How is the braking force of a F1 car compared to a road car?
What is the Formula 1 car's breaking power compared to a normal road going car. Is it true that the breaking power of simply easing off the acceleration pedal will be higher than a road car in full breaking? What about the drag coefficients between these two cars?
The drag coefficient of a Formula 1 car is very high due to the large wings. It is not far from the truth to say that if you take your foot off the throttle in a F1 car that it will be close to the deceleration of a normal road car at full breaking.
In a regular road car you can normally achieve around 1G forces, where as Formula One cars can go up to four times at that, 4G - which equals to four times the force of gravity on earth. This is a significant difference that is mostly caused due to the high downforce.
If you start breaking with high downforce then the mechanical grip will allow you much higher deceleration than regular cars.