20 replies to this topic

[vapaokie]

Any further questions on why the hated restrictor plates are used?-

from jayski.com

Rusty hits 228mph at Talladega: #2-Rusty Wallace gave a new meaning to the term "high speed communication" on Wednesday afternoon when he piloted his Miller Lite Dodge at speeds up to 228 mph at Talladega Superspeedway. "We hit 228 (mph) at the end of the straightaway and averaged 221 (mph) for that overall lap segment," an excited Wallace said late Wednesday afternoon as he prepared to head back home to North Carolina. "It was a helluva deal that I certainly will remember for the rest of my life. We'd all been wondering what it would feel like to run at Talladega again without the (restrictor-) plates and now I know. I'll bet we could be running speeds up to 235 (mph) without the plates if we spent time doing some tweaking. But I'll tell you this - there's no way we could be out there racing at those speeds," Wallace offered. "It was neat to be out there running that fast by myself, but it would be insane to think we could have a pack of cars out there doing that."
Wallace's high-speed opportunity came at the request of NASCAR officials on behalf of series sponsor NEXTEL and Racing Radios, the Hampton, Ga.,-based company that serves as the "Official 2-Way Radio provider" for all three of the major NASCAR racing series. "I've enjoyed a long-standing relationship with Racing Radios and I jumped at the opportunity to assist them with their 'Communication of the Future' program for NASCAR," Wallace said. "We were invited to bring our Miller Lite Dodge superspeedway car down for the test to assure quality audio at high rates of speed. The NASCAR, NEXTEL and Racing Radios officials were all extremely pleased at the end of the day, so I'd say that we did a good job for them." Wallace's speed far exceeded the official track qualifying record of 212.809mph (44.998 seconds), set by Bill Elliott on April 30, 1987.
"I guess it was about as official as you could get as we were operating under the watchful eyes of NASCAR," chuckled crew chief Larry Carter, who flew to Talladega with Wallace after testing at Sonoma, Calif., on Tuesday. "John Darby (NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series Director) and Buster Auton (long-time series official who has served as the pace car driver since 1997) were in charge, along with officials from Racing Radios and NEXTEL. So, there were plenty of witnesses on hand.(Tom Roberts PR)(6-10-2004)

[Psychoman]

Originally posted by vapaokie
"It was neat to be out there running that fast by myself, but it would be insane to think we could have a pack of cars out there doing that."

But the reason that there are packs of cars I thought was because of the restrictor plates... still, at 230-ish I don't think the current Cup cars should race. Now if the frames shattered a la Indycars (or perhaps fluorescent bulbs), maybe the effects of the impact dissipation would make things a little safer.

[jondoe955]

"We were invited to bring our blahblahblah superduperspeedway car down for the test to assure quality audio at high rates of speed.

WTF??? Do they think radio waves travel at the speed of sound? And that an additional 30mph would make a difference? Maybe they wanted to hear Merle Haggard broadcast at 220.
Science (or bullshit) marches on!

[Buford]

Hee hee. Yeah that's what I was thinking too. If they really wanted to test that they would use a CART/OWS car which would probably lap at 270MPH or more.

[random]

What a bunch of horsepuckey. They couldn't "race" at those speeds? Please... Maybe Old-man Rusty doesn't 'want' to, but I know the young guys could.

I suspect it might be safer for them to run at 230, all spread out, than the 195mph 'all bunched together' as they do now.

CART and Earl have run 230, 240+ on the ovals for ages...

[DEVO]

didn't some cart drivers to start to black out at those speeds (230+mph) at the texas oval? so yeah the cars can handle it but the drivers can't.

anyway i'm impressed that a "brick" can be pushed around a track at over 200mph.

[Jerry Lee]

Originally posted by DEVO
didn't some cart drivers to start to black out at those speeds (230+mph) at the texas oval? so yeah the cars can handle it but the drivers can't.

anyway i'm impressed that a "brick" can be pushed around a track at over 200mph.

The dizzy thing at Texas was due to the fact that they were turning almost constantly. They brain didn't have enough time to "rest" on the straights before they were turning again. I wasn't just the fact they were going fast, it was that they were going that fast on a shorter oval.

[ehagar]

Originally posted by Buford
Hee hee. Yeah that's what I was thinking too. If they really wanted to test that they would use a CART/OWS car which would probably lap at 270MPH or more.

Doubt it. An Open wheel car is too draggy with its front wheels exposed. I don't have the drag coefficient for an open wheel car in front of me (got a book somewhere), but a stock car's Cd would be lower. Given that Stock cars now have over 700 bhp, in a straight line they would be faster.

[Nasty McBastard]

its a bit of a swings and roundabouts deal.....

superspeedway races are dodgy enough as it is... tacking an extra 25MPH average speed onto what they do IS asking for trouble....

but half the problems they have wouldnt happen if it werent plate racing....



either way... 220+ average for a tintop is pretty impressive.

[vapaokie]

Rest of the article on nascar.com

http://www.nascar.co...dega/index.html

IMO, I think the audio test was more a matter of dealing with the noise at high speed rather than dealing with the speed of the car.

Also for comparison, April Talledaega pole this year was 191.180 (Ricky Rudd). In other words, Rusty was going roughly 30 mph faster in this "test."

[Buford]

Originally posted by ehagar


Doubt it. An Open wheel car is too draggy with its front wheels exposed. I don't have the drag coefficient for an open wheel car in front of me (got a book somewhere), but a stock car's Cd would be lower. Given that Stock cars now have over 700 bhp, in a straight line they would be faster.

Well at Indy CART was going 239 when Nascar was going 180 so I cannot imagine a OWS car wouldn't be at least at 260 MPH at Talledega, if the driver could handle it.

[ehagar]

Originally posted by Buford


Well at Indy CART was going 239 when Nascar was going 180 so I cannot imagine a OWS car wouldn't be at least at 260 MPH at Talledega, if the driver could handle it.

What I am thinking of is a theoretical maximum speed. On a relatively flat track like Indy, downforce helps.

Now lets say you had a flat track with really, really long straights, say Avus. The only two factors in top speed would be horsepower and drag. Stock cars have similar bhp to an IRL/OWRS car and less drag. Therefore, it is theoretically possible that they could be faster at the right track.

I did a maximum speed calculation for a CART car in Indy Trim (80s data) and the top speed came somewhere around 240 or so mph. How much faster they could go if they adjusted settings to a Talledega like track I don't know.

[Rob G]

Originally posted by ehagar
I did a maximum speed calculation for a CART car in Indy Trim (80s data) and the top speed came somewhere around 240 or so mph. How much faster they could go if they adjusted settings to a Talledega like track I don't know.

IIRC one or two of the champ cars (driven by Gugelmin and Blundell perhaps?) topped out at 250 at Fontana the year before CART stepped in to slow the cars down on the superspeedways.

[Buford]

Yeah - since Rusty's car had the restrictor plate removed, I was assuming it would be fair for the OWS car to bump up the boost and adjust wings for high speed. Rusty said they could have gone faster if they worked on the aero too. I agree, at Indy the nearly 60 MPH difference is downforce in the corners.

[bear]

Tracy ran 248 mph tire testing for Penske at Indy years ago, 270 sounds very scary anywhere though.

[McGuire]

The tire manufacturers don't want to be involved with sustained speeds above 250 mph in competition.

[biercemountain]

Originally posted by Rob G

IIRC one or two of the champ cars (driven by Gugelmin and Blundell perhaps?) topped out at 250 at Fontana the year before CART stepped in to slow the cars down on the superspeedways.

It was Gil de Farran driving a Penske, and I believe the lap average was in the 220mph range with top speeds of over 240mph on the back straight. At the time it was the fastest ever qualifying speed for an oval. Don't know if it still stands though.


Back to the Nascar speeds. It's amazing that a Nextel Cup car can go almost as fast as the almighty Porsche 917/30 did at Talledega. And that's without the 1,500hp that Donohue had on tap. Guess it says a lot about aerodynamics.

[Spunout]

I am not sure how much point there is in comparing "top speeds" of open-wheel cars since it´s all about how much wing you use. CART cars reached 250 MPH even though they still weren´t set up for maximum top speed. Back in 80s when Gilles Villeneuve had a drag race against F-14 his Ferrari was set up for 250 MPH (with front wing removed). After much less dramatic changes in a drag race against Typhoon Eurofighter Michael Schumacher had his car set up for 250 MPH. No one knows how fast OWRS/F1 cars really are, but with "maximum top speed setup" close to 300 MPH is more than realistic (actually, I recall Schumi talking about 300 MPH, too?)

NASCAR - I don´t believe the cars are safe enough for 220 MPH racing.

[McGuire]

Gil De Ferran's one lap average at Fontana in 2000 was 241.428 mph. His trap speed on the backstretch was reportedly 248 mph.

The four-lap qualifying record at Indy was set in 1996 by Arie Luyendyk at 236.986 mph. He also holds the official one-lap record at 237.498 mph, as well as the fastest lap ever recorded at the Speedway, 239.230 mph (which is not deemed "official" at Indy as it was turned in practice on Friday, not in an official qualifying attempt). Luyendyk's trap speed on this lap was 247 mph.

[Lantern]

Originally posted by DEVO
didn't some cart drivers to start to black out at those speeds (230+mph) at the texas oval? so yeah the cars can handle it but the drivers can't.

anyway i'm impressed that a "brick" can be pushed around a track at over 200mph.

Due to Texas being a 1.5 mile highly banked oval with barely any straights, the drivers were subjected to -G forces that kept the flow of blood from reaching their brains, thus the blackouts. Talladega and other legitimate "superspeedways"(2.5 miles+) should be allowed to be what they are, otherwise they should be removed from the schedule. They continue to provide fans(those who enjoy racing and not horrific multicar crashes) with little to no real racing compared to their smaller counterparts.



Don't get me wrong.....I fully understand that in its current form a NASCAR chassis shouldn't be subjected to anything close to a crash over 160mph(much less probably) due to their inflexible nature that puts more direct force on the driver during a crash.

However if the cars are to remain the same so that it is easier for NASCAR to doctor the competition then something MUST be done about the tracks or restrictor plates in general. A simple rpm limit would help a little.....or perhaps different engines for the larger tracks to steer away from this so called racing where you must ride with the wind and MUST have friends on the track to win or even be near the front.........I will stop now as I have started a tangent that I don't have time to finish...LOL

[dbltop]

The pole speed at the 2000 Michigan CART race was 240+ but I'm not sure by how much.