Originally Posted by
Matra et Alpine
Monaco, v Spa v Monza are spring and damper settings, ride hieght, downforce, tyre pressures, wing settings. The basic car is the same, thus why we get some chassis are better at some circuits.
Depends on what you define as "basic car". If you were to be anal, this theoretical car with active whatnot might actually need less parts changed between tracks since it will likely to be designed to work in a range of parameter. I'd imagine being able to run wings at Monaco level at low speed corner and trim it out to Le Mans level on the straight. The only thing that might change will be the codes of your program.
Currently cars run at least different floor, front and rear wing and maybe brake duct configuration at a minimum between specific tracks. The physical wing themselves are different from race to race, not just what angles are set at(most if not all rear wings in F1 now are fixed and non-adjustable). The designs were derived long before they arrive at that race weekend. Some cars(Mercedes for example this year), even runs different suspension arms that alters the wheelbase and kinematics between tracks, and track like Monaco at least requires everyone to run different steering rack to deal with the hairpins. Not to mention the whole deal of people putting on and taking off F-duct. So in essence in that respect the only thing that is constant is the tub, and that is not necessarily the case in the past neither. Its only recently that they introduced rule to homologate the chassis design in the beginning and they can't change it....
Taking the whole computer driven car out of the equation, the "ultimate" car shouldn't need track specific setup physically.
Like I said, I don't think wheel to wheel racing is feasible, nor really kinda fits the spirit of competitive sport since at that level you need to be comparing human as opposed to program #1 to program #2. As far as an engineering exercise in the competition to lap around the track as fast as possible(hell, they still race Time Attack and Solo "racing" don't they?), I don't see why this can't be done. The only reason why its NOT done is because there are no reason to do it. Capitalistically if there are no commercial interest and no real scientific gain to be had, no one would do it anyway.
University of Toronto Formula SAE Alumni 2003-2007
Formula Student Championship 2003, 2005, 2006
www.fsae.utoronto.ca