25 replies to this topic

[Skouse]

Just qurious. I beleive DC set a new F1 speed record at Hockenheim last year of 361 kph (221mph). I could be mistaken though. If the McLaren road car is capable of speeds of 371 kph (231mph), what would an F1 car do with minimal downforce? Any Ideas?

[The Rock]

hmm.interesting question that,if you look at CART and the speed record last year at Fontana (241mph) i think that an F1 car could get up to around 235 or more i don't really know, but don't expect to see it any time soon as the tracks straights are too short to build up that speed.It would be interesting how a F1 car would do on an oval though.F1 cars have better power-to-weight ratios and are narrower and hence less drag aswell through the air,Oh and i believe DC records is more like 224mph i think.

[Ali_G]

no one really knows.

i would put it up some where like 240 to 250.

Withdraw all wings and rely on Splitter for downforce. The problem is that F1 does not run on any Superspeedway. Put an F1 car on a Super Speedway and you would find that it would probabley beat the CART car any day.

you have got to take a few things into consideration.

1. Superior F1 erodyanmics.
2. Slimmer body
3. Lighter weight. (hence lessd downforce used on F1 car.
4. CART more powerful, only by about 50 bhp thogh.
5. CAR uses Handford rear wing. A lot of drag.

Niall

[ehagar]

The answer is of course, that it depends on the circuit.

Sports cars have closed wheels, hence less drag and are capable of higher speeds. That doesn't mean a quicker laptime though.

CART cars can, when running full mixture have slightly about 30-50 BHP more than F-1 cars. But they usually don't. The questin is though, what is the drag co-efficient with an 'Indycar'. With the Handford device it is higher. Without it, finding out who would go faster would be a simple BHP vs. Drag equation (rolling resistance is relatively minor). Pretty simple actually. Given CART's mandated wickers and gadgets, they would probably be slower on an infinitely long straigtaway...

Wouldn't it be nice if they wouldn't just go around AVUS (the longer version) a couple of times to settle this once and for all.

[regenmeister]

I think the McLaren F1 been tested(unofficial) by a magazine or something and reached 394kph.
The 371kph was with a prototype with 50bhp less and during bad conditions.
Official stas say 371+ i think.

[Ali_G]

I think that now everyone agrees that overall an F1 car with an indefinate stragith would have a higher tp speed than an CART car.

The main reasn is that the CART car has a lot more drag with only a slight advantage in BHP.

Niall

[ehagar]

Interestingly enough, the stated drag of a 1983 generic F1 car is 1.07, and a March Indycar 1.06. A Penske PC20 1.11... On a superspeedway the Penske PC20 is 0.74...

But these are old figures. CART has adopted a 'high drag' formula for its superspeedways, and the F-1 stats are really old.

Wish there were some more current CART & F1 drag info available.

[Ali_G]

CART cars have to give off more drag.

eventhough they use Venturi's their rear wing only has 2 elements. The cars are a lot wider than F1 cars. Their wheels are wider.

Niall

[Skouse]

Muppet, Ihope they leave the cirquit alone in Montreal so we can all compare once and for all, but I agree with you, they won't. If they did, and I've mentioned this before on a previous thread, I see F1 lapping 5-8 secs faster than CART. Whattaya think?

[shelby]

Since I lived in Montreal area,I can assure you that they will change a few things on the Gilles-Villeneuve circuit.
They don't want people to do some comparasion between the two championship,for the good and the bad.

[ehagar]

Originally posted by Ali_G
CART cars have to give off more drag.

eventhough they use Venturi's their rear wing only has 2 elements. The cars are a lot wider than F1 cars. Their wheels are wider.

Niall

20 cm is alot wider? The wicker's and flat plate handfords have more to do with the drag of a CART car. The dimensions in height aren't that much different either.

As far as downforce, in street circuit trim, I'd reckon they are comparable, being that a Reynard chassis produces about 5000 lbs at 200 mph (2000 cars). But that changes alot too, because CART continually changes the underbody profiles.

I haven't found anything on wheel dimensions yet though. But Mad Max Mosley seems to have a tyre fetish, so I wouldn't be suprised if they are narrower. Getting info on the F1 technical regs is easy enough, the CART stuff... well...

[Arneal]

I think it is kind of silly to try to compare the theoretical top speed of a trimmed out F1 car to the actual top speed of a CART car. With one vehicle (F1) you are doing everything possible to hit a high topspeed (someone even suggested removing the wings) and with the other car (CART) every attempt is being made by the sanctioning body to slow the car down.

CART runs superspeedways with the parachute like Handford Device to add drag to slow the car down. Tunnel blockers are used to reduce the air flow under the car to reduce downforce so the corners need to be taken slower. Still they manage to top out above 250mph. The 241mph mentioned earlier is the lap average speed, not a top speed.

With regards to oval racing I suspect an F1 cars weight and size may go up if it were brought up to safety standards required for vehicles that can potentially hit a concrete wall at 230mph. I do not know what the respective safety standards are for the series, but it makes sense that CARTs would require more crash protection because of the higher level of risk. I imagine this is why they have the higher mandated weight.

[Ali_G]

Arneal: most people believe that an f1 car would only weight around 500 KG if not for the mandatory 600 KG weight minimum.

hence the car would not weight more as the extra weight cold be reduced by reducing ballast.

Niall

[biercemountain]

Put an F1 car on a super speedway with no wings and you would watch somebody die!

Cart cars are built for racing on these types of tracks and have setup options that maximize their capability to turn while going in excess of 200mph. An F1 car would IMO have to be reengineered to allow for running in this type environment. Besides, Cart motors are built to run 500 miles at redline. Run an F1 car around Daytona at redline and in 5 laps it would be toast.

[regenmeister]

The same goes for the gearbox then, they don't need to make that many shifts on an oval.....;)

[MattPete]

Originally posted by Ali_G
CART cars have to give off more drag.
no one really knows.

i would put it up some where like 240 to 250.

Withdraw all wings and rely on Splitter for downforce. The problem is that F1 does not run on any Superspeedway. Put an F1 car on a Super Speedway and you would find that it would probabley beat the CART car any day.

you have got to take a few things into consideration.

1. Superior F1 erodyanmics.
2. Slimmer body
3. Lighter weight. (hence lessd downforce used on F1 car.
4. CART more powerful, only by about 50 bhp thogh.
5. CAR uses Handford rear wing. A lot of drag.

Niall

First off, I think you'd need to talk to Irvine about superior erodynamics ;)

Secondly, where do you get this idea of superior F1 aerodynamics? The only minus CART has going against them is that damned Handford device introduced a few years ago. Take those off, and the CART cars with their venturis will have better aerodynamics.

Thirdly, weight, compared to aerodymics, has almost no effect on top speed along a sufficiently long straight.

Originally posted by Ali_G
CART cars have to give off more drag.
no one really knows. eventhough they use Venturi's their rear wing only has 2 elements. The cars are a lot wider than F1 cars. Their wheels are wider.

Niall

2 elements? Do you even know what you're talking about? On superspeedways, they use single element element wings. They're not there so much to produce ground huggy downforce, but more to adjust the aerodynamic balance. Take a gander at these very trim, low drag, single element wings from the 1999 Fontana race:

http://www.champcar....ana/index4.html

http://www.speedcent...m_pavement.html

http://www.speedcent...hadows_big.html

[MattPete]

Originally posted by ehagar


20 cm is alot wider? The wicker's and flat plate handfords have more to do with the drag of a CART car. The dimensions in height aren't that much different either.

I wonder which produces more drag: the Handford device, or the F1 airbox?

[Ali_G]

Matt: For a start. As an F1 car is lighter its optimal setting for a Supe Speedway would mean it would be running less downforce than the CART car.

2. On road courses the CART car has its rear wing limited to 2 elements. The Handford device is practically a normal wing with a restrictor plate hanging of the back of it.

3. the Handford Mrk2 surely produces more drag than the airbox in usage with NA engines.

Niall

[ehagar]

I thought we were talking about an infinitely long straightaway...

Weight wouldn't bloody matter too much. Power and drag would be your primary variables.

Of course in real life its a totally different story.

[MattPete]

Originally posted by Ali_G
Matt: For a start. As an F1 car is lighter its optimal setting for a Supe Speedway would mean it would be running less downforce than the CART car.

2. On road courses the CART car has its rear wing limited to 2 elements. The Handford device is practically a normal wing with a restrictor plate hanging of the back of it.

Niall,

I wonder if CART has any specs mandating the minimum size of a road course wing? If not, then on a non-oval top-speed run, there would be nothing stopping CART from using danty pre-Handford type wings and calling them a road course setup.

Also, I have this sneaky suspision that a NASCAR stock car might be the spoiler in our theoretical top-speed contest. I remember back in the 1980's Road and Track had a shoot-out at the Ohio Transportation Research center test track between a NASCAR stock car and and Al Holbert's Porsche 962 in Le Mans trim (pre-Mulsanne chicane). Much to my shock, the stock car won, and by a convincing margin.

It might not brake or handle worth a crap, but those smooth stock car bodies must have a helluva lot less drag than any formula car.

BTW: I know there were rumors that at Michigan, the front wings were trimmed to produce a slight bit of negative downforce. Again, that illustrates that the wings are so small and produce so little downforce that their main use is for aerodynamic balance. This suggests that the tunnels, even with the tunnel blockers, produced sufficient downforce for CART drivers to take these track flat out.

[berge]

-for top speed the only things that matter are drag and horsepower.
-weight has absolutely nothing to do with the ultimate top speed of any car capable of more than 60-70mph.
-the mclaren f1 ROAD CAR actually accelerates quicker than the 1993 mclaren/ford with the 3.5L v-10 beyond 125mph
-f1 and indycars have horrible cd. because of their exposed wheels, a winston stock car probably does have a higher top speed than either of its open-wheel cousins.
-re which has a higher top speed, f1 vs cart. probably very similar.

[MacFan]

Peter Collins of Benetton said in a 1986 interview with CAR magazine that their then current car would do 300mph without wings. Admittedly it had 1200hp to the current cars' 850-ish, but the current cars must be much more aerodynamically efficient than the larger, cruder cars of the mid-80s. I suspect a current car without wings would be faster than a 1986 Benetton would be.

Niall, just to reinforce a point made already, weight still has nothing to do with top speed!

[MattPete]

Originally posted by MacFan
Peter Collins of Benetton said in a 1986 interview with CAR magazine that their then current car would do 300mph without wings.

Of course, that begs the question: what do we mean by a CART or F1 car? What's within the regulations, meaning they could be able to reshape the bodywork such that although it doesn't match any of the current configurations used on any circuits, it's still within the rules. Or do we mean any setup from off the shelf parts (save gearing), such as the most aerodynamically smooth setup either series uses on current circuits.

[Skouse]

Originally posted by MattPete


Of course, that begs the question: what do we mean by a CART or F1 car? What's within the regulations, meaning they could be able to reshape the bodywork such that although it doesn't match any of the current configurations used on any circuits, it's still within the rules. Or do we mean any setup from off the shelf parts (save gearing), such as the most aerodynamically smooth setup either series uses on current circuits.

There's only one way to do a fair comparison between the two series'. Have them both race on the same circuit under similar temperatures and with no changes to the circuit. This can be done next year in Montreal if they leave the track alone. This way the teams are responsilbe for getting the optimum setup for their cars. The comparison can then follow. I still say, under these circumstances, that F1 will lap 5-8 secs faster. Cheers.

[Locai]

It's interesting that everybody here is talking about which is "faster" when every year the governing bodies of each circus (I mean "circuit") is trying to slow them down!

I remember the first year of the IRL at Indy. They were using year-old CART cars. Luyendyk hit over 240mph and they were all saying that if he lost control he would be dead. They were also afraid that the car might not hold together if it went any faster. That was one reason the IRL went with non-turbos (possibly the one smart thing the IRL has done).

It's impossible to say which formula is "faster" because they both have so many rules in-place to slow them down. You can't say "if you change" this or that because then they wouldn't be true to the formula anyways!

[Ali_G]

Originally posted by MacFan
Peter Collins of Benetton said in a 1986 interview with CAR magazine that their then current car would do 300mph without wings. Admittedly it had 1200hp to the current cars' 850-ish, but the current cars must be much more aerodynamically efficient than the larger, cruder cars of the mid-80s. I suspect a current car without wings would be faster than a 1986 Benetton would be.

Niall, just to reinforce a point made already, weight still has nothing to do with top speed!

I know it doesn't. your right.

What I was saying was for Super Speed ways. As An F1 car is lighter it would be running less downforce than a CART car as this would be its optimum setup. hence less drag.

Niall