Let's open up the mother of all cans of worms...
Firstly anyone interested should read Elvo San's article:
http://users.pandora.be/elvo/8/1.html
We had a VERY long and very interesting discussion about this on myTSN back in 2001/2002 (?). The good old myTSN is sadly gone with the wind, but I managed to save some of the stuff:
http://www.ymr.no/bilder/aerodynamics_discussion.pdf
(this is mainly for 1:8 TR, but still much can be learned)
Here is a super cool presentation from a university on the topic:
http://www.ymr.no/bilder/race_car_ae..._evolution.pdf
I learned a LOT from my master Elvo here, and I must say this is extremely fascinating stuff!
For the real lazy people you can read the "conclusion" here:
http://users.pandora.be/elvo/8/9.html
Here's a more recent debate:
http://www.one-ten-rcforums.com/4wdr...ic.php?id=1333
Now let's talk turkey!
One of my big surprises was that open wheel cars are extremely inefficient as to aerodynamics. Closed wheel cars are faster. I.e. F1 cars would have been faster with a CanAm style bodyshell...
But for us RC people my biggest "revelation" was when Elvo pointed out that inverted aerofoils etc does not work for our scaled down cars. It's simply a matter of deflecting air for us...
Narrowing it down to 1:10 OR I think we could still gain from having lighter cars and much bigger wings.
ideal.jpg
This would have been ideal! Extremely low weight, high grip, extreme agility...
But we need something to propel the thing, so then comes a chassis with some sort of motor +++ and so we need 4 wheels to keep this thing stable... still I claim the basic idea is to keep the weight at an absolute minimum and maximise downforce, but it's gotta be balanced and stable to drive and jump of course. Since we have so much power in excess we don't really get a "drag penalty" like real cars!
When some say that adding weight is better, I don't argue that it's right. I'm sure it can be faster. I still think that more downforce genereated from a shell, wings or ground effects could do the same and be even faster.
Very slippery slopes is different though, with low speeds wings don't do much and adding weight may be the only solution for more tyre load/grip...
Share your ideas guys!