(I am dedicating this thread to Dave W for so patiently explaining a bit of the byzantine complexities of the current F1 car aero/handling dynamics)

... not buy a football team like Abramovich as there are too many egos and it costs $100M year. Nor would I buy an F1 team because there may be less egos but it would cost $200M per year, and I would not understand a single thing the engineers said about aero.

What I would do is set up an annual $10M prize for the fastest lap of a road circuit by a car with no technical rules or limitations other than some basic driver safety ones. It would be televised but no spectators so as to eliminate the crash trajectory concerns which have forced F1 etc to limit speed to protect against spectator injury risk ( and quite understandably so).

There would be basic safety rules such as belts, fuel cells and roll over protection but no crash testing and simply no technical rules. You want to run a 9 litre nitro pushrod V-8, OK. Turbo charge an old F1 V-10 no issue. Venturi tunnels , as long and high as you like. Hub mounted high wings, feel free. Venturis and wings, you are welcome.

It would be a four lap run over a fast circuit , personally I would alternate between Silverstone and Road Atlanta as both are near big motorsport technical centres. You get a week of free practice then the 4 lap run off. One catch, only the fastest car gets the $10M , no other prizeas and after the first year you not only have to be the fastest on the day but also beat the previous record as well or no cigar. Hopefully $10M would encourage a lot of innovation and engineering without being too big.

No of course it won't ever happen as I am not an Oligarch and none of them seem to be interested. However it I could do it at least I might be able to see and understand what made the cars go fast!!

With no technical rules the cars would end up being robot driven.

Why just on tarmac? throw in some dirt/gravel too?

Essential. No human could withstand the G forces.

Check out hillclimb/pikes peak

Er.. Thanks, mariner (I think). I'm honoured.

Ho hum . Big deal, interesting, might even be challenging, in a crude way.

Now, run the same event with a limit on the energy at the start, and I think you are onto something. I presume the engineers/chemists can calculate, and thereby equalise, the energy content of different 'fuels' (in the loosest sense). Give them all the same metaphorical 50 litres or whatever, and you have some real real challenges - fastest lap, highest average speed, greatest distance, .... do an index of performance for best all-rounder, the possibilities are pretty much endless.

Peter Wright wrote an article for 'Racecar Engineering' some years ago about this type of machine - if I remember correctly, a four-wheel drive, fan-assisted GE, turbine powered vehicle. I am still impressed that highly restricted designs such as F1 can induce forces of 5g, and that the drivers can cope with it, lap after lap. If you throw technology at such a vehicle you surely reach a point where a human jockey canna take it Captain!

Yes Peter Wright did indeed write about his ultimate racecar some while back and he selected a 1500 bhp gas turbine as the power unit. It had (IIRC) two wheel drive with 20" rear wheels and large venturi tunnels. They had drop down fans which were to be used a la Chaparral as as sucker system in low speed corners.

Being a very good engineer he had calculated the fuel consumption and G forces and and think his final observation was that the driver would be exhausted from the G forces just about when the fuel ran out after a few laps. Maybe todays team strategy optimisers could calculate whether the frequent fuel stops could fit in a driver change as well?

There is no reason why the driver in my theorectical contest could not have a G suit to help him/her. One of my postulations is whether you would end up building a car nearly as wide as the track to maximise downforce given , in principle , unlimited power.

I think the fuel limit might be a good idea.

I recall listening, fascinated, to an F15 test pilot describing his experiences. He had, apparently, logged over 2000 hours manoeuvring in excess of 6 gn. Admittedly that was vertical & he would have been wearing a g-suit. By his appearance, he might have been over 60.....

I'm not sure whether 5 gn is a sustained acceleration in F1, but there are ovals (e.g. Texas) where cars have to be slowed down by "Handford" devices to avoid g-induced vision problems, & even then accidents appear to happen rather too regularly late in races.

There appears to be increasing support for a race series regulated only by safety, energy available & planform. Not much, however, for my preference for a contoured underbody to limit L/D (& the need for g-suits).

. . and no wings?

Anything (within a defined planform), but at a cost in drag. Ground effect aero is highly efficient technology, but it will dominate all else if it is allowed (including budgets), & it isn't particularly relevant elsewhere, I think.

A buddy of mine is a former A-6 bomb-nav, he has buddies that flew for the Blue Angels. No G suits ...

Natural limits are more fun than man-made limits.

Yes -- much more spectacular and no need to worry about g suits - until that is you run out of mountain

skycar anyone ?!!

A big part of the pikes peak are now with tarmac.

But the fastest pikes peak car is most likely still this bad boy:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5WfSZBPosI&feature=related
Humungus size venturis and a big wing too.

Interesting you guys say that the driver would be the limit.

Were is this limit?

I say 8-10G or so. remember the red bull air race guys does 9-10G and im not sure they even have a G suit. Possibly they do too short turns to black out or something.

And then its the top fuel dragsters and bikes. The bikes does 0-100Km`t in 0.6-0.7sec. dunno what the dragsters do.

myth has it that the heart skips a beat in the start and that they need to thighten the 6point harnesses as much as possible or they will break bones when the paracute gets deployed.

WR TF dragster 402: 4.42 as far as i know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnUyL2l2Rjw

Love the sound of those: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR7aF4hY9rU

But if your preference is to limit L/D with a contoured underbody yet wings are free, the scramble for ever-increasing DF would continue via non-GE aero - just like now. Perhaps I am misinterpreting your post?

I would like to think that a more "balanced" equilibrium would be reached when it is combined with a cap on available energy.

In their different ways, F1, proposed developments in IRL & even NASCAR are all examples of what can happen when ground effect aero is not curbed directly.

Whether you like mainly F1 or all the analysis or whatever if you have never stood by the start line of a top fuel run-off please try to do so if you can. The sheer power and noise is just amazing and however good videos are they cannot give you a actual physical impact of so much noise, you teeth and stomach really do shake. However simple or even pointless it is I may be hopelesly childish but find it totally addictive.

I'm so close to Santa Pod, and never been...

I did it once. Had a borrowed press pass which allowed me to get as close as I liked. I think I got to about 15 meters from the start line for one pass - I was in sensory overload at that distance and the fear factor overcame any desire to get closer than that. No recorded video or audio could take you within an order of magnitude of the actual experience.

McGuire why do TF dragsters run "clean" when first started, then revert to the familiar "sick" idle after a few second? Do they start them on straight alcohol then switch to fuel?

It's my understanding that this os indeed the case - start on alcohol, turn on fuel. No idea if that's the idle disturbance or not. I seem to recall reading that the alkie start was required as nitromethane is too unstable and at "starting" speed it's more likely to detonate than burn. I could be completely wrong about that - just an old recollection.

I will second or third the recommendation to see top fuel up close and in person. There is absolutey nothing I've since experienced that even comes close.

I'm watching the Red Bull Air Race on Discovery Chanel right now.
It's in HD and it is just incredible to watch this coverage.
These guys are pulling 11.2 Gs, and in the 270 degree turns at the end of a lap, it lasts for 5 or 6 seconds.
Hannes Arch won it yesterday in Windsor / Detroit, which is about 35 miles south-west of me.
Next year I will be there in person


I, too, can highly recommend being near a Top Fuel car when it fires up.
I was racing in Oz, about 25 years ago, west of Sydney.
My class was next to go, right after the Top Fuel guys.
So I wandered up behind Colin Grahem's (sp?) fueler, just as they were firing it up.
The noise was absolutely deafing, it felt like the ground was shaking under me, and I was partially blinded by the unburned nitromethane spitting out of the pipes.
Talk about a sensory overload!
But I followed him up to the burnout pit, watched them do their burnouts.
The tree goes yellow, then green, and I watched the two blue "V"s of flame disappear down the track, into the darkness.
A win light came on, the two blue "V"s winked out, and about 2 seconds after that, the noise finally stops.

It was an experience I will never forget

Don't know if this answers your question properly, but they generally use a squirt bottle filled with methanol to prime the engine for starting, but all the fuel in the tank is race mix. If you are asking why the engine is rolling up and down etc through the warmup, essentially they are just tickling the engine with enough fuel to keep it running. Since the fuel system is of such extreme volume (AFR 2.75:1 at full load) they must be very careful not to hydraulic the motor. So the driver and crew chief are manipulating the fuel system; the driver with a handle that turns the two fuel pumps on/off sequentially through the main pump bypass valves, the crew chief with the barrel valve and other adjustments. Once the driver gets both pump valves open and the fuel pressure stabilizes, the crew chief adjusts for something approaching an "idle." The engine never comes close to full main fuel metering on the warmup... one puddle backfire in the manifold and they could lift the blower up over the grandstands.

Since the engine is completely taken apart and reassembled every round, the purpose of the warmup is to check for leaks and loose stuff, run in the clutch discs (new set every run), build some heat in the driveline, and sync the timer and telemetry systems. Before they are done, they will generally also do one very brief throttle hit or two to make sure the clutch is loading. (Known as a "tug.") The warmup is also very popular with the fans walking the pits -- their opportunity to get close to the beast and get a sample of the violence.

Perhaps this will help...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxGvfKGres4


Here is someone getting it wrong...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRYwrHQyJAM...feature=related

Getting back on topic.... I would dig up an old Lola champ car, fabricate a rear subframe to carry a turbocharged LS stockblock (2500+ hp), install the largest tires and brakes that are commercially available, and commission a meatball aero package. Basically just expand the plan form a bit and free up the tunnels. Would not be terribly sophisticated but then with 2500+ hp and no aero restrictions, it wouldn't have to be. Would still be good for 5+ English tons of DF without too much trouble. Crude, agreed, but I am trying to make $10M, not spend it, and I doubt if anything could keep up with it for a few years at least.

Human body has a much stronger ability to withstand vertical positive g forces (head-feet direction) than vertical negative or lateral.
Aircraft g suits essentially work for vertical positive g-forces.

Paolo, you might like to read this. CART drivers experienced tunnel vision problems at Texas in 2001, which caused the race to be cancelled.

Others remain skeptical that the issues were primarily physiological. Perhaps the concerns were more existential in nature. We might just say folks were on uncomfortable ground that weekend and leave it at that.

In any case, I don't think g loadings on the driver would be an issue on road courses at the speeds currently within reach. Multi-directional, not sustained.

Just make a leaning seat then.

Hey man, that's a can of worms you opened up there, can you extemporize?

Kenny Brack's pole time in the aborted 2001 CART event was 22.854 seconds at 233.447 mph.

Gil De Ferran's pole time at the 2003 IRL season finale at Texas was 23.504 seconds at 222.864 mph.

However: CART Timing & Scoring used a track distance of 1.482 miles to compute its lap speeds at Texas Motor Speedway, while IRL uses 1.455 miles. Naturally, these two distances result in different average lap speeds for the same lap time. For example, Brack's 2001 CART pole speed of 233.447 mph becomes 229 mph if computed using the IRL course distance, while De Ferran's 2003 IRL pole speed of 222.864 mph becomes 227 mph if CART had timed it.

In the 2003 IRL Texas race, 21 of the 22 qualifiers had quicker lap times than the slowest qualifier in the 2001 CART event (Max Wilson, 24.308 seconds).

Is average speed over a timed lap directly correlated to peak/sustained G force/duration in the corners?

I think a fan car is a neater solution than shear brute force aero, but packaging fans and ducts to give 10g cornering is rather difficult with a conventional sized car, you'd end up with a reverse hovercraft, with some wheels hidden in the middle somehwere.

The nice thing about the fans is that you switch them off when they aren't needed.

Your research is thorough & the evidence damning, McG. Just to complete the picture, I suppose there are no differences in seating position? (F16 pilots are semi-reclined to improve g tolerance).

p.s. "Ice" jackets can help too, I believe.

I beg to differ from Wikipedia.

Wiki is wrong here (IMO), when it says "The human body is much more tolerant of g-force when it is applied laterally (across the body) than when applied longitudinally (along the length of the body).".

Human body has excellent resistance to front-rear (accelerating car or "eyeballs in") and, to a lesser extent rear-front (braking car or "eyeballs out") g-forces.The Stapp experiments recorded tolerances of 40+ g in these cases.

Yet resistance to lateral g-forces (right-left and left right) is minimal, 5 g for anything more than a few seconds will cause blackouts.

I tried to find some academic papers on that but couldn't locate the source, so take this at personal reminiscence value, albeit this ppt presentation from US DoD supports my views:

www.flyosa.com/.../G-Force%20Review/Annual%20Review%20-%20G%20Forces.ppt

"Human body has minimal tolerance to right or left accelerations"

The Fontana problems were caused by a mix of vertical and lateral acceleration, but the real problems came from lateral.

I confess that I wasn't entirely happy with the quality of the Wiki entry either...

You have probably seen this. The subject is crash tolerance, rather than tolerance to sustained acceleration. It does include the statement "The lateral axis (Gy) used to be considered the least tolerable, but recent data derived from crashes of Indianapolis Race Cars indicates that this is probably not the case."

I suspect tolerance to lateral acceleration, both abrupt & sustained, is affected by head restraints (high lateral acceleration can/will become negative vertical unless the head is supported). Freedom of head movement is rather more important for an aircraft pilot than it is for a race driver, & head supports in race vehicles have improved substantially over the last few years (& continue to do so, I guess).

The nasty thing is when they switch off when they are needed! Nobody found the Racecar Engineering article yet? Er, perhaps it was the later version, Racetech... Gordon Murray wrote a similar article near the same time as Peter Wright, for another publication, but I didn't read it, for some reason.

Yeah, I remember one of the sliding skirt cars had a pressure gauge in it so the driver could check whether he had enough vacuum for the next corner. Fans would be reliable compared with sliding skirts.

Where is P2? He would have a ball here

My understanding is that the G-force itself is not the issue (unless you are the structural engineer ), it is the draining of blood from the head. In an aeroplane, that means you are being pulled down into your seat, and in conventional sitting position the blood tends to run to the 'lowest' point, the legs and feet. The G-suit compresses the lower body during high-G manoevering, to reduce the pooling effect. The F16 seat is famously tilted back to lower the vertical distance between the highest and lowest parts of the body, to reduce the pooling effect.

In a racing car, the driver is reclined already, so for G-forces perpendicular to the track (on the banking?), the pooling effect will be reduced. For braking, it is worsened, because the G-force is acting along an elongated body form. I note the earlier comments about tolerance of lateral G, I would have thought minimal effect again, because the G is acting across the body, maybe one side of the brain gets affected before the other? Maybe there is a mechanical issue of the brain being forced against the side of the brainbox?

The other variable here is the time the body is subjected to the force. I would almost say the aeroplane would be likely to subject the body to longer sustained G-loadings, but thinking of Turkey's Turn 8 ...

It is surprising how a true statement can be used to mislead (with apologies, Greg).

Actually, the meter was designed to indicate the average pressure "coefficient" at the throats of the two tunnels. It was added as a precaution after a skirt failed to extend. The failure also stimulated successful modifications to the skirt mechanism & so, I recall, the meter ultimately proved to be superfluous. It was an interesting project, however.

A related project, also interesting & ultimately successful, was to reduce wear so that the skirts survived a race weekend without maintenance.

The original "fan car" was, I believe, the Chaparral 2J. The Wiki entry claims it was unsuccessful because it was "plagued with mechanical problems". Nothing wrong with the principle, however.

Which could mean that on left-handers you would get in touch with your feminine side, perhaps.

...so you suddenly realize how fast you're going, throw up your hands in panic and crash...

...and burst into tears. Whereupon you would recieve sympathy, the offer of a clean hanky and a cuddle.

I think this explains NASCAR

There is one world in motor racing that has evolved entirely heuristically.  It is a world of gross asymmetry & vast & sudden non-linearities - compound tyres, coil-binding springs, structural compliances, conditionally attached suspension elements, etc.  It is a world that few experienced drivers can enter, or leave, successfully. It is a world the relies on track testing & a comprehensive track-specific data base for vehicle set-up & where conventional vehicle dynamics analysis is almost entirely peripheral.  It is a world where "pull down" & K&C rigs are the order of the day to even remotely characterize the intricacies of a suspension set-up.  It is also a world that has defied attempts to introduce analytical predictability.

That world is NASCAR... See here.

Reminds me of shipbuilding.

The phrase "evolve or die" springs to mind.

Brilliant analysis, you nailed it. It's all quite deliberate on the sanctioning body's part, too... though they stumbled onto the formula quite accidentally themselves. John Darby flat out admitted it one day while I was bitching about something or other. The purpose, of course, is to provide parity and uncertainty of outcomes and it's pretty effective. When Roush can periodically get lost in the tall weeds, you know they've got something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08cv3UNMFyo...amp;feature=sub

This one got some potential.

Thanks Mats, love the car AND the track surface which means sub 10mm ground clearance is not possible.

Now maybe there should be a viral campaign to secretly spray each GP track with 10 - 15mm stones coated in instant glue the night before each race!!