How Do Sway Bars Work

By Matthew Eddy - 2018-08-12

Sway bar, aka anti-roll bar, aka stabilizer bar – they may have many names but they have one purpose and that is to reduce body roll. There are ride comfort reasons to reduce body roll but you are probably reading this article to learn more about the performance benefits. In short, the sway bar works by tying the left and right suspension together and as the car leans into a turn the body leans and pushes down on the sway bar at one side. This causes the sway bar to try and lift the inside tire and causes a torsional force (twisting force) on the bar. The bar resists this torsional force and so reduces how much the body can lean. The best way to imagine how a sway bar works is to think of it as a long spring. The thicker the bar the more it resists twisting and therefore the stiffer it is. Now I am sure this description isn’t sufficient so I will walk through it with some diagrams below.

First, let’s look at how the sway bars are designed because this is critical to understanding how they work. The most simplified version of a sway bar is a straight bar with two arms that project at 90° from each end forming a very wide but short U shape. Somewhere near the arms is where the sway bar will connect to the body usually with a rubber bushing – higher performance bushings will be made from polyurethane or some other very rigid plastic. The ends of the arms are connected to the control arm or strut tower through end links.  Below is a picture of a typical set of sway bars you will find in a car – these are a performance upgrade for a BMW e46.

Eibach front and rear sway bars for a BMW e46

I have attempted to draw up a diagram showing how the sway bar works in a turn. The first diagram is the car going straight. I tried to represent the 90° bend, and its relation to the body of the car because this is a critical feature of how the sway bar works.

In the diagram below the car is in the middle of a right hand turn. When turning right the car will lean to the “outside” of the turn – which in this case is to the left. Now, looking at number 1, the body of the car pushes down on the sway bar mount. This changes the relative position of the sway bar end (#2), which goes up in relation to sway bar mount (#1). This causes a twisting force on the bar (#3) and also tries to lift the opposite end of the bar (#4). It’s this resistance to the torsional force that reduces the body roll. Now what is keeping the opposite end of the sway bar (#4) from going up?  The weight of the wheel/hub assembly, and the stiffness of the spring.  

So a stiffer sway bar is harder to twist than a thinner bar so therefore is resists the body roll more effectively. This in turn keeps more weight on the inside tire which means it can help increase the total amount of traction. Now there is an upper limit to how stiff of a bar you can throw on any car. Once the you start lifting the inside tire it is no longer able to help add additional traction. Another way to address this is to increase the stiffness of your springs which will also help reduce body roll and help keep the inside tire planted.

You may want to read my article on suspension tuning to get a better idea of how sway bars will effect the balance of the vehicle HERE.


Now I demonstrate this in a video that I made a number of years ago and I won't say is a spectacular video but it helps show how these forces are working in real time and models the diagram I show above.

 If you have any questions please ask them in the comments section and I will try and answer them when I can. Thank you. 

Suspension Omnibus

Suspension Omnibus

Suspension Tuning, tips, and more

by: Matthew Eddy, 2018-07-31

You have a car and you plan to race it or track it and you want to make some adjustments to the suspension so you can go faster. What can you do? Well first, let us define what I mean by the suspension so everyone has a clear working terminology for this article. “Suspension” for this article refers to all springs, shocks, control arms, suspension links, sway bars, tie-rods, strut mounts, wheels, and tires.  It’s a lot of stuff you can tweak for good or bad. Some adjustments may be good for one track or condition and bad for others. Also, a change that you do now that makes you faster may be bad as you become a better driver or when you actually start collecting data such as lap times.

Part one will deal with essentially stock suspension adjustments and then part two will go over common modifications. It is important to keep in mind that the tuning mentioned in Part 1 is still relevant to any modifications that you may eventually or have already made.

Part 1 - Stock Suspension:

If you just got the car great – DON’T DO ANYTHING DRASTIC! Assuming the car is already a sporty car of some sort, the manufacturer already had a bunch of engineers drive the car around the road and track for thousands of hours tweaking the suspension so you have a pretty good base to start from. Also, if you are reading this you are new to suspension setup and tuning and probably new to the track. The last thing you want to do is make a bunch of changes to the car before you even know how to drive.

Now as you get more familiar with the car and you start getting a feel for it you should start making some changes.

#1 - Tire Pressure

If you are new to motorsports this may seem pretty minor but you would be surprised how drastic of a change the tire pressure can have not only on the feel of the car but your finished lap times. Ideally you will make changes based on quantitative analysis of some kind of data – like lap times. But even without that data you can adjust pressures to tune the feel of the car.

First, it should be clear that tires are not rigid and their shape will change depending on the weight of the vehicle, the shape of the rim, and their pressure. That’s why vehicle manufacturers tell you what pressure the tires should be set at and not the tire manufacturer. As a driver, you want to optimize this shape by adjusting the pressure so the tire sits as flat as possible against the ground. Over inflate the tire and the center of the tire bulges out and you reduce traction. Under inflated tires the center sucks in, you ride on the shoulders, and not only reduces traction but it feels less planted. So ignoring the manufacturers recommendations the ideal way to determine the correct pressure is to use a tire pyrometer and measure the temperature across the width of the tire (outside shoulder, center, and inside shoulder) on all 4 tires and it should be relatively even. If you don’t have a pyrometer – which is fine because they are kind of expensive – you start by lowering the pressure slightly and see how it feels. You can mark the side walls of the tires with a paint marker or chalk to see if its starting to roll over. Work your way down slowly until it feels like they are too soft or you start rolling the tires.

#2 - Alignment

Some alignment changes will help improve the feel of the car. Often car manufactures set the alignment to optimize tire wear which doesn’t necessarily optimize handling. This is something you could do yourself at the track but it takes some patience and a little practice.

Quick rundown of terminology:

Toe - if looking at the car from above, toe is how parallel each set of wheels are to each other. Toe-in means the (again when viewed from above) the tires are pointing toward each other. Toe out is the opposite. See images below for examples.

    

    

Camber – If viewing the wheel from front or rear of the car, this is a measure of how perpendicular the wheel sits to the ground. Negative camber means the tire leans in toward the car. Extreme negative camber is called, I believe “stance” which is something that has become popular with all the kids these days.

Caster – Not really mentioned but because it’s part of the alignment it is only on the steering wheels and is a measure of the steering angle. Sometimes this is adjusted for racing applications but I am not going to touch on that in this article.

People have probably already figured out the best alignment for your particular car so try and find that information but here are some general suggestions:

•       Toe out the front tires. This can make the car feel more agile in regards to steering. This is only like 1-2° of toe
•       For RWD cars that are prone to oversteer, you can help tame that a little by adjusting the rear toe in 1-3° 
•       For FWD cars (or any car but more typically FWD) that suffer from understeer toe-out the rear to try and make the back end a little looser.
•       Negative camber is good. For any stock vehicle you can adjust as much negative camber as you can get front and back. This will help with cornering. People will often get camber plates to add even more negative camber. There is a point at which you can add to much camber because the car is riding on the inside shoulder too much and you will lose braking distance

Part 2 - Suspension Modifications:

I will preface this section and say that likely any changes you make (new sway bars, springs, struts, coilovers etc) are likely to improve the handling of your vehicle. While that may be the case, the changes may not optimize performance or may have some other negative effects even if there is an improvement overall. Any of the changes below are starting to get into the range of moderate to advanced suspension tuning and if you are truly looking to optimize handling of your vehicle that you use this a stepping off point to do more research on suspension setups specific to your vehicle. It is also good to have a pretty good feel for the car in its stock configuration so you can make an educated evaluation of the changes you have made, be familiar with the terminology, collect data – lap times, tire temperatures, suspension travel, etc.  

#1 - Wheel and Tires:

One improvement you can make that is pretty straight forward is to go with wider tires. More tire = more rubber on the track = more traction = more speed in the corners. That’s a pretty simple formula. Just like there is no free lunch, there are some trade-offs that people should be aware of and some “tuning” that can be accomplished with this. You can choose to have the same size tire on all four corners of the vehicle this is called a square setup. Versus having larger tires on the drive wheels which is called a staggered setup. I suppose you may choose to put larger tires on the non-driving tires but I never heard of it but that doesn’t mean there isn’t good reason to do so for certain applications. The most typical of the staggered wheel setups is on RWD cars and they have wider tires in the back but I have also seen FWD cars with big honkin tires up front. This makes sense for FWD cars since the rear wheels are only there to keep the back end from dragging on the ground. By changing tire sizes you can increase grip but also compensate for under or oversteer to some degree. If your car currently has a square setup, and you get a lot of oversteer, then consider leaving the front tires the same size and increasing the rear tires. Or increase the size of all the tires but increase the rears more than the front. If you experience a lot of understeer, adding more tires to the front of the car may or may not help. This is something you will have to try experiment with since understeer can be caused by a few factors including bad driving line. There are some downsides to going big. One is that your top speed will drop. More tires means more traction. Another word for traction is friction. Even going in a straight line the tires are going to increase traction. This may sound bad but in general the car will make up for this loss of speed in a straight line by higher speeds in the corners. Second is that wider rims are heavier. Weight, and especially unsprung weight is not good but again the downsides are relatively minor compared to the improved handling. So this is a balancing act. How much tire is to much? That is something you will have to determine yourself with trial and error and  don’t forget - data.

*** A word of warning – changing wheel and tire sizes can lead to fitment issues. You might start to getting rubbing on the strut, the wheel well, etc. This may only occur while turning or hard turn. A good resource are forums or FB groups and ask what tire sizes people go with. You may have to get wheel spacers or roll your fenders.

#2 - Sway Bars (aka anti-roll bars):

The purpose of the sway bars are to reduce body roll in a turn. How sway bars help increase traction is a bit involved for this article but in short by reducing body roll, more weight is kept on the inside tires during a turn. What is important from a suspension tuning perspective is that adding a sway bar can have a huge effect on the feel and performance of the car. You can also add or reduce oversteer and understeer by changing the relative stiffness between the front and rear sway bars. Now it’s very important that you understand that the below guidelines are RELATIVE stiffness between the front sway bar and rear sway bar.

• Stiffer front sway bar increases understeer
• Stiffer rear sway bar increases oversteer

I will mention this a third time, the difference is relative. For instance, you can increase the relative stiffness of the front by reducing the stiffness in the rear and vice versa. Why this is important is that you may want to change the balance of the car (reduce understeer or oversteer) and adding a stiffer sway bar may not be an option because there just isn’t one available or you have maxed out the ability of your suspension to handle a larger sway bar. So instead you can reduce the stiffness of the other one to have the same effect. It’s a good idea, when possible, to get an adjustable sway bar so you can tune the car a little bit while you are at the track.

Here is an example. I have 91 MR2 and the car is known for its snap oversteer. A few years ago I installed a V6 in it and I wasn’t sure how it would handle on the track. So for my first outing at the track I decided to disconnect the rear sway bar to increase understeer and reduce oversteer. Once I was out there it didn’t feel necessary and unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to try it with the rear sway bar connected back up because I spun a rod bearing on the very first session. The important part of this example is that I was able to change the relative stiffness of the front sway bar by reducing the stiffness of the rear which I did by disconnecting it altogether. I was sad. Anyways, some real life application for you.

To tickle your brain a little – some people don’t like sway bars and would rather eliminate them. This gets into deep suspension theory, and this is a very small minority, but some people would prefer to just increase the spring stiffness substantially. The reason being is that sway bars link the pair of wheels together which is a lot like having a solid axle which is bad. The stiffer the sway bar, the less the wheels can act independently. My suggestion would be to still use a sway bar and educate yourself a bit more before doing anything drastic.

#3 - Lowering Springs & Adjustable Shocks:

Luckily there are a lot of options for lowering springs and adjustable shocks so will likely be a benefit if you go with a reputable brand. Lowering springs usually do two things, first is to lower the vehicle which lowers your center of gravity making the car feel more planted, and second is the springs are usually stiffer. If you go this route I suggest getting either adjustable shocks or shocks that were intended to be used with the lowering springs. I say this because the purpose of the shock is the dampen the tendency of the spring to want to oscillate (or bounce). If the shock is not strong enough the spring will over power the shock. If the shock is to strong it does not allow the car to settle in a reasonable amount of time. Meaning the suspension is still going back to equilibrium as soon as it can. Ideally you have a shock that is perfectly tuned to the spring. A stock shock is likely going to be to weak to dampen a stiffer spring so I would not suggest replacing only the springs. REpalcing just the shocks without replacing the spring is only going to give a small improvement to overall handling.

Like the sway bars mentioned above, you can adjust the understeer/oversteer balance of the car by changing the relative stiffness of the front springs versus the rear springs of the car. 

• Stiffer front springs increase understeer
• Stiffer rear springs increase oversteer 

One downside of lowering springs is that they usually don’t have a range of stiffness available so there is very little customization to change the understeer/oversteer balance of the car so you can compensate this by changing sway bars, wheels and tires and even the tire pressure. Another downside is the shocks are usually the same length and with the car sitting lower the shocks are compressed a bit more than usual. This means there is less travel available before hitting the bump stops.

#4 - Coilovers –

A coil-over comes from the term coil over shock which I think it’s funny because strut is a coil over right?  I believe this terminology developed before struts were invented and most vehicles had springs and shocks separate from each other. The main difference between a strut and a coil-over is that you can adjust ride height with the coilover.  Another difference/advantage with coilovers is the spring diameter is pretty standard so you can easily change out the spring for a different length and/or stiffness (aka spring rate). A lot actually goes into a good coil-over system and you get what you pay for because what you are relying on is that the manufacturer had done a good job tuning the whole system for your particular vehicle. There is a lot to tune in a system like this such as choosing the proper spring rate, the socks are paired well with springs, and this includes different springs/shocks for the front and the rear. If the shocks are adjustable, a good shock will have a very smooth consistent adjustment curve. So I am saying cheap coilover kits are not going to be as good as expensive ones but it may not matter because regardless you will likely see an improvement in handling.  

One benefit of being able to adjust the height of the car on each “corner” of the vehicle, is that this also changes the weight balance of the car. If you haven’t heard of 4 corner scales you will want to. They look like 4 bathroom scales hooked together and it tells you how the wright of the car is distributed across all 4 wheels. So if you get coilovers and you don’t do this – even a little bit – then you are missing out on one of the whole reasons to get them. If your plan was to just lower the car X inches and forget about it then you can buy lowering springs for that.

My suggestion is not to get coil overs until you have some track time under your belt. You have done a good deal of research about suspension setups in general and for your car specifically and are prepared to get the full benefit from the system.

#5 - Suspension Geometries

All the above is well and good but another step that is intermixed with the modification listed above is to actually start changing suspension geometries by lengthening/shortening arms, moving and/or modifying their locations, and changing mounts. There is too much variation between vehicles to get into specific changes so I will list some of the more common.

-           Camber/Caster Plates – Typically this is for camber but some plates also allow you to adjust caster. The will replace the top strut mount which will allow you to get more camber adjustment. Stance is life.

-          Control Arms – This one may be harder to explain but on many cars when you lower the vehicle you are actually changing the angle of the control arms. Imagine how a control arm moves. In the most simple example it’s a arm that attaches to the car and pivots. The other end attaches to the wheel. When that arm moves up and now, if you were to trace the motion of the end of the arm it makes an arc. Now imagine a wheel is attached to that arc and as the arm swings up and down the angle of the wheel in relation to the ground is going to change. That means the camber is going to change. The camber changing while the suspension moves means you are changing the feel of the car as the suspension travels. Some cars people make camber adjustable control arms or longer control arms so that the camber always stays negative.

#6 - Aerodynamics

I am not going to get into to much detail here but there are a few comments on aerodynamics and how that works with suspension.

The three main aero mods are

1           Rear Wing – This helps to push on the back of the car and keep the back end planted in a turn. The down side is that it creates a lot of drag and will slow you down in a straight line.

2.                 Front Splitter/Air Dam – Kind of the same but slightly different I’ll explain the difference briefly. The air dam projects vertically down from the front bumper and all it does is prevent air from getting under the car. By preventing this it helps push the car down. The front splitter essentially does the same thing but better because it also adds a lip that projects out in front of the car and will actually help to push the front end down similar to how a rear wing works. This also increases the drag on the car so will reduce top speed.

3.               Rear Diffuser – A rear diffuser is this magical aerodynamics thing that gives you free downforce without any drag loss. The only issue is that it’s very difficult to make is effective. The car needs to have a perfectly flat bottom, and then it has to curl up the back of the car a bit with some vanes to help keep the airflow going in the proper direction. A lot of cars have fake rear diffusers because they look racy but getting one to function properly is tricky.

Aerodynamics makes the car grip harder by physically pushing the car into the ground. By pushing the car down means the tires are being pressed into the road even harder which means they have more traction. A formula 1 car’s aero can produce three times its own weight in downforce.

A couple things make aerodynamics tricky. One is that the aero mods are literally pushing the car down and compresses the suspension a bit which makes the car lower. If you have adjustable height suspension such as coilovers, you will need to alter your ride height to account for this additional force which can be even trickier since a rear wing and a front splitter will likely be applying different forces at the same speeds. Second is that different tracks are going to have different mix of straights, fast corners and slow corners and the car is going to perform very differently in each and will require a fair amount of tweaking to optimize your setup.

The main points I want to make with aerodynamics that it adds a lot more variables to an already tricky equation. Ideally you will be getting real data on how much downforce is being generated at various speeds and use that to help make educated decisions on the proper settings.

I should also stress that a lot of people, especially if they are just doing track days for fun, don’t do any of this stuff. They buy it, bolt it on, and it will usually improve performance. They set it and forget it and then have fun. However, if you are competing then it would benefit you to consider all these effects to learn how to optimize your setup for each track, weather, and temperature.

Conclusion

The main purpose of this article is to give you some pointers for some simple suspension tuning and also a background in suspension modification and tuning in general. The thought is you take this foundation of knowledge and build on it for your own particular vehicle and goals. Look for future articles that go into more detail.  If you have questions or article ideas please feel free to leave them in the comments section below. I will try and get to them when I can.

Thank you.

Why Get a Lightweight Flywheel?

By Matthew Eddy - 2018-07-20

First, Ill explain why a lightweight flywheel is beneficial. Obviously, any racer knows, that reducing the weight of the vehicle is always good. In fact, nothing improves a car more than reducing weight because you can accelerate faster, stop quicker and turn harder. Basically it checks all the boxes when it comes to improving performance, so just on weight reduction alone it provides some advantage. Additionally, there is another benefit when it comes to what is called “parasitic power loss.” What this means is the engine uses some of its power to move internal components (pistons, crankshaft, etc) and driveline parts (driveshaft(s). A lot of this is unavoidable, but some of it can be reduced be eliminating as much mass in the system as possible.

They flywheel is one of the heaviest single component in the drivetrain – depending on the vehicle. It serves a few purposes such as helps to start the car, stores energy to smooth out the engine, and ease shifting by keeping the RPMs from dropping quickly (or at least that is some peoples opinion). Essentially, its to make the driving experience more pleasant. However, for a more race/performance centric car this is less of a concern and instead the focus is on speed and power. So taking this heavy flywheel out (for perspective the one in my E36 BMW weighs about 24lbs) and replacing it with a lighter one will reduce the overall weight of the car and more importantly reduce the amount of mass the engine has to turn and that means more power to the wheels.

There are a few different lightweight options available depending on the application. For lower power cars such as my stock BMW that produces 190hp, a good option is an aluminum flywheel. As I mentioned above, the stock flywheel weights 24lbs, the aluminum flywheel is only 10lbs. Now, an aluminum flywheel is not 100% aluminum, the ring gear that the starter engages will be steel, and the face the clutch will grab will be a hardened steel plate riveted or bolted on because the aluminum will just get torn up. You can see the pictures of the flywheel I just purchased for my BMW below for reference. Another claimed benefit is for some cars with dual mass flywheels, the single piece lightweight flywheel improves reliability since the dual mass flywheels can fail when you ham-fist your shifts during some spirited driving.

There is a steel plate bolted to the face of the flywheel where the clutch engages

Other side of the flywheel

Now aluminum is great but some engines produce a lot of horse power and the aluminum may not be able to stand up to it. You choose to go with something that is a bit stronger such as one made from chromoly. The weight savings are not as good but it’s still fairly significant. One for my car would be 11-14lbs (depending on brand) which is a 10-13lb weight savings over stock but still 1-4lbs heavier than the aluminum one. What is chromoly? It’s a particularly high strength steel alloy with relatively high amounts of chrome and molybdenum. It’s from Chrome and Molybdenum that the term chro-moly comes from and is designated as 4140 steel. Most flywheels are made from cast iron which isn’t particularly strong but its cheaper to make. Using high strength steel the weight savings come from the flywheel being a lot thinner and holes are added to remove additional material as well. I am not going to tell you which is best to go with, you may have to do research on your particular car and what makes the most sense for your application. Fidanza has an interesting article that you might light to read for some additional information.

https://fidanza.com/aluminum-vs-steel/


What is 6061 T6 aluminum? 

There are multiple alloys of aluminum out there but the most common “billet” type is 6061 T6. The 6061 designates the alloy, and the T6 is a reference to how it was heat treated. This allow also comes in tubes, bars, sheets etc. So pretty much any aluminum flywheel will be made with 6061 T6, but its also a very good alloy of aluminum. Billet simply means it was made from one big chunk of metal. There really is not any other way to make a flywheel, but it sounds cool to say “6061-T6 billet aluminum flywheel.”   

OK Cool But How Much POWER do I Gain?

This may vary significantly per engine and how much of a weight savings you are gaining over the stock flywheel but if the test done below is any indicator – it may be 1-2% gain in peak horse power and 2-3% gain in peak torques at the wheels. This may not seem like a lot, and its hard to say that this directly correlates, but if we say this could translate to 1-2% reduction in lap times that’s not too shabby.

http://www.superchevy.com/how-to/engines-drivetrain/1502-how-to-add-hp-with-a-lighter-flywheel-why-weight/

How to Install Lexan Windows in E36

How to Install Lexan Windows - Rear Quarter Windows for E36 Coupe


I have a 1997 328is that I have been slowly modifying into a track car. I have been keeping the suspension, intake, and exhaust completely stock because I am still trying to figure out which race series I want to run. Though I do plan to run some Chumpcar races and keeping the car unmodified would make the tech inspection go a little smoother.

I am a bit lucky and got some 1/4" thick lexan panels from work for free. Doubly lucky for me are that they are large enough to make some of the rear quarter panel windows out of the material.

Why Lexan? 
Most people, when they think of clear plastic they think of Plexiglas, but that material is pretty terrible. Its brittle, you can't form it, it scratches easy, and its not very strong. When you talk about the strength of a material, it deals with how well it take s load without breaking or deforming. On the other hand, Lexan, which is made from Poly carbonate, its the opposite of all these things. Its easy to cut/drill and shape. If you desire, you can actually bend and form it. Sometimes add a little heat to help shape it. Most importantly, for Motorsports applications it won't shatter if its hit by something. Just for perspective, armored windows are made by layering glass and Lexan. Another tidbit is that that in the military, bullert proof glass is called "transparent armor."

I think a video is a good format to show how I made some lexan windows so I am not going to describe what I did. Let me preface this video to say I am not a master race car fabricator. I am able to hack my way through most things and this will give you some direction on how to make Lexan windows for yourself. If you have any other good links that you want to share please leave them in the comments section and I will add them to this post.

World Record Attempt - Longest Parade of Subarus

This up coming September 16th friends and family of Matthew Nobel Marker, who died will racing in the Olympus Rally in 2011, are attempting to break the world record for the longest parade of Subarus in Matthew Marker's honor.  The event, which would have corresponded to Matthew's 33rd birthday, is being held in his home town for Elk Rapids Michigan.  The event organizers are still hoping to get more people registered for this event so if you have an Subaru, or can borrow one, and want to head up to Elk Rapids for the weekend I would strongly suggest you sign up and be a part of this great event.

The rally community is very small so Matthew's passing really touched everyone but we can all take consolation in that he died doing what he loved.  So this event is to honor and celebrate his life. 

If you are interested in signing up please see this link below for additional details and the registration form:

REGISTRATION & EVENT INFO


More information about Matthew Nobel Marker HERE.

Subaroots Facebook Page

2012 F1 Driver Championship Prediction

Story by Matthew Eddy

At this point it is probably clique to mention that this season has been unpredictable with seven race winners in the first seven races (whoops to late); the top three drivers separated by only 3 points and the 4th place driver another 6 points behind that.  Considering a first place finish gains a driver 25 points the driver standings could and will change many more times in the next few races.  If the rest of the season follows the same pattern the Driver’s Championship will probably come down to a nail biting last race.

In previous seasons the front runners generally separated themselves from the pack pretty quickly.  The last few years have been anything but predictable and this season seems to have introduced a bit more volatility into the mix.  For instance I was not expecting Lotus to have such a strong car right out of the gate.  If Grosjean had finished more races he may be a contender for the championship but as it stands he is in 5^th but still in striking distance.  Alonso has been driving brilliantly on a car that no one expected to be very competitive this season and had captured a crucial first place finish in Malaysia to bring him just two points shy of Hamilton in the standings.  Plus many other extraordinary drives especially by drivers a little lower in the ranks that are just starting to come into their prime.
Race number eight (of 20) is less than a week away and who knows what the outcome will be and I decided I will take the bold step of predicting the Drivers Champion before the front runners separate themselves from the pack.

Before I declare my prediction I want to assure you this has not been made on some gut feeling, or a name I pulled out of a hat.  I actually did examine some of the stats and tried to rank the drivers, cars and teams in a meaningful way.  For instance I compared drivers on their ability to qualify well regardless of penalties that may have received for gearbox changes or various other infractions.  I figure this would be a good indicator of the drivers/car abilities in relation to the rest of the field.   Also, I compared a how well a driver finished in relation to their grid position to judge whether their race pace matched their qualifying pace.   My working assumptions are that drivers who are able to qualify well are also more likely to finish well.  Most of the tope drivers, on average, will only gain or lose a few spots.  Also, I assume that team errors, mechanical failures and the like should be statistically even among teams over the course of the season though it does seem like Pastor Maldonado has had some bad luck this year with gearboxes.

So, based on looking at this data I predict that Lewis Hamilton will be the 2012 champion.   First off he is by far the best qualifying driver all season.  Of the drivers his average grid position is 2^nd (keep in mind this average is based on him qualifying 1^st in Spain even though he ended up starting from the back of the grid). He has consistently finished well, even if he doesn't usually translate a pole position to a first place finish.  It could be argued that this was from bad team strategy, bad pit stops or what have you, but over the course of the season all teams will make mistakes and I assume that all these will even out in the end.  A perfect example is the last race in Canada; if Alonso and Vettel had pitted right after Hamilton then they might have finished on the podium.  I have also considered the team’s ability to keep pace with car development throughout the season and McLaren-Mercedes has good track record in those regards.  One other benefit Hamilton has going for him is that he is a bit of a scrapper and tends to have his best finishes when not on pole.  Based on the races this year he had had pole position twice and both times he finished 3^rd while starting from second he got a win.  Lastly he is much calmer this year and much more consistent.  

Below I have condensed some of the results so you can see them yourselves.
Here is the average grid position by each driver - WITH ALL GRID PENALTIES ERASED.  This not only includes Hamilton but Schumacher, Perez, Maldonado etc.  Hamilton has clearly done well in qualifying this season especially when compared to Alonso and Vettel.

No	Driver	Team	Avg Grid Pos*
4	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	2
8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	5
2	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing-Renault	5
10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	6
1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	6
7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	7
3	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	7
5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	7
9	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	9
18	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	11
14	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	11
6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	12
15	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	13
11	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	13
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	13
16	Daniel Ricciardo	STR-Ferrari	13
19	Bruno Senna	Williams-Renault	15
17	Jean-Eric Vergne	STR-Ferrari	18
20	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham-Renault	18
21	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham-Renault	19
24	Timo Glock	Marussia-Cosworth	21
25	Charles Pic	Marussia-Cosworth	22
22	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT-Cosworth	22
23	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth	24

One stat I calculated was how well the driver finished compared to his grid position.  Most drivers have a positive average, meaning they tended to gain more places than they have lost averaged over the last 7 races.  However, though I did look at these figures while making my determination, I don’t think it produces very pure data.  For instance Hamilton in the Spain race gained 16 positions as he made his way from the back of the grid, but passing back markers in a car that qualified as pole is not the same as going from 16^th to first.  If those 16 positions are included in his average than he on average gained 1 position per race.  If I remove this race as an anomaly, than he on average lost 1 position per race.  What muddies this even more are drivers like Vettel who may have decided not to put a few laps in during Q3 in order to save tires for the race and so he starts lower down in the field and artificially improving his average gains per race since he could have started closer to pole.  Regardless, below are the stats I have calculated without removing the Spain race from the data.  Of the top three drivers in the championship running, Alonso has had the best performance and this would partially explain how he is doing so well considering his average corrected qualifying position was 7^th.

No	Driver	Team	Avg Place Change
15	Sergio Perez	Sauber-Ferrari	6.5
17	Jean-Eric Vergne	STR-Ferrari	4.4
24	Timo Glock	Marussia-Cosworth	3.7
11	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	3.0
25	Charles Pic	Marussia-Cosworth	2.8
9	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	2.6
23	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth	2.4
10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	2.4
5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	2.3
12	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	2.1
7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1.7
4	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1.3
19	Bruno Senna	Williams-Renault	1.2
14	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1.0
22	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT-Cosworth	1.0
1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1.0
21	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham-Renault	1.0
20	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham-Renault	0.9
18	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	0.2
6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	-0.1
2	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing-Renault	-0.1
16	Daniel Ricciardo	STR-Ferrari	-0.5
8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	-1.9
3	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	-4.4