Our car's chassis and suspension set up is a compromise between many competing criteria for good handling.  Using a computer program, such as Susprog3d we can analyse a lot of what the designer has done.  This might give us an insight into the strengths and weaknesses of our particular car.

However, our intention is not to re-design the car, but to tune it for faster lap times.  The key idea presented is that if we accept a fairly basic theory about how weight transfer works, we can readily tune our spring/anti-roll bar/shock combination for any conceivable movement of the race car chassis platform.  In particular, we can understand how shock absorber tuning works. 

The main difficulties in transferring the theory into practise are setting the race car so that it is responsive to changes, and properly analysing the movements and responses of the race car. 

We will discuss why it is that our car will work reasonably well over a range of roll resistance (or stiffness), and also pitch resistance.  It is fortunate that this is the case, because it gives us endless opportunity for tuning for BALANCE and particularly TRANSIENTS (or handling balance variation). With a small change in front vs rear roll stiffness, and/or roll and pitch stiffness in combination, we can influence understeer/oversteer balance for any particular movement of the car.  These front and rear variations in stiffness, and the timing of weight transfers, are achieved by tuning our spring/anti-roll bar/shock package.

You will gain an understanding of the relationship between your springs, anti-roll bars and shocks.  We'll talk a lot about shock absorbers.   This is gold in your hands.  If your baseline setup is in the ballpark, you can use these ideas to tune for better response and feel, improved turn in, or power down, or ride the kerbs, or just about any transient you can name. 

And this applies not only in professional racing, but all amateur racing - historics, supersprints and (insert your category here). 

Even road cars.  Consider the difference in drivability and feel, at normal fast touring speeds, let alone 10 tenths driving, between a Tickford or HSV vs the standard car.  Or a car fitted with a Pedders Sports Ryder handling package vs the standard car.  The improvements come with essentially the same suspension.  The magic is done with suspension tuning - springs, shocks, anti-roll bars, suspension bushing stiffness and, to a lesser extent, minor suspension geometry and wheel alignment settings.

Then consider upgrading a GTS Commodore road car for GTP racing.  We start with a V8 Supercar spec roll cage.  This adds chassis stiffness so the driver can feel changes we make to suspension settings.  We now expect far greater precision from our springs/shocks/antiroll bars.  We are dealing with greatly increased tyre grip.   Yet our suspension design remains essentially the same. We can't even lower the car that much under the rules.

If we again upgrade, this time to a purpose built race car, there'll be many more race only features and components on our car.  For instance, if it was a V8 Super Car, the 4 link rear suspension would provide tuning possibilities.  We would need to have an understanding of how that works.  But our week to week tuning would still be done with springs/bars/shocks, (and also downforce.)