Active Wings question (was: Re: Active Suspension questions)

Kendt Eklund writes:

Quoted text (11 lines)

>> Why don't they use powered wings ? >> The driver presses the button on the straights and the wings lay down. >> Wooaa! >> Is it banned too ? >Yes, I think the restriction is against "any moveable aerodynamic device." >Others may have more info, but I think this was in response to the Brabham >"fan car" - they put a huge fan at the back of the car to pull air through >a radiator, but what it really did was suck air through the ground effects >under the car. The cars crushed the competition in the few races they ran, >and rumor has it the drivers were sandbagging and the true performance of the >car was never seen.

You are correct about the restriction on moveable aerodynamic devices. I think that this rule was used to ban active suspension in 1994, because they made the entire body a moveable aerodynamic device -- as suggested by earlier posts on this thread about changing the angle of attack of the body on straightaways for reduced drag. I don't know if this rule was a response to the fan car, but I believe that the fan car ran only one race before being banned. It won quite handily with Niki Lauda at the wheel, I think. John Oliver Canton, MI

> Kendt Eklund writes: > >Others may have more info, but I think this was in response to the Brabham > >"fan car" - they put a huge fan at the back of the car... Kendt: And before that, there was the Chaparral which had a moveable rear wing which flattened out on the straights and raised into the turns. It failed once during a race and the driver went straight off and almost killed himself... Chaparral also had a fan car (the 2J, I think it was...) -------------------//------------------------------------------- | )/-\(_)|__ // "Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; | nightshade // But it's lightning that does the work." ----------------//------------------------- Mark Twain ---------