Red Bull Motorsports
WRC
How dampers turn WRC cars into high fliers
Ever wondered how WRC cars get “big air” without smashing their chassis? Take a look.
3 min
AHEAD with Davd Coulthard: WRC Damper
Ever wondered how WRC cars get “big air” without smashing their chassis? Take a look.
Colin's Crest, the Fafe, the Yellow House jump: the World Rally Championship is famous for its massive jumps.
For the drivers, getting the biggest air off a jump and landing the car is a vital skill if you're going to get in the points and it's up to the team engineers to make sure that the cars are up to the job.
When 1.2 tonnes of metal hits the floor at 200kph, it can make a mess of your weekend if you break your car on impact. In WRC cars, this brutal touchdown is taken care of by dampers. A rally car’s shock absorbers are made up of two components: a spring and a damper.
The impact of a bump compresses the spring but in order to ensure that your car doesn’t turn into a 200kph trampoline the spring is not allowed to decompress immediately. Instead, the damper (the oil in the damper, to be more specific) releases the compression gradually to get the car back to its normal ride height.
Shock absorbers of a rally car
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The spring gets compressed as the car hits a bump
© RedBull.com
Damper reduces vibrations
© RedBull.com
Join David Coulthard in the above video as he explains the science behind the dampers and springs used in rally cars.
