On 9/7/2011 10:30 PM, John Francis wrote:
On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 11:37:21PM -0400, Doug Franklin wrote:
On 2011-09-07 22:39, Anthony Farr wrote:
But
they were much more powerful and faster in a straight line. Through
the bendy bits they really were "mobile chicanes".
Several run groups at your typical SCCA event will have that flavor,
due to the classes that end up combined sometimes. I think the
worst I've seen was a run group that included both GT1 monster
horsepower cars and GT-Lites (or was it GT4 back then) which handled
like roller skates but had zip for power compared to the GT1 cars.
GT1s took off like scalded cats on the straights, and got caught up
by the Lites in the twisty bits. Lap after lap after lap.
Nothing new there. That's exactly the scenario that unfolded around
40 years ago, except in that case the powerhouses were Ford Galaxies,
and the roller skates were Mini Coopers.
Several years ago, when I built my spec miata, one of the local clubs
had us in the same run group as the legends cars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends_car_racing
On pavement, the Legends were running on spec tires, which were pretty
much street tires. They have about 140 hp, and weigh 1,300 pounds with
driver.
The spec miatas were running on DOT legal race tires, which are stickier
than the full on race slicks of up until not too many years ago, have a
bit under 140 hp, and weigh 2,300 pounds with driver. Despite having
nearly twice the acceleration, the legends would turn about the same lap
times as the spec miatas. The end result being that the legends cars
would go barreling down the straights like a scalded ape often passing
one of a pair of miatas in a hot duel, then park it in the turns so that
any miatas unlucky enough to be behind the legend would not only end up
split up from the driver they were dicing with, but would then lose
their "momentum", and lose even more speed on the next straight.
--
Larry Colen [email protected] (from dos4est)
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