What if somebody built a faster lapping road car?

[g-force_addict]

What would happen to the sport, as their barely road-car related technology got beaten by a completely streetable car in the same circuits?

[Absolutelee]

On a real circuit a car without aerodynamics is going to get destroyed in the corners. Also, road cars are so heavy.

The Ariel Atom is one of the fastest street legal cars available and it does 0-60 in 2.8s...I think I remember hearing F1 cars to 0-60-0 in 3s

[Greg Locock]

It would not be difficult to build such a road car. Fairly expensive, yes, but not especially difficult. Start with fans, powered skirts, 4wd, traction control and ABS. Oddly enough I did some consulting on such a project, killed by the GFC. The big problem would be road legal tires that could handle the circuit forces.

[MrCodyWeston]

f1 cars can travel from 0-125-0 in under 5 seconds. So I doubt it.

[Greg Locock]

Equal laptimes does not mean equal straight line performance. Otherwise dragsters would beat f1 cars. Ok, here's what you do. Download Bosch lapsim. Build a typical Countach clone yawnomatic modern supercar. Build an f1 car. Now turn up the downforce coefficient for the supercar without increasing the drag, and reduce the engine power to compensate for driving the fans. Rinse and repeat until you have a spec for the sportscar that beats the F1. That way you've turned into a technical discussion instead of just another hand-waving playground yelling match.

[Jersey Tom]

What would happen to the sport, as their barely road-car related technology got beaten by a completely streetable car in the same circuits?

Would make no difference. F1 isn't about making the fastest circuit cars possible, so who would care?

[Greg Locock]

Good point.

FWIW road-based sportscars are about 33% slower than the fastest f1 (not current) around Albert Park. I wonder what that differential might be at say Monaco.

[RB7ate9]

Then we would have a condition where that manufacturer ought to sweep the World Endurance Championship.

[mzivtins]

I do not think it is possible.

The rules that make a car 'road legal' severely compromise the designs needed for performance, ride height is a good example.

Essentially you would look to build an F1 car with all the awesome tricks that are banned, like skirts, blown diffusers, DDD's, v10's, all that stuff, and then figure out a way to make that road legal... i guess you could put lights on it, and mount a number plate quite easily, but then you would only be able to run wet or intermediate tyres on the road so that would cut your performance back.

On the road you would not have to comply with the FIA weight regs, so no ballast to make the car heavier, so really on the road it would be lighter so that would help a lot! I would make sure i picked up a nice set of groved f1 bridgestones to get around having to run inters on it.

Dooable with an f1 car? i think so! but not a two seater sports car.

So i think the only way to beat an F1 car is to build a bastard child f1 car

[beelsebob]

What would happen to the sport, as their barely road-car related technology got beaten by a completely streetable car in the same circuits?

I actually wondered this as soon as McLaren announced the P1... the MP4-12C was already a beast, and the P1 is McLaren having a go at Hypercar stuff. I wouldn't be enormously surprised if it could beat an F1 car round some of the twistier tracks.

[beelsebob]

On a real circuit a car without aerodynamics is going to get destroyed in the corners. Also, road cars are so heavy.

The Ariel Atom is one of the fastest street legal cars available and it does 0-60 in 2.8s...I think I remember hearing F1 cars to 0-60-0 in 3s

It's actually pretty common for road cars to beat F1 cars off the line, simply because F1 cars are geared towards always maintaining a speed over 60mph even in the very tight turns. I once saw a test at silverstone where they raced an F1 car and a porche 911 off the line – the 911 initially accelerated (by eye) twice as fast as the F1 car, and in fact reached turn 1 (then copse) entry ahead by quite a margin. The F1 car though simply didn't slow down, while the porche breaked into copse, and by even mid corner was significantly ahead.

[Cold Fussion]

What would happen to the sport, as their barely road-car related technology got beaten by a completely streetable car in the same circuits?

I actually wondered this as soon as McLaren announced the P1... the MP4-12C was already a beast, and the P1 is McLaren having a go at Hypercar stuff. I wouldn't be enormously surprised if it could beat an F1 car round some of the twistier tracks.

How do you propose a car that weighs 2.5x as much, has little to no aero compared to an f1 car and has less power with road tyres is going to beat an f1 car under any circumstance?

[beelsebob]

What would happen to the sport, as their barely road-car related technology got beaten by a completely streetable car in the same circuits?

I actually wondered this as soon as McLaren announced the P1... the MP4-12C was already a beast, and the P1 is McLaren having a go at Hypercar stuff. I wouldn't be enormously surprised if it could beat an F1 car round some of the twistier tracks.

How do you propose a car that weighs 2.5x as much, has little to no aero compared to an f1 car

You have seen the size of the diffuser on this thing, right? That alone is more rear aero than an F1 car.

Add to that a significantly larger rear wing which has no design restrictions on it, and I would hardly say it has "little to no aero compared to an F1 car"

We are talking about the same thing here, right?


Add to this that the P1 will almost certainly have similar active suspension systems to the MP4-12C (which by all reports are incredibly good), traction control, and all kinds of other driver aids, and I expect extremely similar lap times over twistier tracks.

Add further to this that the front wing and rear wing on the P1 are adjustable, and electronically position themselves for maximum downforce/minimum drag appropriately, and you may even beat an F1 car.

Also, McLaren quote "600bhp per ton", given that it's an 800 horse power engine, we're talking about a 1.3 ton vehicle, so only twice the weight of an F1 car.

[turbof1]

Would it really be that difficult? Slap on ground effect with a fan and you have already loads of grip, even with normal road tyres. As said before, the real problem is the cost to produce such a car. In the world of fastest cars generally only the top speed and the amount of horsepower is counted, unfortunaly.

[mzivtins]

This whole thread and the idea behind it just makes the McLaren P1 even more exciting... my scientific analysis tells me: The P1 is freakin' dope!