The arrangement of the components in relation to the centre of gravity is a key factor in how the car will handle. Most of us understand that if you have two cars with equal power and one weighs say 100gm less than the other the lighter weight car will out accelerate the heavier car. A similar argument applies when a direction change in roll, pitch or yaw is required. The car with the lowest mass properties (Mass Moment of Inertia) will have the least resistance to changing direction and therefore the weight transfer process will occur faster. Faster weight transfer, faster car response in the turns.

The calculation of the Mass Moment of Inertia (MMI) is a somewhat complex procedure which I don't want to get into in detail. In simple terms the MMI of a component within an assembly is a function of the components geometry, mass and the square of its distance to the centre of gravity of the vehicle. If we lived in a perfect world where all the components had zero volume and could be located at the centre of gravity then the MMI would be zero. There would then be no force required to move the chassis in pitch, roll and yaw which would mean vehicle body movements would occur instantaneously. Wouldn't that be nice. Unfortunately this is not possible, but we can reduce the MMI by placing components (particularly the heavy ones) as close to the centre of gravity as possible. This will help the chassis to respond faster when changes in direction are demanded.

Now back to the TNG chassis. The design goal was to reduce the MMI when compared to the standard TC3 chassis. The final version you see here is a chassis that provides a significant reduction in the mass properties about all three axis. Compared to the standard TC3 layout the TNG chassis in the 4/2 aft configuration provides a reduction of 5%, 2.3% and 4.9% in the roll pitch and yaw MMI respectively. Ask any race engineer if he/she would be happy to achieve that level of improvement.