Oh yeah, rant rebuttal. Small displacement engines can make tons of HP,
since HP is a function of torque and RPM.
hp = (torque x rpm) / 5252
don't forget that the driver is WAY more
important than the car. An expert road race driver in a stock Camaro or
Vette will still stomp all over the average Joe (or Dave) in his high-buck,
fully Neuspeed-tricked GLI or GLX or VR6 or whatever. And vice-versa.
Back when I was on the Z-car mailing list, there was a gentleman on there
who was an aspiring amateur race driver. He had a nice 280Z and did really
well on the local circuit.
He posted a story about a trip he and his dad made to a professional
driving school. Bondurant, Skip Barber, something like that. I can't
remember the exact school.
He described the two-week-long course, how they started them on prepped
street cars (Mustangs with roll cages, basically), moved on to road cars
converted to race cars (1st gen RX-7's and VW Rabbits, to get into both FWD
and RWD), then progressed to open-wheel purpose-built race cars (Formula Ford).
So he gets to his description of the Formula Ford. He says they were
wickedly fast (and this guy drove an SCCA-winning 280Z that would embarrass
anyone with a stock Corvette), handled incredibly, a whole different
league. The "real thing", if you know what I mean. Full up racing slicks,
200 hp mid-engine, 1000 lb, 3.0g on the skidpad kind of thing.
So they (the members of the class, like a dozen guys) were racing these
Formula Fords on the last day of the course. They're choosing the right
lines, they're trail-braking, they're late-apexing, whatever, you know,
using what all they had learned in driving school the previous week. This
is on a regular road-race track. They think they are going real fast. My
friend was at the head of the pack when he heard a surprising sound and saw
a car fly by him, way faster than the pack, just blowing his doors off. He
sees the driver wave through the back glass and realizes it's their
instructor, driving a VW Rabbit!
A whole pack of guys in Formula Fords with a two-week driving school
education under their belt just got spanked by their driving instructor in
a 75-hp VW Rabbit!
-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Josh Karnes <>< "As long as the devil gives you slack in Austin TX
your chain, you think you are free."
- Dick Brown
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