13 replies to this topic

[thomaskomm]

Hello Guys!
I have a question, please help me:

How many G-forces had the Champcar Driver with Speed about 250 mph of the tracks in turns like California or Michigan. I know this was one of the hardest races they drove.
A interessant question for me, only i don´t know.....

Thanks for replys

Thomas

[McGuire]

Well, they weren't quite that fast. The all-time CART lap record was set by Gil de Ferran at Fontana in 2000, at 241+ mph. The trap speeds for this lap would be somewhere around 6-8 mph higher than the average speed, the cornering speeds about 6-8 mph lower in the broadest ballpark terms, which is to say I am guessing. (Depending upon the boost and aero package in place that specific year, which I really don't remember to tell the truth. )

Assuming a somewhat more representative cornering speed of say 230 mph, the lateral g loadings are then somewhere in the range of 3 to 4g, depending upon instant cornering radius. V^2/r, so 230 mph through a constant 1000 ft radius is 3.5g. However, on a banked race track only part of that is "true" lateral in terms of cornering force/tire grip.

[Fat Boy]

I can't remember right off the top of my head, but I think the G load at those tracks was in the neighborhood of 3-3.5 G's. Visually, it was very, very fast. Too fast for good racing, actually.

The tracks that were crazy were the short ovals with the massive wings. 1997 at Nazareth with less than 19 second laps. That was stupid fast and over 4 G's.

[thomaskomm]

Thanks a lot for yours replys!
Yes the speedway tracks have tighter turns. They drive very fast. But i mean on the superspeedways like Michigan the Quali times and note they drive in the race about 500 Miles!
4 G´s are a hell of lot forces! They drive 500 x 3- 3,5 G-force. Nascar driver are a little bit more tougher cause they drive 4-5 hours in the past on speedway.
I remember 2001 the Champcars drove in Texas Superspeedway... in praxis the Driver had so many G-forces (until 5 G´s) that they cancel the race...

Thomas

[rookie]

IIRC one of the problems they had at texas was the g-force was of a longitudinal nature instead of lateral on some parts of the track due to the steep banking,

meaning that the drivers were experiencing multiple g's of compression follwed by multiple g's of lift, almost ripping the helmet of the drivers heads after it had tried to squashe it on....leading to the dizziness & balckouts some drivers experienced.

[Fat Boy]

The problem at Texas was the high banks and high speed. It's a smaller oval than Michigan/Fontana, but bigger than the short ovals (1.5 miles). You end up with corner radii that are small, but with the high banks, the speeds were tremendous.

The combined vertical and lateral G's (the vector of the 2) was over 5 G's. It was really brutal. Drivers were starting to get vertigo like fighter pilots.

I remember watching the in-car footage and thinking it was like a real-life video game.

[BRIAN GLOVER]

Vertigo, in non medical terms, is when the brain tries to orientate its situation spatially without visual reference.There are many motion sensors in the human body and the main motion sensor is the inner ear. You have two. The inner ear has 3 circular tubes placed on the 3 axis filled with a liquid. If this unit is rotated on any of these axis the fluid momentarily remains stationary which deflects little hairs that grow on the inside of these tubes. This deflection is transmitted to your ECM. Without visual reference, your situation awareness is inaccurate. We don't have LINS( Laser Inertial Navigation System). Anybody and not only fighter pilots experience this condition when visual reference is lost. The diameter of the tubes and viscosity of the fluid can vary from individual to individual and the effects will vary. What the IRL drivers experienced was not vertigo, but a disorientation caused by blood flow to the right of the brain. Reduced oxygen to the inner ear and left eye causes a nauseating experience and dizziness. Pilots do not experience this asymmetric blood drain from the brain and in high positive G maneuvers, lack of oxygen due to blood drain from the brain, if sustained, will cause tunnel vision, then no vision then black out or no consciousness.

Here is an exercise you all can perform at home. Sit on a rotating bar stool and blindfold yourself. You must have no audio or visual reference. Your buddy will begin to rotate you, say to the left. He asks you which way are you going.
"To the left".
"which way are you going".
To the left
Which way are you going?
Left
What's happening now?
I'm slowing down. ( The RPM has not changed)
What's happening now?
I'm slowing down. (constant RPM)
And now.
I'm stopping.
Now.
I'm stopped. (Still constant RPM)

Stop the chair.

" Which way are you going?"
"To the right"
How fast?
Very fast.
Now?
Slowing down.

Even when the chair is stopped and the fluid has stopped in the inner ear, you could still think that you are in motion.
Remove blindfold. You will experience extreme vertigo. You eyes will move left to right at 100 HTZ. You could get sick. Have a Camcorder handy and a garbage bag.
Imaging this happening on all three axis. Part of your instrument rating, you must recover to normal straight and level flight using your flight instruments after the instructor has performed some wild aerobatics while you are blindfolded.
This is how young Kennedy killed himself and two others. He could not fly instruments. Sure wish Ted was with them.

Originally posted by Fat Boy
The problem at Texas was the high banks and high speed. It's a smaller oval than Michigan/Fontana, but bigger than the short ovals (1.5 miles). You end up with corner radii that are small, but with the high banks, the speeds were tremendous.

The combined vertical and lateral G's (the vector of the 2) was over 5 G's. It was really brutal. Drivers were starting to get vertigo like fighter pilots.

I remember watching the in-car footage and thinking it was like a real-life video game.

[desmo]

Originally posted by BRIAN GLOVER
Sure wish Ted was with them.

That's sick!

[Fat Boy]

Originally posted by BRIAN GLOVER
Sure wish Ted was with them.

I nominate for 'Quote of the Year'.




Also, it was CART, not IRL. The IRL goes a little slower and they still race there. They're also bloody fast, but apparently under some sort of G threshold where the body stops acting right.

[BRIAN GLOVER]

I don't thinks so. AJ Foyt refered to the drivers as sissies who complained.

Originally posted by Fat Boy



I nominate for 'Quote of the Year'.




Also, it was CART, not IRL. The IRL goes a little slower and they still race there. They're also bloody fast, but apparently under some sort of G threshold where the body stops acting right.

[McGuire]

It was a CART event that was supposed to take place April 28, 2001, and one of the most bizarre deals ever go to down in major league racing in North America. In this case the truth is not out there.

[Fat Boy]

Care to enlighten us?

Are you saying that a bunch of guys that were going to jump ship anyway were trying to submarine the series? Hard to prove, but wouldn't suprise me.

All the series had to do was stick the road course wings on the cars and slow them down that way, if they wanted to. A 2" gurney probaby would have done the trick. Artificial pack racing isn't hard to make.

[McGuire]

Originally posted by Fat Boy
Care to enlighten us?

Are you saying that a bunch of guys that were going to jump ship anyway were trying to submarine the series? Hard to prove, but wouldn't suprise me.

All the series had to do was stick the road course wings on the cars and slow them down that way, if they wanted to. A 2" gurney probaby would have done the trick. Artificial pack racing isn't hard to make.

No, I am not saying that at all.

I have no reason whatsoever to believe the drivers racing in CART in 2001 had any plans or intentions at that time of driving in the IRL in 2003. Nor do I believe any CART drivers have ever been involved in any plans to sabotage CART in any way. Nor do I believe the cancellation was a deliberate attempt to sabotage CART by anyone. This doesn't have anything to do with any of that nonsense. If you are asking me what I think, I find it impossible to believe this magnificent screwup from top to bottom could have been planned by anyone, let alone successfully executed. Give me a break. Nobody is that smart or that devious.

It amuses the hell out of me that anything to do with either IRL or CART (now CCWS) always raises suggestions of some conspiracy involving the other. That's all a load of rubbish. Come to think of it, since you brought it up you may be the one with the overactive imagination in this instance.

However, since you brought up the drivers, here is something interesting: six drivers from the aborted CART event in 2001 also raced at the same track in the 2003 IRL season finale. At this race, de Ferran's pole time (23.5301) was only six-tenths slower than Kenny Brack's pole time for the CART event (22.854*). Most of the field for the October '03 IRL race was quick enough to qualify for the 2001 CART event -- you know, the one that had to be cancelled due to excessive speed and resultant g loadings eh. However, none of the drivers in the IRL event experienced any such physiological problems attributed to high g loadings. What, if anything, do we make of that?

*This fact has been somewhat obscured by the figures used by the two series to compute their average lap speeds, the numbers most people use to gauge performance on ovals. CART T&S used a track distance of 1.482 miles to compute its average lap speeds at Texas Motor Speedway, while IRL uses 1.455 miles. It's the same track and the same groove, but the two distances used result in different average lap speeds for the same lap time. For example, Brack's 2001 CART pole speed of 233.447 mph becomes 229 mph if the IRL lap distance is used, while de Ferran's 2003 IRL pole speed of 222.864 mph becomes 227 mph if CART had timed it.

[Fat Boy]

Easy trigger. I thought you had some sort of conspiracy theory to float, not me. Let me put this differently. Could you elaborate on your statement that 'the truth is not out there'?

The only reason that I wrote what I did is that I remember Andretti being very vocal about it.

You are right, though. The IRL cars are as fast as the CART cars were there.