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Racecars are only really slowed down by two things.. budget and rules. Every year the cars get faster as teams budgets optimize the rule sets more and more. Oft
by namecheapTA 4y ago
Racecars are only really slowed down by two things.. budget and rules. Every year the cars get faster as teams budgets optimize the rule sets more and more. Often rules are created to slow the cars down, and to limit spending. If you let people spend unlimited money and have totally open rules, very quickly you'd have cars so fast they are completely unsafe on the tracks they are designated to race on.
MotogGP for example has tightened rules basically every few years to lower the gap between the top tier teams and the low budget teams, and to slow the bikes down. Even with that, the bikes top speeds are still rising and talk of unsafe speeds at certain corners grows every year.
If you just allowed 20% larger engine sizes and custom traction control, and variable aero, bike speeds would rise so high people would die every few races instead of every few years.
- sojournerc 4y agoThe other thing that slows them down is the need for a meaty human in the cockpit. A fan car (creating downforce by pulling the car to the ground) can go faster than a human driver could reasonably sustain without passing out in the corners
- namecheapTA 4y agoThat would be a heck of a suction to help a car produce several Gs. 'Fan cars' give more traction for sure.. I'm not so sure about pass out levels of traction.
- Gwypaas 4y agoThe cars already produce 4-5 G when braking and in higher speed corners.
- sph 4y agoThe Silverstone Esses are about 5.2G in a Formula 1 car, and they repeat that experience 50 times on a racing Sunday. I think Copse and Stowe are very intense G-wise as well. No wonder F1 drivers have necks as big as their head.
- sojournerc 4y agoIt's definitely possible. This 2001 CART race was cancelled due to concerns about driver safety because of high sustained g-forces. And that was just an open wheel racer like an Indy car. > There was fear of the possibility that drivers could suffer "grey-outs" or lose consciousness from g-LOC. It is also likely that the high g-loads would have been outside the design limits for the HANS device, which was required for all CART races at oval tracks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600
- spaetzleesser 4y agoA fan car works with ground effect. F1 regulations constantly fiddle with the floor to keep ground effect in check.
- spaetzleesser 4y agoSeems you got downvoted. No idea why. You are right on. I am pretty sure you could build cars that a human driver couldn’t drive because of acceleration in turns and braking.