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Two-wheel racing..[four wheel cars]

Started by dbw , Mar 24 2004 18:22

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14 replies to this topic

#1 dbw

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Posted 24 March 2004 - 18:22

in a post on lotus elites it was noted that when raced hard they would tend to go up on two wheels...i have seen several photos of such antics....the other car ,famously photographed often on only two wheels ,was the brecia bugatti....any other cars come to mind that peformed this act with regularity??[being on two wheels for an instant on the way over doesn't count...the same goes for three wheel morgans as there is no other way to race them..]

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#2 rdrcr

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Posted 24 March 2004 - 18:46

How many times have we seen photos of Jim Clark flogging the daylights out of a Ford Cortina with this attitude?

Posted Image

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#3 Frank S

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Posted 24 March 2004 - 18:57

And that Scarab:

Posted Image

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#4 rdrcr

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Posted 24 March 2004 - 19:36

Then there are these nut-cases who are always on three wheels at any given moment and often on two or even one!

Small wonder with 800hp yanking 1,400 lbs around a 1/4 mile oval.

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#5 Buford

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Posted 24 March 2004 - 20:15

I went from racing Mini Coopers on 3 wheels to racing what rdrcr just showed you. Who needs 4 wheels to race? I never did.

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#6 Rob G

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Posted 24 March 2004 - 20:49

Top fuel dragsters get up on two wheels all the time, but of course it's the two front wheels that lift off the ground. I believe it was Don Garlits who got such a massive wheelie that the car rotated 180 degrees on its rear end and ended up facing backwards going somewhere near 200 mph. He got the car stopped by flooring the throttle. :lol:

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#7 D-Type

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Posted 25 March 2004 - 22:06

I remember most DKW saloons taking the hairpin at Nakuru on three wheels and the fast boys such as Bob Gerrish on two!

What are those things that rcdr posted? Midgets? Sprint cars? super modifieds? I genuinely don't know my US classes other than NASCAR and Champcar

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#8 Buford

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Posted 25 March 2004 - 22:36

Those are Sprint Cars both with a wing and without a wing. They are raced in the USA, Canada. Australia, and New Zealand. He said they race on quarter mile tracks but usually it is 1/2 mile. I raced one non wing on the mile track in 1980 in Sedalia, Missouri. There were 36 drivers there that day and 13 went to the hospital. I don't think they ever ran a mile track again, or if they did, it was not non wing. Sprint cars have the power to weight ratio of a F1 car and run wheel to wheel and actually pass. The winged races however have far less passing than the non wing racing where side by side action is the norm.

My story of the first time I raced one of these and the mess I made of it, the fireball, and the heroic rescue can be found on this thread if you are interested starting at post 69.

http://forums.atlasf...hlight=fireball

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#9 D-Type

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Posted 26 March 2004 - 00:58

Thanks for the explanation, Buford. :up:

And thank you for pointing me to that thread. I've spent the last two hours reading it - through the tears of laughter. :rotfl:

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#10 Rob Semmeling

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Posted 26 March 2004 - 09:01

How about Hans Stuck in a BMW?

http://www.hansstuck...ges/hsp1972.jpg

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#11 Buford

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Posted 26 March 2004 - 11:23

He was one of my wildmen favorites.

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#12 mctshirt

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Posted 26 March 2004 - 19:23

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#13 Aanderson

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Posted 26 March 2004 - 23:05

Originally posted by rdrcr
Then there are these nut-cases who are always on three wheels at any given moment and often on two or even one!

Small wonder with 800hp yanking 1,400 lbs around a 1/4 mile oval.

[

And,

There were several drivers in the Offy Roadster era in USAC who drove the 1st and 3rd turns (at least those two) at Indy, Milwaukee, and other paved ovals on three wheels (they seemed to have regarded the left front tire as little more than a "landing gear" to support the car when going down the straightaways.

Pat Flaherty comes to mind here. I believe that he preferred his early Watson Roadsters set up that way, having seen film of him going through Indy's turn one with the left front 3-4 inches off the pavement.

Art Anderson

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#14 Teapot

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Posted 27 March 2004 - 14:21

After the rear axle scheme was redesigned Alfa Romeo "Giulia Gta" and "Gtam" were prone to lift the inner wheels on sharp bends.

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#15 diego

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Posted 28 March 2004 - 19:38

Hey DBW -- interesting thread!

I'm reading Ludvigsen's reissue of "Excellence" (am almost done with 1 of 3 volumes), and I keep reading about all these weird solutions that the guys at Porsche came up with to keep front or rear wheels from lifting off the ground.

Of course, I know given your current stable you are intimately familiar with these already!

Here's another one: first generation M3 racers were almost Cortina-like in their cornering behavior