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Vehicle’s Dynamics – Episode 3: The Pitch
The second aspect that will make us lose precious seconds on track, or be dangerous on road, is commonly known as PITCH. This car’s behavior represents a rotational motion on the transversal axis of the vehicle, ie a movement (forward or backward) of the vehicle body during acceleration and braking, thus going to break down the weight of the same and resulting, as you can easily imagine, dangerous , especially in the second case, approaching a corner.
But that’s not all, because pitch is limited to a change in weight distribution, if the situation is accelerating or braking with wheels straight and on a straight line. Instead, try to imagine what might happen if, cornering, you stomp on the gas to gain speed on your way out and the car begins to accuse an annoying pitch? The possibility of losing control and stability is at the corner and that can then turn into understeer or oversteer – so you can easily figure out what happens if roll comes into play too … On the contrary, decelerating while cornering could create an excessive lightening of the rear axle, leading to an oversteer phenomenon resulting in loss of grip of the rear wheels. Pitch can be caused by a too soft suspension setting, by an overload of the weights on the front axle or on the rear one,or more generally by the type of layout of the car itself (excessive ground clearance or a very short wheelbase).
It ‘so good to keep in mind this factor, especially when driving fast, in order to avoid situations difficult to control in case of emergency.
Words by Carlo Brema
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