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Originally Posted by kevinthenerd
What if you're using high-profile tires? (What I have in mind are my crappy P185-70R14 tires.) There's quite a bit of give in the tires and bushings in a street car. Have you seen how high the damping and spring constants are on an F1 car?
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Much of the purpose of your suspension is to control the bump force. A tyre is very bad at controlling force, it just squashes and then returns it. No real damping (so you'll keep bouncing) and a spring rate that is really wrong.
You really need to compare spring rate at the wheels, while some cars have really high spring rates, they can run leverage of 2-3 or more from the wheel, so the wheel rates are much more sane.
F1 cars also have harder suspension to cope with the aerodynamic deivces. Those wings work best at a certain angle, so the firmer suspension keeps the car at that attitude more often. They also have very large changes in downforce (more than their dry weight).
Soft suspension would give large changes in ride-height as the downforce changed.
Rough rule of thumb, the more uneven the surface, the softer your suspension has to be. Consider the extremes of a baja buggy and an F1 car.