I suppose this could just as easily go in either Cafe Society or Game Room, but I figured it was probably general enough.
Inspired by my recent viewing of Cars 2: Realistically, there’s no way a stock car (like Lightning McQueen) could even approach the racing speed of a Formula 1 race car (like Francesco), is there? I understand in the movie, Lightning is the star, so they have to have him winning or near-winning. But a Formula 1 has the aerodynamic design, the low center of gravity, the big wheels for traction - is there any way a NASCAR racer could run a competitive race at all against one?
(And strangely, it seemed to me that Francesco was the only Formula 1-styled car in the race. I’d have thought that there would have been more like him and fewer stock-type cars, given the fact that both types are allowed.)
They would only have a (ghost of a) chance at a high-banked flat out layout like Talladega (and without restrictor plates)-IIRC F1 cars would need to be seriously modded to get above 200 MPH (the wings create a lot of drag). An Indy car is a bit inferior to a F1 car, but they easily beat what the NASCAR boys can do at the same track.
For raw speed on actual race course, the top speeds of NASCAR and Formula 1 are pretty close. Both hit the low 200’s. But the tracks and racing conditions are wildly different. I never saw Cars 2 so I’m not sure what kind of racing is depicted, but you could certainly set up a race course where NASCAR entries would be competitive with F1 cars.
F1 cars would utterly destroy any road based cars through corners but not necessarily in a straight line. In a drag race I’d choose a Bugatti Veron SS thanks (not withstanding the fact I’d probably repeatedly stall the F1 car!).
Sharpening the point of the fine posts above: F1 is about handling. NASCAR is about straight-line sustained speed. And drag racing is about acceleration.
Who wins depends on which strength the track favors.
I don’t think this is true. The current generation of F1 cars hit about 220MPH in low-downforce configuration at Monza, the fastest circuit they race at. If you were to race them at a high-speed oval the wings could be adjusted further to give an even higher top speed. The record for an F1 car with the wings removed is 259 MPH. What is the top speed NASCARs reach?
At any track with actual corners, the F1 car would leave the NASCAR for dead. A NASCAR is two and a half times heavier and produces a fraction of the downforce. An F1 car can go from zero to 100 MPH and back to zero again in under five seconds, and corner at over 5g.
As others have said, everything depends on the course. A NASCAR stocker with an unrestricted engine would put up a strong fight with an F1 car geared to reach 225mph. What hasn’t been mentioned is that a stock car is built to run near the limit for three or more hours while the F1 car can only sustain short bursts of power over 90 minutes.
While the flying mile land speed record (Bonneville) and closed course speed record (Talladega) has been set by several types of race cars, I don’t recall that any of them were ever a Formula 1 car. I believe that the engines are too high strung.
The fastest lap time is 212 MPH at Talladega back in 1987, but things have been changed to reduce speeds since then. Top speed on an unrestricted car that I can find on the net is 228 MPH.
Sometimes it is hard to compare speeds when we are talking race cars. To those of us on US speed limit controlled highways, anything above 100 just seems like silly fast.
NASCAR and Fi cars are built to different sets of standards established by their particular ruling bodies, but I’d be hard pressed to think of any kind of track that an f1 wouldn’t absolutely smoke a NASCAR “stock” car. I’m not hating on NASCAR, by any means, I’m not a huge fan of either one. It’s really more a statement of fact. Here are some of the facts:
[ul]They mandate a large pushrod V-8 engine
[li]They weigh over 3200 pounds[/li][li]4 speed transmission[/li][li]They utilize carburetion for fuel supply[/li][li] max of 865 HP without restrictor plate[/li][li]Max RPM of about 9000[/li][li]absolute minimum of computer or electronic controls[/li][li] recirculating ball steering[/li][/ul]
So that’s NASCAR
For F1:
[ul]
[li]V-8 engine less than half the size of NASCAR[/li][li]cars weigh around 1400 pounds[/li][li] 7 speed semi-automatic transmissions[/li][li]730 HP with current restrictions[/li][li]max RPM of 18,000[/li][li]numerous uses of technolgy from shift control to fuel mixture, etc.[/li][li]extremely advanced version of rack and pinion[/ul][/li]
Blah, blah, blah. If you haven’t caught on by now, there are two entirely different machines. I can’t find a single reference to the two of them sharing a race circuit, so direct comparison isn’t easy, but I will offer the following. This is a well known video of GT race cars (not NASCAR) on a road course right next to a video of F1 cars on the same course, in the same spot on the track. The speed difference is stunning. Now factor in that the slow-looking GT cars are somewhat comparable to NAScar perfromace levels.
Similarly, the F1 cars have a lower top speed than they had a few years back. The engine size has been reduced and the rev limit lowered, they now produce closer to 750BHP than the 1,000BHP of the mid-2000s. Highest recorded speed in a race legal F1 car was 229.8MPH, back in 2004.
To give you some idea of the relative pace of F1, Indycars and NASCARs, the last time they raced on the same track was back in 2006/2007. The F1 pole time was 1:15, the Indycars managed 1:20 and the NASCARs 1:42. F1 pole this year was 1:13, despite having 75% of the power of a few years ago and smaller wings.
To go back to the OP, the only track where a NASCAR might be able to beat an F1 car would be a very high speed oval such as Talladega, or a hypothetical circuit with even more gentle corners. I can’t find the performance figures to be certain, but I suspect the F1 car would be slightly quicker if it was fitted with a Monza aero package and the wing angles were reduced to a minimum. Even at Monza, the settings chosen are a compromise between downforce and low drag, as there are some high speed corners, so it should be possible to eke a bit more speed out of them without having to develop new wings. Top speed is all about the ratio of power to drag. Under braking, acceleration and hard cornering, the performance difference would is huge, as the figures for the Gilles Villeneuve circuit show.
I very much doubt the makers of the film Cars give a damn about any of this.
Did any of you race experts even see the movie? The makers of CarsII actually did address this very question. The race is designed to give all racecars a section of track to shine. There are high bank corners and straight-aways for the stock cars. There are windy road sections for the F1 cars. And there are rough and windy dirt sections for the rally guys.
The last part is why Lighting did so well. He could do the stock car sections because he is a stock car. AND he could do the rally sections since his mentor Doc Hudson schooled him in dirt track racing. And - also importantly - the F1 car floundered terribly on the dirt.
Yes, my daughter loves both Cars movies – especially Tow Mater!
Well, a NASCAR probably could beat an F1 car over a dirt track, but so could a normal road car. They have almost no ground clearence, and there is more flex in the tyres than there is travel in the suspension.
I don’t know much about the cars but someone forwarded this video to me and I think you all might find it interesting although GT is not NASCAR, its still a great speed comparison video. I think that F1 cars haul ass over anything else but that’s just my opinion.
Brewha, I do remember that, but it seemed to me that the dirt portion was pretty insignificant in relation to the rest of the track. If the dirt was Lightning’s only advantage, and the relative speeds of F1 vs NASCAR is what I thought it was in my OP, then it shouldn’t have compensated enough to allow him to keep pace with Francesco.
Yes but dirt will stuff up the F1 cars air intakes pretty quickly and kill the engine in short order I’d imagine. This pagegoes into some details about how F1 cooling systems work. Here’s what they’re dealing with:
Dirt in the cooling air intakes would be a disaster.
In the real world both F1 and stock cars would be pretty terrible on dirt. They’re designed to run on pavement, with low ground clearance and slick tires. If the stock car was faster at all, it likely wouldn’t be by much…
