Do Flat Floors Slow You Down?

Of course your lap time improvement will depend on the car, performance, tires and track. There are instances where your elapsed time will suffer from the addition of a flat floor. I believe it also increases downforce in the rear more than in the front, the effects of which can manifest as understeer. And of course the downforce generated is of the non-adjustable type, much like that of a car's overall shape.
 
The flat floor is bass ackwards in the game, it reduces your top speed greatly when it should actually increase it because a flat floor reduces drag.
No, it's working properly. Adding downforce does not make a car go faster in a straight line. Otherwise every drag racer in real life would be running flat floors and diffusers. Last I checked, none of them do.

Yes, it reduces drag, but at the expense of top speed. Flat floors and diffusers help with cornering speeds.
 
It is not working properly at all. It's not like it has a rear diffuser found on the back of a super GT car. THAT I could see causing drag in return for downforce. This should eliminate drag on the underside of the body, providing higher top speeds. That's what flat floors do. It is entirely screwed up.
 
A diffuser speeds up the airflow underneath the car, increasing downforce at the rear of the car, with a very minimal drag penalty.

I believe the way it is modeled in GT6 it is added, non-adjustable downforce and drag to the rear of the car, I guesstimate it adds about 15% more downforce and about 10% more drag at the rear.
 
It seems like when i install flat floors it slows my acceleration quite a bit. Anyone else notice? I mean what exactly do they do?

It in no way should do that, if in fact the model of aero is being done correctly, which doesn't seem to be the case. You're overall speed may be diminished but your acceleration shouldn't be. Also as others said flat floors allow for air flow to cleanly travel beneath the car and out the back instead of on the conventional car where it travel up into the underside into areas that cause drag.
 
A diffuser speeds up the airflow underneath the car, increasing downforce at the rear of the car, with a very minimal drag penalty.

I believe the way it is modeled in GT6 it is added, non-adjustable downforce and drag to the rear of the car, I guesstimate it adds about 15% more downforce and about 10% more drag at the rear.
Yea, a real diffuser would do that. I'm talking about flat floors, which don't (shouldn't). The (visual) slots that drop down after adding flat floors hardly count as a diffuser, and wouldn't cause drag.
 
No, it's working properly. Adding downforce does not make a car go faster in a straight line. Otherwise every drag racer in real life would be running flat floors and diffusers. Last I checked, none of them do.

Yes, it reduces drag, but at the expense of top speed. Flat floors and diffusers help with cornering speeds.

How does one reduce drag, at the expense of top speed? Drag is generally what causes top speed to be limited at all, unless you're on the rev limiter in top gear.

You're right that downforce does not make a car go faster in a straight line (unless you're grip limited, obviously), but being more aerodynamic sure does.


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Diffusers and flat floors are very nearly free downforce. They're almost always an improvement over a bunch of pipes and fittings and no diffuser, unless you make your flat floor out of omgheavium.

The flat floor is cleaning up the airflow underneath the car, making it faster. Penalty: slight increase in weight.

With smooth airflow under the car, you can then use a diffuser to enhance the low pressure under the car. Essentially, it's using energy that would be wasted causing drag in the turbulent air at the back of the car to accelerate the air underneath the car instead, lowering the pressure and causing downforce.

As far as I'm aware, diffuser is basically always good, assuming that the back of your car isn't designed to deal with the aero back there already. It's like a "pointy" front on the car is basically always better than a box, just because it goes through the air more easily.

It's not like a wing, where more downforce = more drag. Wings and diffusers generate downforce in very different ways.
 
Extra downforce should slow the car down, even if its not producing more drag. It is effectively making the car heavier and the engine has to push that extra weight. At least this is what my sleepy brain is telling me. Though when I think about it another way I think I am wrong...

Ah.. Need coffee.
 
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That logic is entirely wrong.

Yeah I'd like to see the maths for this, I can't quite model it in my head. Actually on thinking more about it, its a pure force and not acting like mass, so there wont be losses equivalent to weight, but there should still be losses. Energy is not free.
 
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I recalled watching Best Motoring test ( driver was the respectable "Professor" Nakaya Akihiko ) on rear diffuser, and flat undertray that was used as factory standard fitment on R34 GTR Vspec II, they tested the car against another model : R34 GTR with no front flat undertray and rear diffuser, the one with undertray and diffuser was slower on the straight at Tsukuba by a few kmh, but able to corner more consistently and more stable with slightly higher exit ( Akihiko-san showed with onboard cam where he can apply full throttle a split second earlier ). Lap times were very close, with the R34 GTR equipped with flat front undertray and rear diffuser faster by a few tenths and has less tendency for oversteer on exit.
 
Yeah I'd like to see the maths for this, I can't quite model it in my head.
You don't really need math. Weight doesn't effect the top speed of a car. Eventually the engine will overcome the weight, It just
takes longer for an engine to push a heavier car to that top speed. What effects top speed is engine output, aerodynamics and air density. Basically how hard the engine can push the car through the air. The "downforce" provided by aerodynamic devices slows the car because it generally becomes less streamline, and in turn is pushing more air. So even if downforce did add weight to the car so to speak (which it doesn't) it wouldn't slow the car because of that weight, just the drag caused by whatever is providing the downforce.
 
It seems like when i install flat floors it slows my acceleration quite a bit. Anyone else notice? I mean what exactly do they do?

Definitive answer:

As @nascarfan1400 mentioned, they affect the top speed of lower powered (like ITCC) cars.

But, I've been using an Impreza STi with a flat floor for career mode, 600 hp., flat floor, and it outhandles LMP cars... :odd: But, that flat floor is amazing on high-powered cars.


All told, it should be used on an application-to-application system. On a 200 hp Civic, you're not getting your money's worth, and you're slowing the car down. On a supercar, I would recommend it.
 
You don't really need math. Weight doesn't effect the top speed of a car. Eventually the engine will overcome the weight, It just
takes longer for an engine to push a heavier car to that top speed. What effects top speed is engine output, aerodynamics and air density. Basically how hard the engine can push the car through the air. The "downforce" provided by aerodynamic devices slows the car because it generally becomes less streamline, and in turn is pushing more air. So even if downforce did add weight to the car so to speak (which it doesn't) it wouldn't slow the car because of that weight, just the drag caused by whatever is providing the downforce.


So reaching the speed of light is just a matter of time for any engine? Mass MUST impact on top speed, otherwise we could achieve light speed travel. From my understanding the reason why anything with mass can not reach the speed of light is that mass increases with velocity. But you are saying mass does not matter so I am confused as to why light speed travel is not achievable?...
 
So reaching the speed of light is just a matter of time for any engine? Mass MUST impact on top speed, otherwise we could achieve light speed travel. From my understanding the reason why anything with mass can not reach the speed of light is that mass increases with velocity. But you are saying mass does not matter so I am confused as to why light speed travel is not achievable?...

Air has mass. Mass (of air being displaced by the front of the car) does affect top speed. You're right, but you're 99% wrong. It's not the weight of the car, but rather the weight of the air being moved aside.


If you were trying to get through a large group of people, whose arms were linked together, you would have to move them. That would slow you down. Now think of yourself as a car, surrounded by billions of air molecules. :)
 
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