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A few points I was wondering about that came up in another thread. Vettel is 18 kg lighter than Webber, which means he will carry 18kg more ballast in the floor of his red bull giving more setup options and a significantly lower Centre of Gravity. Burning question is how much time is that worth per lap?? I know the heavier drivers (Webber and Kubica) went to massive lengths to lose just 5 kg a few years ago when KERS was introduced it became more important for some reason (maybe more difficult to meet minimum weight with a good amount of ballast on board).

Also does anybody know when the rule came in that the minimum weight rule applied to car and driver and not just the car?

The extra ballast for the lighter drivers should be applied to the seat and not evenly distributed throughout the car. Just throwing it out there.

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Maybe but no other spot goes to any effort to be size neutral. In basketball for example there are no rules to help the little guys.

horse racing

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Rowing

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Weightlifting

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F1 does consider the weight of the driver (minimum weight is car and driver) although that was not always the case. I believe pre 1989 it was just the weight of the car, although I am not sure of the exact season. Giving lighter drivers a massive advantage.

The amount of time it costs the heavier drivers depends on the circuit. You often hear Martin Brundle talking about 10kg of fuel costing the driver around 0.3 seconds per lap at whatever circuit they happen to be racing at, so that weight can be significant. The minimum weight for the car plus driver has gone up significantly since KERS was introduced though, from 605kg before to 642kg for 2013 onwards.

The weight difference is 10kg according to FOM Pit channel video.

F1 (motorsports) has been like this forever, with the smaller, lighter person having an advantage to begin with. The advantage was not more in terms of time in the modern era, instead you had the car designed around the smaller sized person. Even now, the cars are usually sized towards the smaller person, it is just the nature of the beast. However, since the minimum weight is a higher amount, it is easy for the teams to design a car which will not be much different for two very differently sized people. Comfort in the car may be an issue for the larger person and that may consequently affect his/ her ability to operate at their best. A case like this was seen when Benetton was running Fisico and Wurz, which was some time ago. I do not know the specifications of the current cars broken down into car + ballast + fuel... so it is really hard to even guesstimate how much time it may properly be worth. If i had to say... i don't think driver weight would account for more than a tenth. Fuel does tend to change the balance a lot, so i guess it does make more of a difference.

Edit: Webbo also faced a similar predicament to Wurz's during his Minardi days.

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Ok ok! I didn't really mean different weight divisions. There are many, many sports where being taller/heavier is an advanyage - Tennis, basketball etc I don't see any harm in having a few sports that give the little guys an advantage.

Isn't there a designated area where the ballast must be situated?

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Ok ok! I didn't really mean different weight divisions. There are many, many sports where being taller/heavier is an advanyage - Tennis, basketball etc I don't see any harm in having a few sports that give the little guys an advantage.[/quote]

Actually in weightlifting taller is not better. Ever heard of Suleymanoglu? 4 ft 10 in, and smashed all records of his time, as the weights had much less distance to travel.

Spud Webb is also a good shout, a basketball player who at 5 ft 7 in won the NBA slam dunk competition in '86 (beating a certain Dominique Wilkins in the final). Little guys excel in basketball, no need to make rules for them, many examples like that. Height/weight is not everything. It's how you use it!!!!!!!


For F1 the height and weight of the drivers has always been the least possible. The size of the cockpit itself don't allow for too tall or too fat drivers. I vaguely remember Justin Wilson's height to be a problem when testing for Jordan back then (wasn't he too tall and was dropped or something like that?).

i thought in DTM they have the weight packed to the seat...

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I suppose in most sports we're thinking of being small has certain advantages, even basketball. I can't think of an advantage to being tall in motosport. Apart from having a better chance of seeing, and therefore avoiding, DC on his grid walk.

I can't see any reason why weights shouldn't be equalised to elliminate the handicap tall people have. I want to see everyone competing on as even terms as possible. If you gave Webber the 3 theoretical tenths he's losing to Vettel it could completely change the face of modern F1.

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well, it is... didn't find the english version of the regulations but the german version read as follows:


my translation is quite basic, but i guess you get the main points ... here is the original document (page 87) http://www.adac-motorsport.de/docs/dtm/ ... ent_de.pdf

to answer the main question: yes it would help heavier drivers to go with a minimum driver weight - but there is also a slight disadvantage with driver sizes... i remember technical staff complaining about obstacles when designing the cars due to fitting large drivers in (that was at wurz' time at benetton if i remember correctly and i think i heard newey talking about that topic in regard to webbo)...

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Weight is a serious problem for the bigger drivers. Yes, the lighter guys are ballasted, but the point is that the ballast can be located for best balance rather than being all over the seat and well forward in the weight of the driver's legs. The recent regulation changes which fixed the front/rear weight distribution makes this technical difficulty even more challenging.

In Webber's case I wouldn't be surprised if his repeated KERS failures are the result of smaller, lighter batteries than optimum in order to get the weight right. Either that, or Vettel gets all the new batteries and Webber gets his hand-me-downs.

At least it isn't as bad as the old days. On Mansell's last hurrah they couldn't fit him into the McLaren for the first few races, even when they greased the sides of the cockpit. After a re-design, weight balance still didn't exactly help results.

p.s. I knew a chap who nearly crashed a plane because he put a chap with no legs in the front seat. The weight calculation was okay, but he didn't realise that not enough of it was far enough forward - it was almost impossible to fly.

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Time to pull some regulations together to make sense.

So that's how the car is designed, it's minimum weight (including driver) is 640 kg, which obviously has to be met at the end of the race.
So the car has to be designed within certain weights front to rear.
They can put it anywhere, as long as it's fastened with tools.

What that means is that in the case of Red Bull and Vettel and Webber, the cars will weigh the same, but since Vettel is both smaller and lighter, the team can place that weight difference in ballast wherever it is needed to balance the car much better than in the case of Webber. It isn't much of a difference, but the team will be better able to find the optimal balance for Vettel. And of course, it will be lower, thus lowering the center of gravity for the entire car, thus giving another slight advantage to the lighter (Vettel) driver.

Just as important is that for Webber, the car is very tight, very cramped for his size. For Vettel, he's more physically comfortable. If the pedals are too close for Webber, too bad, there's no room for adjustment. For Vettel, they have a few centimeters to play with. The team could also add more padding for Vettel, while Webber gets to enjoy the feeling of hard carbon fiber against his body.

PS - That's what HM was talking about at Silverstone when he said the reason they moved Mark's nose to Seb's car was that Seb's chassis was heavier. Where the weight is in the car influences how its handling characteristics change with new aero parts. The easiest way to keep the cars the same is to put the ballast low and near the driver...that can sometimes mean giving away a small performance advantage, but you'd think keeping them as close to the same as possible would make for less headaches in development and testing. There is very little room to vary the f/r weight distribution too, just as a reminder.

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Does anybody know when the rules moved from solely weight of the car to car + driver?

Certainly before Schumacher did another famous cheat - turning up for the start of season weigh-in with a helmet so full of lead he couldn't hold his head up with it on.

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They actually moved it as vettel broke his front wing.

Yes, obviously if he hadn't damaged the first one there'd be no need to replace it. I meant that's a reason they gave as to why, given the 1 wing 2 car situation, they chose to put it on Seb's.

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This is the only thing that i could find on interwebs with a few minutes on google. Could you please link it, or we'll have to chalk it down to some urban myth created by some chaps who don't like him.

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1) Prost/ Schumacher
3) Fangio
4) Lauda
5) Brabham

if you don't like it, too bad! There's a reason why it says "My Top 5"

'Rumor' has it that Tyrroll, and possibly Bernies cars, ran well under weight and were 'adjusted' by filling the fuel tank with lead balls during the final fuel stop.

A device like a milk churn was put over the tank vent at the time, and even 'empty' it took 2 men to lift it into place

I think it is a miracle that anyone approaching 6ft can make it beyond carts, let alone the front row of the f1 grid.

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Got me wondering if they might make different weight parts for the two ?

Started watching F1 not so long ago so surely I can not remember it, but did it really happen? They sure knew how to bend the rules if that is true .

As for the issue discussed here. Kubica's father once said (in pre-race material in polish TV sometime in 2008, sorry I can not post link to that as it probably is not even on the internet... also I may have heard or understood something wrong so please take that into account) that when Robert lost 1 KG of weight and they placed that 1 KG as ballast more to the front of the car, his lap times improved by few tenths. But that was when minimum car weight was smaller than now. It was a real issue for him in 2009 when KERS was introduced. He was not running it as he was left with too little ballast to play with. Later in the season BMW got rid of KERS altogether as they redesigned the car.

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That's the first time I've heard this.

Any proof for this claim?

How would a lead-filled helmet assist a driver? The amount of force on their necks with the extra weight would be unbearable. Pray tell and share the info with us if you can

It was Brazil 1995. From Wikipedia;

'One of the rule revisions stated that the minimum weight limit of 595 kilograms (1,310 lb) applied to both car and driver together. Prior to the first session of the season, all of the drivers were weighed to establish a reference weight to be used on occasions when the two were weighed separately, or if the driver was unavailable to be weighed. As such, a small competitive advantage could be established if the driver attempted to register a weight as heavy as possible, so their actual weight when driving the car would be lower. Williams Technical Director Patrick Head estimated that a weight penalty of 7 kilograms (15 lb) could cost 14 seconds over the course of 70 laps of the circuit. In the drivers' weigh-in, Schumacher weighed in at 77 kilograms (170 lb), compared to 69 kilograms (150 lb) at the beginning of the 1994 season. Sauber driver Karl Wendlinger gained the most weight compared to 1994, gaining 22 pounds (10.0 kg). Wendlinger's team-mate Frentzen and Tyrrell driver Ukyo Katayama added the least amount of weight, gaining 3 pounds (1.4 kg). When Schumacher was weighed after the race, his weight had decreased to 71.5 kilograms (158 lb), although this weight, when combined with that of his car, still left it above the limit, at 599 kilograms (1,320 lb). Schumacher explained the weight gain as a consequence of a fitness regime over the winter that had converted excess fat to muscle, and also admitted to eating and drinking heavily, in addition to refraining from using the toilet, prior to the weigh-in.'

Of course it's only Schumacher that's remembered for this incident, but it was pretty much acknowledged that the drivers went to the weigh-in with a little extra something either in their pockets or inside their helmets - this would allow the car to be a few kilos lighter as the driver now formed a larger portion of the allowed 595Kgs.

Of course, there's no advantage for a driver to drive whilst wearing a lead-lined helmet - the scam was in using the heavier helmet for the weigh-in, then using a standard one when in the car.

You know what, I never knew this. Thanks mate.

Makes sense on the weigh in, I would find it very weird for the racing!

Yep Sounds like Schumi's car was over the weight limit regardless though so I don't see how an advantage was gained.

So car + driver was only introduced in 1995? I thought it was before that?

Not likely. Why would you make heavier parts for Seb, which have fixed locations, when you can just add ballast that you can move around as you see fit?

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That is correct, altough 1kg would not have that much influence, maybe 10 kgs positioned lower could give a tenth.
Robert turned up for the 2009 season looking like a Skeleton.

I asked an engineer who has been involved with cars and racing: what about those hefty fifties drivers, Fangio, Gonzalez and Ascari; would thier weight have affected car performance?

He reckoned hardly because they were all short, so weight was lower down; he said tall drivers like Hawthorn would have had more effect on performance due to thier weight being higher up and also wind resistance in those open cockpit cars.

When it came to the 1.5 litre cars of the sixties, he reckoned because the drivers reclined, their weight was low down, so big guys like Graham Hill, Brabham and Gurney, would have had little effect on car performance.

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That doesn't help the little guys though

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The effect is smaller than before. When the limit was 605 kg, Kubica couldn't use KERS. But still being lighter will be an advantage - it's hard to tell how much, I think no one here will be able to answer. There are always other things that affect performance. How can one know that the two driver have exactly the same speed, bar the weight effect? You'd had to ballast the driver in a special way to simulate him being heavier and make a lot of laps is same conditions as without that ballast to compare. Still, the effect could be different in different cars.