Speaking of the future, summarizing briefly the past of and plans for the Physics of Racing series. The following overlapping threads run through it:
Tyre Physics concerns adhesion, grip angle, and elastic modelling. This has been covered in Parts 2, 4, 7, and 10, and will be covered in several later parts.
Car Dynamics concerns handling, suspension movement, and motion of a car around a course; has been covered in Parts 1, 4, 5, and 8 and will continue.
Drive Line Physics concerns modelling of engine performance and acceleration. Has been covered in Parts 3, 6, and 9 and will also continue.
Computer Simulation concerns the design of a working program that captures all the physics. This is the ultimate goal of the series. It was begun in Part 8 and will eventually dominate discussion.
The following is a list of articles that have appeared so far:
1. Weight Transfer 2. Keeping Your Tyres Stuck to the Ground 3. Basic Calculations 4. There is No Such Thing as Centrifugal Force 5. Introduction to the Racing Line 6. Speed and Horsepower 7. The Circle of Traction 8. Simulating Car Dynamics with a Computer Program 9. Straights 10. Grip Angle
and the following is a tentative list of articles I have planned for the near future (naturally, this list is "subject to change without notice"):
Springs and Dampers, presenting a detailed model of suspension movement (suggested by Bob Mosso)
Transients, presenting the dynamics of entering and leaving corners, chicanes, and slaloms (this one suggested by Karen Babb)
Stability, explaining why spins and other losses of control occur
Smoothness, exploring what, exactly, is meant by smoothness Modelling Car Data in a computer program; in several articles
Modelling Course Data in a computer program; also in several articles
In practice, I try to keep the lengths of articles about the same, so if a topic is getting too long (and grip angle definitely did), I break it up in to several articles.