MattFurness wrote:
I’m totally opposed to these artificial barriers
that stifle innovation.
There are those of us that feel automobile racing should be a
competition among builders. But there are others who feel it should
be a competition among drivers. Those who think it’s a driver
competition are always in favor of stifling any and all innovation;
in fact, a field of identical cars is the ideal, and that’s exactly
what many racing venues offer these days.
For a long while, F1 was the one place where competition among
carmakers reigned and innovation ran rampant. Unfortunately, it
appears those days are gone.
They would have been better advised to
tolerate turbocharged engines but successively reduce the engine size
to keep the competition relatively even.
The problem with that idea is that, once turbochargers are permitted,
there basically is no limit to the power available – you just turn
the boost up. Before the turbos were banned, they were getting over
1000 hp from 1.5 litre engines with 60+ psi of boost.
There is, of course, a fundamental problem with engine size limits.
To maximize power output for a given engine size, you either turbo it
with gobs of boost or you rev the bejeezus out of it. Since F1
banned turbos, they’re now at a reported bore/stroke ratio of nearly
five and are revving to 19K – and would happily go farther if not
for regulations limiting revs.
The far, far better way to go here would have been the way the ALMS
has gone: Air intake orifices. It doesn’t matter what you put
behind it, you can only get so much air through a particular size
hole. Establish a particular orifice size and let the builders use a
turbo, or a big V8, or whatever behind it.
Of course, the ALMS put some other restrictions on there, too, which
were well-intentioned but have somewhat mucked up the works. For one
thing, they established a minimum vehicle weight – which isn’t a bad
idea, it keeps teams from spending huge wads of money on carbon fiber
this and titanium that. But it also means there’s no downside to
using a heavy engine, so the Audi has gone to a huge diesel V12!
They’re kickin’ a** and takin’ names with an engine that apparently
doesn’t rev very high (the sound is amazing, like they’re shifting at
4000 rpm or something) but has 800+ ft-lb of torque. If not for the
weight minimum, they’d be losing badly to similar cars with gasoline
engines that weigh a couple hundred pounds less.
They also set up their P2 category to have smaller air intakes but
also less weight, with the result that they are about the same speed
as the P1 and it’s a toss-up which one is going to win overall in any
given race.
Just the same, the P1 and P2 classes in ALMS are my favorite racing
venue today. I don’t like the GT classes as well because they keep
messing those up, such as when they just decided to make the Aston
Martins carry a couple hundred pounds of extra weight so the
Corvettes could beat them.
This would have encouraged
further development in this field and who knows where we would be now
with this technology.
Besides the air intake orifice, another limitation I’d like to see
would be minimal driver input. Ideally, I think the driver should be
limited to having a gas pedal, a brake pedal, a steering wheel and a
lever that selects Forward, Reverse, or Park. Everything else that
needs doing should be automatically done by the car, including
shifting, weight jacking, you name it. F1 transmissions are
basically automatic already, but the driver has the capacity to
override it. With a requirement that racing transmissions be
automatic, think how much better automatic transmissions for street
cars would get. No longer would we have to put up with slushomatics,
we’d eventually get what’s essentially a manual transmission operated
by servos (which is basically what the F1 transmissions are).
Another thing I’d like to see would be movable airfoils. Jim Hall
introduced those in his Chaparral back in the 60’s – and he used an
A/T and operated the wing with his left foot – but they were soon
prohibited because nobody else had an A/T and hence their left feet
were busy. Again, with the minimum driver input requirement
mentioned above, I’d like to see movable airfoils that are controlled
automatically by the car. Apply the brakes and watch air brakes
deploy. Turn the steering wheel and watch airfoils move to help the
car turn.
And one more thing I’d like to see: ground clearance. They tried to
regulate ground clearance back in the day, but Lotus came out with
cars that would pass tech inspection and then “squat” at speed. Now
they’ve apparently given up. Here’s the fix: You know those little
steel domes they sometimes use to separate lanes of traffic? They
make a really big whump when you hit one with a tire. Well, I’d like
to see a few installed across the road on a race course. Paint lines
leading to them so you know where they are, but space them close
enough that you cannot go between them, you’ll have to choose one and
straddle it. If your car lacks ground clearance, you just ripped a
hole in the bottom of the car. Now, regarding the minimum driver
controls: If they want, they can design the car to sit 1/2" off the
ground – but it’s going to have to be able to automatically detect
the approaching dome and raise the car to clear it. Otherwise, the
car’s going to have to be high enough to clear the dome all the time.
– Kirbert
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