepi0l, and thanks for your answer. Unfortunately I can't be helpful - I never got to change the polar moment of inertia in the editor, as I always felt that the car reactions were perfect and I was afraid of not being able to control it if I tinkered with that

Just wanted to give the team an update. I actually used rremedio's tool to change the polar moment of inertia and tested it out. The default is 247. I tried first decreasing it to 147 and the car becomes super-twitchy in the rear, almost any steering input puts it into an incredible spin. I then increased it to 500- it feels like you are driving the "love-boat" - or the suspension is incredibly soft. You have to really give it a lot of steering input to make it corner. Maybe values closer to slightly over 247 would be better if I had more time to test them.