COMPETITION CAR SUSPENSION DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION, TUNING THIRD EDITION ALLAN STANIFORTHClassic suspension on a classic car. These shots of the 1970 Ferrari 5125.0 ire, 12 cylinder Sports- Prototype illustrate the traditional mid-engined car layout with inclined coil spring’ ‘damper unit operated directly by the upright at the rear and by its support on lower wishbone at the front. | Suspension The wheel and the axle are not quite as old as the average hill but they still go back a bit. The path from a slice of tree trunk to an F1 rear is a long one, well worthy of a story all to itself, but we shall be more concerned here with all the complexities of holding it on the vehicle, controlling how it does its job and utilising the small area where it touches the road to the very ultimate. In a word: suspension. Inthe early stages of the evolutionary path suspension did not, of course, exist. It was sufficient that man had devised a means to transport, however laboriously, objects that had hitherto been immovable. But war and sport (the latter often a thinly disguised derivative of the former) were incentives torapid progress. The Romans werea shining example. The Legions had carts and the Colosseum had chariot racing, without doubt the Formula One of the day. Neither appear to have used suspension but the strong metal-tyred spoked wheel had already appeared in the form it would still be taking 2000 years jater on the horse drawn English brewery drays of the 20th century. Why bother to explain or illustrate the past at all? Because nothing happens in a vacuum. Everybody except the first to do something (often much further back than one might suspect) is copying to some degree, even if unknowingly History has an extraordinary number of instances of major inventions made by different people in different parts of the world at about the same time, within milli-seconds of each other if you think in cosmic terms, that is in millions of years. Bitter are the disputes and accusations within science and industry when this happens. Soitis thata glance back (in no way totally comprehensive) will hopefully show how history and the designers it left behind laid the groundwork. What died and what survived is a fascinating insight into the state of the art not readily obtainable in any other way. Despite computers and huge budgets, itis still an art at the highest level. While cars undoubtedly now tend to work very much better ‘straight out of the box’ the legendary performer is still nurtured by secret and ferociously intense testing and changes between that well known box and the first grid. Assuming the engine is good and the chassis is as rigid as possible (quite separate problems) how the car handles, its ability to put its power down and behave in the way a world class driver asks of it is almost totally down to 13