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Most powerful touring car racers ?


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#1 AAGR

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Posted 24 April 2013 - 15:09

Now that many European touring car race series have been throttled, in more ways than one, the age of truly brutally powerful saloons may have gone for ever.

Robson, as you might realise, tends to measure most cars by comparison with Eggenberger's 550bhp 2-litre turbo Sierra RS Cosworths of the late 1980s and yes, I know, they say that Dick Johnson's machines had just as much power in Australia.

But what about the rest of the world ? How much power does a top-ranking NASCAR engine push out these days, or one of the modern Australian V8 types ?

AAGR


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#2 kayemod

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Posted 24 April 2013 - 15:21

How much power does a top-ranking NASCAR engine push out these days ?

AAGR


I chatted to a friendly guy accompanying a newish NASCAR racer at Goodwood last year or maybe the year before. He told me about 860bhp unrestricted, and maybe 450 with the restrictor plate fitted, as required on some of the fastest tracks. Must feel like half the engine has been taken away if you move from one to the other. He told me that the engine in the car I was looking at was full of Cosworth parts & technology.


#3 AAGR

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Posted 24 April 2013 - 15:46

I chatted to a friendly guy accompanying a newish NASCAR racer at Goodwood last year or maybe the year before. He told me about 860bhp unrestricted, and maybe 450 with the restrictor plate fitted, as required on some of the fastest tracks. Must feel like half the engine has been taken away if you move from one to the other. He told me that the engine in the car I was looking at was full of Cosworth parts & technology.


And I suppose my 'supplementary' would be - whose engines had the highest specific output (bhp/litre ?). Are we still talking about Eggenberger's 275bhp/litre ?

AAGR

Edited by AAGR, 24 April 2013 - 15:46.


#4 Frank de Jong

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Posted 24 April 2013 - 16:19

Nope, I would take a look at the Group 5 Zakspeed Capris of 1981/82: Ludwig's 1.4 car was quoted with 495 HP (that's 347 HP/litre) while the bigger 1.7 car was close to 600 HP.
That said, before that a prototype BMW F1 engine was used in Höttinger's BMW 320; even as early as 1979, the car was quoted at 480 HP, again from a 1.4 engine.

#5 kayemod

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Posted 24 April 2013 - 16:21

And I suppose my 'supplementary' would be - whose engines had the highest specific output (bhp/litre ?).
AAGR


A good point, while 860bhp is impressive, NASCAR engines are 5.86 litres, so specific output is a relatively modest in racing engine terms 147 bhp/litre, though less unimpressive when you consider that they're using iron blocks and pushrods to achieve that.


#6 Dale Harvey

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Posted 24 April 2013 - 21:48

I just finished watching a comparison between an Aussie V8 Supercar and an American NASCAR on the Cicuit Of The Americas. In the story that goes with it they are quoting 650 HP for the Aussie V8 and 950 HP for the NASCAR. The NASCAR engines rev to 9500 RPM and the Aussie engines are rev limited to 7500 RPM.
Dale.

#7 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 24 April 2013 - 22:23

This piece with Brian Redman only came out on Monday but is strangely topical

http://gordonkirby.c...t_is_no381.html

"On June 12 I drove with Peter Gregg again in a BMW CSL, this time at Le Mans and with a 3.5-liter turbocharged engine. This was one of a series of "art" cars BMW produced over the years, the livery designed by artists, including Alexander Calder, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and ours by Frank Stella. The car was white with sheets of graph paper covering it. It was somewhat intimidating knowing we were racing a work of art.

"The 3.5-liter turbocharged BMW had tremendous power. Too much, perhaps. Before the race Jochen Neerpasch told me to drive as fast as I could as they knew the car wouldn't last. I don't know what he thought the weak link was, but we developed an incurable oil leak and were forced to retire during the 4th hour.

"Some years later I was talking to one of the mechanics who'd worked on the car. He asked if I knew how many horsepower the car had. "Six hundred, seven hundred," I said. "No, much more," he told me. "Eight hundred and fifty, but we never told you drivers."



#8 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 24 April 2013 - 22:44

Any turbo engine cubic inch is not taken into account as they are 1.7 or 2.0 equivilancy of their capacity.
Nascar engines are no longer a production engine so you have to go back to when they were though the figures have not changed much, and they did turn 10000 rpm.
Though all the numbers are somewhat fudged anyway. Supercars are closer to 600hp and 400 ft lbs [And Nissan and MB have that as a huge wish] and Nascar are 800hp. Maybe those numbers once came on the dyno, but not in the cars for racing!!

None of these engines though are true stock block, interchangeable block maybe. But not the heads or anything else. The Ford Supercar engine is the closest, a clone of a Boss 302. But strictly a clone

#9 Thundersports

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Posted 24 April 2013 - 23:03

A handful of the Thundersaloons must have been pushing over 500bhp.

#10 john aston

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Posted 25 April 2013 - 06:36

I think there are plenty of 500bhp plus saloon cars around our various national series; I recall seeing a couple of ferocious turbo Focuses at Croft a year or two ago with reputedly 700bhp and there is a sprinkling of turbonutter Japanese jobs - Evos and Imprezas- which must be developing that sort of poke. A chap in an Impreza recently did a 1.25 at Cadwell in a Time Attack (me neither) event there- check it out on youtube- a hugely powerful car pulling 150 plus in very short order.

#11 Ray Bell

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Posted 25 April 2013 - 12:36

Cosworth bits in NASCAR?

Wait till Carrillo hears about that...

#12 kayemod

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Posted 25 April 2013 - 12:59

I suppose it's slightly irrational of me, but huge outputs of super/turbocharged engines never impress me half as much as the same thing with normally aspirated ones, an oversimplification I know, but I always think of it as winding a screw a bit tighter. Can we have a thread subdivision for the non-turbos? That way engines like the NASCAR ones might look a bit more impressive. Is the almost 100bhp jump in NASCAR outputs from the 850+ I was told to the 950bkp that Dale Harvey quoted just down to their recent adoption of fuel injection? And Ray, the guy who was telling me about the engine in 'his' NASCAR racer at Goodwood, definitely said that it had a lot of Cosworth parts and technology in it.

On NASCAR legality, interesting story emerging about the Toyota engine in Matt Kenseth's racer, Toyota cheating indeed, whoever would have have imagined that?

#13 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 25 April 2013 - 13:00

It was a pretty rubbish cheat, to have a tiny fraction shaved off one of eight rods. Unless they were testing whether it'd be picked up by the inspectors.

#14 kayemod

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Posted 25 April 2013 - 13:08

It was a pretty rubbish cheat, to have a tiny fraction shaved off one of eight rods. Unless they were testing whether it'd be picked up by the inspectors.


On the face of it, that appears to be true, it's just that the penalties imposed make me think that there's more to this story, at least in the Inspectors' minds. No doubt the full facts will emerge in time. As you say, given NASCAR's history, it seems to be a pretty minor offence, Smokey Yunick will be laughing in his grave.


#15 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 25 April 2013 - 13:27

NASCAR tends to crucify people for engine infractions, they do everything short of take away your finishing position. But that's in part because NASCAR has a rule that the guy who won on Sunday will always be the 'winner' despite what unfolds later.

#16 Bob Riebe

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Posted 25 April 2013 - 18:20

I suppose it's slightly irrational of me, but huge outputs of super/turbocharged engines never impress me half as much as the same thing with normally aspirated ones, an oversimplification I know, but I always think of it as winding a screw a bit tighter. Can we have a thread subdivision for the non-turbos? That way engines like the NASCAR ones might look a bit more impressive. Is the almost 100bhp jump in NASCAR outputs from the 850+ I was told to the 950bkp that Dale Harvey quoted just down to their recent adoption of fuel injection? And Ray, the guy who was telling me about the engine in 'his' NASCAR racer at Goodwood, definitely said that it had a lot of Cosworth parts and technology in it.

On NASCAR legality, interesting story emerging about the Toyota engine in Matt Kenseth's racer, Toyota cheating indeed, whoever would have have imagined that?

I always look at it this way if they did the same type of set-up, as the Euro blown motors use, on the NASCAR engine it would be just as far ahead of the blown four- banger as an unblown four-banger is behind the NASCAR engine.

#17 Jesper O. Hansen

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Posted 26 April 2013 - 07:19

How would a cronological time line of the most powerfull touring car racer (defenition of a touring car racer needed) look like?

Looking at NASCAR specifically Carl Kiekhaefer's NASCAR Grand National Chrysler 300Cs of the mid 1950s would be an early high water mark, but what would be their output? 300 bhp, 400 bhp ? The 7-liter Ford and Chryslers of the 1960s would be my next guess at what?, 600 bhp, culminating with the Superbird and Torino and their aerodynamic help. NASCAR Grand National from 1981 and beyond has been spaceframe chassis, leaving the nominal car as an advertising board, in my mind, and thus no longer a saloon/touring car.

When was the 500 bhp line crossed?

Jesper

Edited by Jesper O. Hansen, 26 April 2013 - 07:36.


#18 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 26 April 2013 - 07:45

Cosworth bits in NASCAR?

Wait till Carrillo hears about that...

Cosworth have quite a decent prescence in the US these days. Not sure wether they make rods, though there is a lot of different manufacturers of those too.


#19 Alfie

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Posted 26 April 2013 - 08:09

How would a cronological time line of the most powerfull touring car racer (defenition of a touring car racer needed) look like?

Looking at NASCAR specifically Carl Kiekhaefer's NASCAR Grand National Chrysler 300Cs of the mid 1950s would be an early high water mark, but what would be their output? 300 bhp, 400 bhp ? The 7-liter Ford and Chryslers of the 1960s would be my next guess at what?, 600 bhp, culminating with the Superbird and Torino and their aerodynamic help. NASCAR Grand National from 1981 and beyond has been spaceframe chassis, leaving the nominal car as an advertising board, in my mind, and thus no longer a saloon/touring car.

When was the 500 bhp line crossed?

Jesper


The Holden Commodores in the mid-late 80's were looking at 400+ (dependant on who you were talking to, tuner or driver) whilst the Cosworth 500s certainly cleared the 500 mark. Whether it was Eggenberger or Dick Johnson to achieve it first,,I can't say.


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#20 D-Type

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Posted 26 April 2013 - 09:29

I think we also need to differentiate between the 'original' concept of touring/stock car racing, namely racing modified road cars, and the current generation of NASCAR, Australian V8 and DTM which are races for purpose-built racing cars with touring car style bodies. They aren't even "silhouette" cars any more.

#21 AAGR

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Posted 26 April 2013 - 11:10

I think we also need to differentiate between the 'original' concept of touring/stock car racing, namely racing modified road cars, and the current generation of NASCAR, Australian V8 and DTM which are races for purpose-built racing cars with touring car style bodies. They aren't even "silhouette" cars any more.


Agreed. I would never have dared say that, in case someone called me biased.

In addition, in my opinion we should also disqualify cars with other-type engine transplants.

So, where does that leave the 'purest' Touring Car racers ? No longer NASCARs nor DTM cars, for sure ....

AAGR



#22 Duc-Man

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Posted 26 April 2013 - 15:09

I went to the Spa 24h race around 1990.
The race was dominated by a group A Nissan Skyline GTR R32. Afterwards I read in an article about the race that the car was driven with 750hp in practice and 550hp in the race.

#23 Bob Riebe

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Posted 26 April 2013 - 19:20

The Holden Commodores in the mid-late 80's were looking at 400+ (dependant on who you were talking to, tuner or driver) whilst the Cosworth 500s certainly cleared the 500 mark. Whether it was Eggenberger or Dick Johnson to achieve it first,,I can't say.

The Trans-Am cars were as high as 480 hp in the sixties on 305 inches cubed.
The class I cars were in the 500hp area by the early 80s.


#24 Lee Nicolle

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Posted 26 April 2013 - 23:59

The Holden Commodores in the mid-late 80's were looking at 400+ (dependant on who you were talking to, tuner or driver) whilst the Cosworth 500s certainly cleared the 500 mark. Whether it was Eggenberger or Dick Johnson to achieve it first,,I can't say.

The late VLs were making closer to 500, how useable it was is another story. As the Sierras, plenty of mumbo but wheelspin everywhere. The incar with Dick Johnson, all you heard was wheelspin off of every corner. And if he backed off it stopped as it lost boost. The Commys actually jumped off the corners harder but never had the straight line.
The Gibson Nissan Patrols also had plenty of power, reputedly around the 600 mark but were a big heavy pig. And very hard to work on, and broke lots of things. But again a turbo car, screw the boost up. Lots of power for a short period. That is why the Supercar concept came. Imported turbos had little relevance to Aussie fans. Though nor has V8 Datsuns or to a lesser extent Benzs.

Edited by Lee Nicolle, 27 April 2013 - 00:04.