why is there a minimum weight requirement in Formula 1? Wouldn’t teams be incentivized to lessen the weight of their cars for faster speeds?

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why is there a minimum weight requirement in Formula 1? Wouldn’t teams be incentivized to lessen the weight of their cars for faster speeds?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It also has to do with the fact that you need drag. You need something to weigh the car down. It’s not all about being the lightest, but you need drag in the curves and in the track in general. Too light and you loose control of the car or their might be too much vibration due to wind action. There is no amount of engineering that could fix having such a light contraption going at 300 km/h. You need weight to keep the car down and stable. Even with the cars being this heavy last year Alonso took a jolly ride and flew with his car in the track. He was ok but the car literally took off. One guesses that engineers could make cars lighter but there is a point were a lighter car would be unsafer and slower due to risk of it flying if there are high winds, too much vibration that actually deducts time, or just plain being too light to counter headwinds.

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