For those who aren’t aware, Harry Metcalfe was the founder of EVO magazine and had an outsized behind the scenes influence of Top Gear’s new format in the early 2000s. While Gordon sticks to some of his script, the two get VERY nerdy at points digging into all sorts of non-obvious minutiae and detail. 53 minutes is a lot, but by far it’s the best interview about the car by a large margin.
Harry is also a very big EV and renewable electricity nerd, and loves digging into those topics with tons of research.
The McMurtry by comparison is more like the old F1 fan car, in that it is literally sucking itself down to the road, with tons of force, with a skirt and so on.
When I watched it do the hill climb I was thinking of all the drivers they might’ve approached, and thought that if Mark Webber hadn’t hung it up a few years ago he would’ve, “noped out” of that conversation immediately given his history of flying for Mercedes in the beginning of his career.
The one at Goodward FOS was cleared by DoT and is road legal. The driver announced it in an interview on TV.
I presume the fans must be turned off on public roads?
aside : how does one engineer a fan blade that's going to suck in rocks all day under normal use?
In the PT6 turboprop engine, the system forces air to go around a bend, and also opens a trap door. It's actuated by the pilot for landing/takeoff.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/16206/how-do-in...
Also the output it filtered so there are no rocks or other debris thrown into the car behind. That was already the case on the prototype raced at Goodwood.
Thrust vectoring could serve as a safety system to dynamically produce downforce in case a high speed car starts to go airborne, can counter spin-outs, etc.
One further famous example was the so-called “fiddle brake”, given its name much later by Ferrari technical boss Ross Brawn, but known within the team as “brake-steer,” that McLaren ran in the latter half of 1997 and into 1998. This simple concept allowed the rear brakes to operate on either the left or right side only, providing a clear benefit under acceleration in corners – and an instant lap time advantage.
https://www.mclaren.com/racing/inside-the-mtc/mclaren-extra-...
Basically a standard diff using brakes to shape power output. Basically a brake limited version of a limited slip diff.
11.1 Brake circuits and pressure distribution
11.1.1 ... all cars must be equipped with only one brake system. This system must comprise solely of two separate hydraulic circuits operated by one pedal, one circuit operating on the two front wheels and the other on the two rear wheels. ...
11.1.2 The brake system must be designed so that within each circuit, the forces applied to the brake pads are the same magnitude and act as opposing pairs on a given brake disc.
https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/2022_formula_1_techn...
This doesn't really seem like that big of a disadvantage to me. You can just keep increasing downforce until the tires are able to give you the traction you need for any maneuver. It seems like that should scale as far as you need it to, and be way more efficient than rockets. I guess the limits would be in the tires and suspension.
You would need something other than pneumatic tires, or some sort of dynamic tire pressure system.
Paraphrasing: https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/mclaren-f1-secret-downforce...
Or even just getting it from tyres to ground. Traction control exists to avoid the car just spinning its wheels in place as it’s completely lost grip.
At high speed downforce can do the job, but at low speeds not so much.
Not very, unless the car suddenly gets a patch of grip and launches you into a tree.
> to hit the gas just to immediately see all four wheels start spitting smoke as they spin in place and start abrasively cutting through the asphalt?
You'd have to wear down the entire tyre first, which isn't going to happen unless you're already at the thread (though supercar tyres do wear down very quickly).
Tyre rubber is much, much softer than asphalt, and for good grip you want pretty soft rubber. By the accounts I've seen, even cold F1 tyres feel sticky. And drag tyres outright crinkle on takeoff.
Not saying they can't be damaged, just that a parking lot is a poor comparison
But the asphalt is mostly fine. It's a lot tougher than rubber.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mcmurtry-launch-...
"It will feature a track mode, which will turn on the downforce-creating fan"
I’m impressed that this video game technology comes back!
Check out the Brabham car that won on its debut at the Swedish Grand Prix.
That's why fan cars can be considered cheating. The fan is made of mobile aerodynamic surfaces. The Brabham BT46B try to circumvent the rules by saying their fan was a cooling fan, it didn't work.
If you allow mobile aerodynamic surfaces, indeed, you are going to have aircraft. It is easy to imagine a car with actual wings, with flaps, ailerons and elevators.
However the percent of time saved for the slower cyclist is less, but only a little.
Basically at cycling speeds the aerodynamic curve is pretty flat so it doesn't really matter if you are fast or slow.
If acceleration were an instantaneous off-on step, that would be a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_delta_function
Drag racers have had this problem for a long time; those races last less than 5 seconds. This hill climb is interesting because it's only a bit longer, half a minute, which really changes the equations for electric race cars vs. something like Pikes Peak which is 8 minutes to the top (and is now also totally dominated by electric cars).
Obviously, this is wrong in the real world for so many reasons, but that doesn't stop this from getting repeated.
Everyone who's ever used a drill knows that while speed and torque are inversely related in most of a motors normal operating range you don't get insane torque at low speed. Of course you can wind a motor differently to mitigate this somewhat but still, not a huge improvement. You wouldn't see reduction gears on all sorts of things if this were the case.
I don't know what you consider "serious speeds", but wings can produce meaningful downforce at pretty low speeds. Check out the various unlimited class autocross cars which carry giants wings for downforce, even though autocross events are typically very low speed events (2nd gear most of the time).
Plus, with extreme aero, there's a top-speed vs downforce tradeoff to be made. The big fan trick doesn't have that issue.
Example: Porche Cayman GT4 RS, extremely potent track-day Porche with giant wing.
> https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/press-kits/718-spyder-cayman...
> "At the car’s maximum speed, there is a total of 122 kg of rear downforce."
Yes, thats right, you get 122kg of extra downforce once you hit 196mph. Really helpful in 2nd gear... The reason manufacturers generally only quote wing downforce on road cars at incredible speeds is because the number is not very impressive at lower ones.
i couldn't find any numbers, but they do put them in the wind tunnel.
That's a street car. You need to look at race cars to see where wing development can go.
For an example of race cars which generate downforce at autocross speeds, take a look at cars like https://www.autoxandtrack.com/a-mod-acme-special-fastest-aut...