An interview with JPM about racing NASCAR stock cars with Richard Hammond from Top Gear… “These cars have no brakes, and I mean NO brakes…”
I love watching NASCAR on road courses. Heavy cars, no aero downforce, skinny tires and NO brakes sliding around. That’s what sedan racing should be.
Those who say I could drive in a circle have no idea. To be anywhere near competitive NASCAR drivers are always on the razors edge of tire adhesion.
Exactly! Sure, anyone can drive a car in a circle. Anyone can also likely do a parade lap around the Circuit of the Americas in a F1 car also.
I have great respect for their driving skills… and their courage and endurance. I just don’t personally enjoy that type of racing. And I believe the cars have become extremely over-regulated. I think that (with the exception of safety requirements) the regulations should be loosened up greatly to allow different approaches to the cars by the different teams. These guys are all extremely experienced and qualified engineers, and I think we’d see a real explosion of performance technology… and some real racing again. And I seriously doubt if any of these guys are going to try anything that they haven’t thoroughly vetted in their labs and on test tracks. They’re not going to destroy their cars or their drivers.
Can’t help it guys, that’s my feeling. No disrespect to any NASCAR fans.
Compared to F1 cars, NASCAR racecars indeed seem like they have “no brakes” compared to just about any road-going car, the brakes on a NASCAR racecar are very good. They are comparable in braking performance to Australian V8 Supercar racecars and DTM cars when running road course brakes. The size and type of brakes (rotor size, piston count) vary from track to track. On superspeedways where brakes aren’t used much, teams will run smaller rotors and calipers with the pistons pushed out (so not to cause any drag on the wheels). But on a road course or short track the brake package will be much more robust.
Anyone can also likely do a parade lap around the Circuit of the Americas in a F1 car also
Probably not. An F1 car is so complicated these days, its unlikely any of us could let out the clutch without stalling the car a half dozen times. And if we did release the clutch and not stall, the tires would spin and pitch the car into a wall. I’ve seen vids with car-writers and presenters trying to drive an F1 car. Even a parade lap is nearly impossible for even an experienced non-F1 racer.
Love to try, though…
Me too, jt, me too!
LOL, even experienced and knowledgeable automotive journalists have to go through training just to learn what the buttons on the steering wheel of an F1 car are for! And which ones not to touch!
Road courses take more technical skill, ovals take more brave, There have been foreign drivers after the merger of the IRL and CART into Indycar that refuse to race on the ovals. What I really like to watch is dirt track racing but the wings and downforce are ruining it for me. I was watching an IMSA late model race last week and the cars had so much donforce the tires were squealing on the dirt. I like to see the cars coming around the corner with full opposite lock and steering with the throttle.
A couple of the buttons are self explanatory. Left side “DRINK”,… sure, why not, rum and Coke please. Right side, “RADIO” gotta have good tunes. Sorry couldn’t resist. 
What makes any sport hard or easy is how good your competitors are. There’s a big difference between being able to drive on an oval track and winning the race.
While I would like to think that NASCAR drivers are just a bunch of Yahoo’s who only know how to turn left, the facts speak differently. It used to be that when NASCAR raced on road courses, an experienced road racer could easily beat them.
Not any more!! Road racers that show up for a NASCAR race get soundly beaten - and even experienced road racers who regularly race in NASCAR don’t do very well. Think Montoya, Allmendinger, etc.
What we don’t have is a NASCAR driver doing Formula 1 for a comparison. I suspect that’s partially because it takes a whole new level of commitment to do F1.
But what we do have is NASCAR drivers doing endurance races such as the 24 hours of Daytona - and they seem to do fairly well. Granted the whole genre of endurance racing requires a different set of skills than F1 or NASCAR, and they aren’t just pushing the car to go as fast as it can, I think we can say that the current set of NASCAR drivers are at least skilled enough to hold their own.
Mustangman Anyone can also likely do a parade lap around the Circuit of the Americas in a F1 car also Probably not. An F1 car is so complicated these days, its unlikely any of us could let out the clutch without stalling the car a half dozen times. And if we did release the clutch and not stall, the tires would spin and pitch the car into a wall. I've seen vids with car-writers and presenters trying to drive an F1 car. Even a parade lap is nearly impossible for even an experienced non-F1 racer.
When you have an engine with NO flywheel, NO low rpm torque, and a “first gear” that’s so tall that you can go nearly 100 mph in it, I would expect launching it to be kind of tricky. But with practice and learning the car, I still bet an average person could manage to drive the car around the track, which is a totally different thing than winning a race.
Of course, a lot of average people can’t even fit into a F1 car. The cockpit fits the driver like a shoe.
But think about it, why on earth would you want to race with a car that’s impossible to control?
But think about it, why on earth would you want to race with a car that’s impossible to control?
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Because it make the car faster… is the short answer.
The longer one is; It isn’t impossible to control, just hard. The closer the car is to instability, the quicker the car changes direction, accelerates or stops. Cars we drive everyday are designed to be stable and forgiving which takes away from their ability to change direction quickly… unless you add driver aids like stability control, traction control and ABS. That’s how car makers can offer a 707 HP Hellcat or 560 HP Camaro to the general public. All that stuff was banned in F1 because it made driving “too easy”.
By “unstable” do you mean that once a turn is initiated, you have to countersteer to prevent the turn from tightening even further, such as when landing a taildragger airplane in light wind conditions? When you have strong headwinds the rudder stays areodynamically effective all the way down to zero ground speed. During takeoff, the propwash going over the tail of the plane makes the rudder effective, but when landing, once the plane’s airspeed becomes too low for the rudder to be effective, the tailwheel does not have enough traction to prevent the plane’s turn from tightening on its own due to the center of mass being behind the main wheels once you go past a point of no return and the result is what is popularly called a “ground loop”.
I think that it is probably more similar to “professional” wrestling than it is to baseball, but that is just my opinion.
You mean the outcome of the race is fixed and the crashes are just stunts done on purpose to add spectacle to the event?
@BLE pretty close and no, crashes are not stunts. The airplane analogy is a good one. Current fighter jets are fundamentally unstable so computer aids are required to fly them. It makes them quick and deadly but not stable. If the computers fail, the airplane becomes essentially un-fly-able.
The instability of an F1 car is not just counter-steering as a response to oversteer. Oversteer in itself is not unstable. An F1 car’s moment of inertia is low and a bit behind the driver. The steering and suspension are tuned to respond the driver very quickly but with limited overshoot. The car responds at a frequency that is faster than road cars and the driver is responding at these elevated rates, as well. Use the “over-correcting a skid” problem as an example. Some people don’t over-correct as they can respond quickly enough to catch the skid.
What if that skid happened 4 times faster? The driver would need to respond even faster. That is the difference between a road-car driver and an F1 professional race car driver. That’s why they get paid $10 to $50 Million a year to drive 18 races.
The tail-dragger analogy is a point in the flight envelope that the reduction in airflow isn’t compensated by the tail wheel’s traction. It is a “hole” in the operational envelope to be approached with care. The aircraft is still fundamentally stable throughout most of the envelope.
I think “monster truck racing” is a better comparison to professional wrestling.
Yea but what if you are driving nowhere close to the limit of cornering traction, as in a low speed parade lap? There’s never a skid to react to and you basically just steer the car.
I recall a cycle magazine being allowed to test ride World Superbike Champion Carl Fogarty’s factory Ducati motorcycle. They were expecting some sort of monster that only the best riders in the world could control, instead, they were amazed at how controllable the bike actually was, and how torquey the engine was. Why would you want to compete on a bike that was ultra tricky to control?
I also was allowed to take the sticks of a radio control pattern airplane. These are designed to be competitive in precision aerobatics. I was amazed at how easy the plane was to control. You could put it on knife edge and it would stay there, and needed very little correction to keep the same heading. But, why would you want to compete in precision aerobatics with a plane that is tricky to control?
No it’s not a beginner’s plane, it is very unforgiving, but it’s not tricky to control.