3 replies to this topic

[fotoguzzi]

I have forgotten the magazine, and I'm not sure if the author frequents this forum, but there was a nice essay in the early days of the ground-effect Lotus F1 cars. The article followed the Lotus moment by moment through a high-speed corner and described what was happening to the tyres, suspension, chassis and driver. 

 

Does anyone have a citation, please?

[Tim Murray]

I suspect you may be thinking about an article in Motor magazine called 'The 150 mph corner'. This appeared in the 3rd March 1979 issue, written by Mike McCarthy in association with Peter Wright of Lotus. They analysed all the loads acting on a Lotus 79 as it negotiated a particular corner at Paul Ricard at around 147 mph. They made regular reference to a similar article from 1953 called 'The 100 mph corner', written by Laurence Pomeroy and featuring similar analysis on an Aston Martin. They were able to demonstrate how much aerodynamics had increased cornering speeds.

[fotoguzzi]

That MUST be it! Thank you so much. Funny how memory distorts. Could'a swore it was 2g, but being a follow-on to the earlier article, the title you suggest makes much more sense! Thanks again!

[VWV]

I suspect you may be thinking about an article in Motor magazine called 'The 150 mph corner'. This appeared in the 3rd March 1979 issue, written by Mike McCarthy in association with Peter Wright of Lotus. They analysed all the loads acting on a Lotus 79 as it negotiated a particular corner at Paul Ricard at around 147 mph. They made regular reference to a similar article from 1953 called 'The 100 mph corner', written by Laurence Pomeroy and featuring similar analysis on an Aston Martin. They were able to demonstrate how much aerodynamics had increased cornering speeds.

Peter Wright wrote a similar article in Road & Track July 1984 called Speed Graphic. This article compared 3 great drivers (Mario, Ronnie and JYS) at Paul Ricard driving an instrumented Lotus 78. The article used friction circle or G-G diagrams to compare the 3 drivers through a set of corners.

 

I have never seen the Motor article so I can't tell how similar the two articles are.