The eternal search for the optimum set-up is doomed to failure, simply because there will be an optimum set-up for each moment of the day, position of the sun, weather conditions such as temperature, humidity and barometric pressure and wind direction. In an extreme case, there’s hillclimbing at Pikes Peak. There the altitude change will sap your engine power as you ascend and at the same time reduce your aero downforce as barometric pressure falls from 69.6 kiloPascals to 57.2, a full 17.6 per cent.
Much in the same way, trying to home in on the best set-up can be a nice exercise in topology, as defined by Gottfried Leibniz, who in the 17th century envisioned the geometria situs, or topography if you want to visualise it on a graph.…
