What Makes This Race Car Faster

there was a time in nearly every racing series where it was possible for a clever outsider to build a car compete and sometimes win this time has long since passed in most of the major series either explicitly prohibited by the rules or just impossible because of the money involved this is kind of a bummer because competition makes things more interesting if any kid in his garage can compete in your industry you have to be consistently good and if you're in an industry with an impossibly high barrier to entry you end up with united airlines gross some of the best racing series are the ones that are still accessible to the privateers the people building racing machines in their garages with their money supported by friends and the sponsor is brave enough to help the little guy the pike's peak hill climb is one of those places sure you hear about the factory teams the bentleys the ducatis the porsches but most of the drivers and sometimes the fastest drivers are not here due to the permission of the marketing department of automotive inc they're just here because they love it in 2018 the pikes peak hill climb was won by one of the largest automotive manufacturers in the world volkswagen they dumped millions of dollars and countless hours into designing testing and developing one of the most advanced racing vehicles on the planet two vehicles actually they brought a whole separate car just in case the next year the event was won by robin robinschute is not a global auto manufacturing company worth 150 billion dollars but he is no slouch he's a professional automotive engineer and a truly impressively talented racing driver he also has a team helping him run the car a team that calls themselves the sendy club because they always send it full send but the team is not a factory-backed effort expensing hotel rooms and inviting celebrities into their paddock they all took time off of work to sleep on couches and air mattresses for a few hours each night before waking up at 3 am to help shoot send it up the mountain most of them work in auto racing or at car companies they know what they're doing this event however is not for a paycheck this event is for the love of racing this past weekend i joined up with the cindy club turning a couple of wrenches listening to their war stories and asking all about their secrets of speed which i will share with you later on in this video just remember these are secrets so don't tell anyone i arrived on the thursday before race day greeted by a cloudy sky and a rain covered mountain about that time robin was on the mountain sending it up the hill in the rain for qualifying there were a few cars that got a dry qualifying run but robin pulled in the fastest time of the unlimited class there are several different classes at pikes peak open wheel exhibition time attack one for production based vehicles and of course the unlimited class which is the purpose-built racing vehicles and almost always the fastest anyway i landed picked up my rental rav4 and drove to my 1960s themed hotel wait is this hotel 60s themed or was it just built in the 60s and never updated i set my alarm clock and got a full three and a half hours of sleep remember when i said that the team was waking up at 3 am well that's not an exaggeration all the practice and qualifying takes place early in the morning the gates open at 3 30 a.m for competitors to get in and set up their paddock before practice begins at 5 30 am so at about 4am i drove up a moonlit mountain behind a short line of cars i don't think i've ever woken up at 3am like i've been awake at 3am but i don't think i've ever started my day at 3am the sendi club was already set up with their car unloaded and the tires wrapped in electric heaters they were all much more awake than i was they had been getting up at 3am every day since tuesday and they were not especially sympathetic to my weariness the cold morning slowly gave way to sunrise and i was greeted by a beautiful mountain and the serene sounds of nature so how's the week been going i asked not great apparently ideally the car would have arrived at least a couple of weeks before the event with plenty of time to button everything up get it on the high altitude dyno and hopefully take it around the local test track for some shakedown well apparently global shipping has kind of been a disaster for the past several months and the car had to be shipped all the way from here shoot is british though he resides in the states now but he and his car were back in england just prior to the race so international shipping was a necessary problem to be solved interestingly chute was the first brit to win pike's peak outright which is a little surprising since hill climb racing is a popular sport in england and pike's peak is probably the most famous hill climb race in the world the car did show up thanks to a lot of phone calls and string pulling but it was late this became a much bigger problem when the team found out that the engine had a cracked block a spare engine was put on the truck and rushed out from california to be installed in the car so basically the engine turned up 3pm on the saturday we got that in the car together enough to go on the dyno so we then started dining around 11 30 12 p.m you know midnight and then we downloaded through till about 4 00 a.m went back for a bit of sleep and team came back put together the rest of the car in the morning and then we went out to the hunter to test in the afternoon so we'd gone from a tub and a car in pieces to dino tuned and shaken down fully shaking down ready for the race about 24 hours after a day of tuning at the local racetrack the car arrived on the mountain for the first day of practice for the practice and qualifying days the mountain is split up into sections the cars alternate sections each day so they can all get a chance to tune and test on different corners and at different altitudes the team had updated the car in a few important ways since their last win in 2019 a turbocharger from borg warner was installed i asked the question we're all wondering how much power do you get from a new turbocharger so the new turbo was supposed to give us 50 horsepower less but it looks like we've ended up with 50 horsepower more okay now i have two questions how did you end up with 50 more and why were you aiming for less we put that down to kind of two main things first of all is the new fuel which i think has unlocked a lot of potential in the car we've gone from a gasoline to an e85 fuel and then the second thing is the turbo inlet air filter which most people don't really pay much attention to but at altitude it makes a huge difference you know having a tiny filter versus a big filter can rob you 100 horsepower as for why they were looking for less horsepower that comes down to drivability and area under the curve you're not always at one rpm making peak horsepower all the time you're shifting gears and sweeping through a range of rpms so your average horsepower you're actually using might be more for an engine tuned for less peak power also the car might be more drivable with a flatter power curve this is especially true with turbocharged engines doubly so with the very turbocharged engines you see on the mountain if you have a turbo screaming at top speed and then you let off the throttle hit the brakes and go into a corner you don't want your turbo to not be spinning when you exit the corner your engine that was sucking in 400 liters of air every second is now struggling to pull in a third of that drastically reducing your power output and making you lose so sometimes less power is better power the team is putting down around 600 horsepower at the base of the mountain and closer to 500 at the top this may not seem like much in a world where every other car has 700 horsepower but it is plenty and i will get into why in just a moment once the team had swapped the engine and made it to practice day on the mountain things started to come together there were a few small hiccups a loose gps sensor knocked off their water pump belt during a run that's fine that's why you have practice days by the time i arrived on friday the team had sorted most of the car they did five practice runs to adjust the fuel map and let robin get a little more comfortable with the middle section of the mountain there were also a couple of small things that cropped up as there always are the gearshift indicator was giving some unexpected readings they ran new wires and crimped a new connector just to be safe they also had a small problem with their tire warmers getting too hot tire warmers are important because these tires like most racing tires are designed to be their stickiest at high temperatures once you're on the track and moving the tires are warm today they're practicing the middle section and so during the race the tires will be fully up to temperature at this point so to get useful practice the tires need to be hot so they wrap the tires in electric tire warmers wrap the warmers in blankets and then crank the heat all the way up this was a bit too much for the warmers slightly melting them but they still worked so that's good after practice we took the car back down the mountain to the shop a list was made and the final prep started bleed the brakes change the gearbox fluid clean the car check the heat exchangers etc weather reports were worrying it was looking like it might be snowing the night before the race and again on race day when the weather gets bad they'll often close the top of the mountain and end the race at a lower point running only three quarters of a race there's still a race but it's a little disappointing because so many people are trying to break a record pike's peak is possibly the most challenging race in the world there are longer auto races faster courses and series with stiffer competition but there are a few things that make this hill climb uniquely challenging it is a complicated course it has 156 turns over 12 miles many of the corners are blind and difficult to tell apart the start of the race is 1.8 miles above sea level it winds through the trees past the tree line up into the clouds ending at just over 14 000 feet at the top of the tallest mountain on the southern front range of the rocky mountains at the start of the race your 850 horsepower car is only putting out 600 and by the end you're in the low 500s it's a unique challenge to build an engine for the thin air and another to tune it for the change in pressure from the bottom to the top this is especially challenging because you can't just rent out the course to tune your car you get three practice days a year for three hours in the early morning each on only a fraction of the course that's for tuning testing and driver practice make sure your driver gets lots of time on gran turismo the course is also unpredictable weather conditions on the mountain can go from hot and sunny to freezing hail with little warning and fog creeps in and out confusing and blinding the already difficult course many of the wrecks are the result of a driver mistaking one blind corner for a blind straight going into a hairpin at wide open throttle and sending it into the trees or worse most drivers run with supplemental oxygen driving a race car up this hill is intense exercise and the lack of oxygen at the top can lead to a dangerous loss of focus and if all that wasn't enough this year part of the pits had to be closed because a family of bears showed up some of the corners have a tiny bit of runoff some have short sections of rusty barriers but much of the course is open to the trees the rocks and the cliffs driving a race car takes talent but driving a race car at pikes peak takes a unique talent a focus discipline courage and self-awareness that makes these drivers undeniably elite also kind of insane just a little bit the quickest anyone has ever driven up the mountain was in that volkswagen i talked about earlier piloted by romain dumas he made the trek in 7 minutes and 57 seconds the first car to make it to the top was driven by william wayne brown in 1913 who took a bit longer at just under five and a half hours back then none of the road was paved in fact much of it could barely be called a road just three years later the road had been widened into the pikes peak highway and the first race was held with raya lentz crossing the finish line the quickest time of 20 minutes and 55 seconds the race skipped three years after the first event due to some shenanigans by the germans and again in the early 1940s due to some more shenanigans by the germans other than that the event has run continuously this year was the 99th running times have gotten better over the years in part due to technological improvements and in part due to the adding of pavement to the course the first year of full pavement was in 2012 when reese millen set a record of 9 minutes and 46 seconds but perhaps the most impressive record was set the next year when sebastian loeb absolutely destroyed that record reaching the top over a minute and a half faster than anyone else had ever done over the last few years overall times have slowed a bit major construction of a new summit complex has resulted in severe damage to the pavement at the top one of the drivers i talked to said he estimated the damage to the road at the top is causing a full 10 extra seconds of time 2018 was the cindy club's first year and like many rookie teams they didn't make it to the finish line racing is hard the following year they made up for it by being the fastest car on the mountain they won outright and shoot was king of the mountain their practice times were looking even more impressive this year and so i wanted to know their secrets so i wired robin's shoot up with the microphone and asked him to share all his secrets of speed i'm gonna put it on my butt somehow there you go cool all right we focus on basically being really really light uh having lots of mechanical tyre grip uh lots of down force and then just a little bit of power or just enough power and i say a little bit it's still 600 horsepower still a lot of horsepower but it isn't these thousand horsepower numbers you see others running with claiming i also asked shoot's co-owner matt sampson the same question and he said something similar number one show up number two finish and number three is be quick lightweight is the key big wings as you can see from the back end now and just really making it reliable finishing based on these answers and my interpretation of them i'm going to make the hierarchy of speed at the top we have show up next we have finish which i'm going to call reliability and finally we have be quick under be quick we're going to put in order of importance first lightweight then grip both mechanical and aerodynamic and finally just enough power we'll start with the first two show up and finish this seems obvious but i assure you that it takes a certain level of experience to appreciate the difficulty of just showing up to the race with the car much less completing the race everyone has lofty goals of building updating and testing their vehicles and very often people don't make it past the first part of that here's what happens you look at your plan and you say i think it will take me four months to build this car and the race is five months away so we're good what you should say is i think it will take me four months to build this car which means it will take me 12 months to build this car also i will need at least five months of testing and tuning so i might be able to make next year's race any and all race car projects are subject to the rule of pi the rule of pi goes like this if you think it will take you a month to do something it will actually take you three point one four months and if that project budget is one thousand dollars you can expect to be out three thousand one hundred and forty dollars in the end this goes for testing time as well even more so testing is when the unknown unknown start showing up all that stuff you didn't plan for the really evil part of the rule of pi is that it's hard to plan in once you update your schedule to be 3.14 months long your project will now take 10 months you have to plan for one month and then expect to be done two months before the race then you'll just barely finish in time what is the number one thing you need to make a car go fast a lot of people will say lots of power ask the same question to race car engineers and you'll get a different answer basically being really really light lightweight is the key low weight horsepower is good it is important but in most racing series at least most of them where you have to slow down and turn it comes further down the list this car has a thousand horsepower twice what shoot has in his car it will be slower by a lot how can i be sure that a car with double the horsepower will be slower because it is a fatty nearly two and a half tons of car and while that might not matter out here it matters a lot when you encounter one of these and one of these and pike's peak has lots of both of those big horsepower numbers will help you accelerate if you can put the power down big brakes will help you slow down if you have the grip but low mass will help you accelerate and help you slow down and help you go around corners faster it will help the car rotate quicker it will reduce stress on the components allowing you to make them lighter lightweight enough to lift the entire car with an engine hoist on its lowest setting less weight begets less weight big cars need big brakes look at these brakes reasonably sized they are the size of one zack head compare that to the porsche brakes which are at least three zack heads in diameter a lightweight car can use smaller brakes smaller brakes are lightweight win-win the best way to reduce the weight of a component is not to make it out of titanium or to redesign it in carbon fiber the best way to reduce the mass of a component is to make it not be there if it absolutely needs to be there it should just barely be there this is engineering lots of people can build a bridge that won't collapse but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that just barely won't collapse lots of people can build a race car but it takes a team of engineers to just barely build a race car to build a barely race car after light weighting your car as much as engineeringly possible your next task is to make it stick this is where the tires and suspension come in shoot swears by these so for your tires go to pirelli slide them some cash across the counter and ask for these suspension setup is a little more difficult especially these past few years with the rough condition of the road the road is mostly smooth but there are a few bumps especially at the top the cindy club uses a three spring setup to keep their tires planted in the corners while making sure the aerodynamic downforce doesn't keep the suspension from doing its job the suspension has to work with the wings not against them aerodynamic downforce is a huge advantage on the mountain more so than pretty much anywhere else the importance of downforce is pretty clear with a quick glance around the paddock nowhere else will you see such prodigious diffusers wait am i using that word right prodigious prodigious remarkably or impressive yeah prodigious diffusers inordinate rear wings and thesaurus front splitters you don't usually see giant wings and other forms of motorsports because lots of downforce usually means lots of drag to slow you down but here drag doesn't matter as much as it does in some other places for every pound of downforce you add you can add two pounds of drag and you'll still be better off this is because there are so many slow tight corners the chassis of this car is a wolf prototype sports car but the wings are special for pike's peak hanging way off the front and back adding five feet to the length of the vehicle power is not the most important thing but it is important there are lazy ways to make power just ask dodge but again you don't want to make 500 horsepower you want to barely make 500 horsepower a good way to do that is to start with something relatively small something proven and reliable and something with enough of an aftermarket to fit your non-corporate budget something like the honda k20 stock block we just have it board out some garden sleeves in it stock crankshaft we got some custom rods we've got some custom cpu pistons head has been ported out we use some supertech valves and springs spring rates we shouldn't know a little bit so we can make sure we hit a red limiter without blowing the exhaust valves open which has happened before [Music] basically it as race day approached the weather was not getting any better it was looking like the course might be shortened due to snow and ice at the top i decided to brave the snow and freezing temperatures and camp on the mountain if you're camping you have to be through the gates by 6 pm non-camping spectators are allowed in starting at 2 30 in the morning and if you're not in line by then it's going to be a couple hours before you get to your spot i slept in the back of my rental car setting an alarm for 2 30 am when i drove from my camping spot at ski area up to devil's playground at an altitude of 13 000 feet there were three other cars when i arrived i put earplugs in and went back to sleep for a few hours before waking up to 500 new neighbors and breakfast in bed unfortunately the weather did not hold and it was deemed that the top of the mountain was too icy and dangerous to run the full course this was kind of a bummer the teams are not only racing against each other they're racing against the records in their classes a shortened course means no chance to beat your class record but the unpredictability of the mountain is what it is and 2021 would be a short course the hill is split into four segments with the third segment ending at devil's playground bummer that we didn't get a full course but i did end up with a great view of the finish line the first cars to go were the exhibition class leading that class this year was the unplugged performance tesla model s plaid driven by randy popest the electric cars are required to run a noisemaker so that spectators know there is a race car coming the plaid had sound clips from the movie spaceballs that they would occasionally just blast at full volume in the pits remembering it's from the pandemic has meant that all this shipping stuff is really really tricky um carl was ready to should pick another spot yeah this car was race prepped but it was not a race car they removed the interior but all the body panels and glass were stock saved for some slight modifications they added a splitter and a rear wing some sticky tires big brakes and upgraded dampers this car came in 10th overall impressive considering how many purpose-built race cars it beat we were hoping the weather would improve later in the morning but it didn't so all the cars would be running on the shortened course shoot would be the fourth driver of the fast cars first up was paul dahlenbach who had set the fastest qualifying time dollenbach has won his class at pikes peak six times and he won outright in 1993 while setting a new record time so he's pretty quick he crossed the line with a time of 6 minutes and 35 seconds cody vasholt and raphael astier followed behind putting down times of 645 and 636 if robin could keep his pace from practice he would beat those times if he could keep his car together and if the weather on the mountain kept clear enough to see the turns at the top he just might it's a 126 flat for robin shoot through the first section and that is 11 seconds better than we've had so far a 201.8 is his second section time again that is over 10 seconds faster than we have seen all day and robin shoots time should easily be the best so far just had the first time attack time roman dumas through sector one one minute 38.2 which is very very good it's as good as paul dallenbach but it's in turn 12 seconds slower than shoots phenomenal progress the line now goes robin shoot shortly to the top yes easily it's a 5 55 so that is 40 odd seconds faster than any time we've had so far well that was remarkable every single sector was absolutely nailed at the end of the day shoots time of 5 minutes and 55 seconds was over 36 seconds faster than the next fastest car a huge margin of victory what if the full course had been run what if shoot had a chance to compete for the overall time comparing his time in the first three sections to previous events it looks like he might have broken the record for the fastest rear-wheel drive car he might have been one of the fastest drivers up the mountain ever in a small group of legendary drivers who set their times in multi-million dollar cars developed by factory racing teams of huge automotive companies but here's the thing about might have beens every team has them several of them if reese millen's bentley hadn't developed a boost leak he might have won the time attack class if the nv8 hyper car hadn't suffered a mechanical failure it might have been in the running for the fastest time it's not really fair to compare sector times to previous years the mountain is always different the clouds the temperature the conditions of the road at the top would have put shoot's top section times slower than previous years so it might not have mattered anyway next year the sendi club is coming back and they already have a better aerodynamic system designed for more downforce the top of the mountain will be repaired by then and the bumps will be gone so it will be faster again it will also be the 100th running of the event so it's going to be something to watch it could be that shoot comes back and takes the record for rear-wheel drive he could possibly finish below 8 minutes it could be that he or somebody else breaks the outright record could be might have been none of this really matters at the end of the day at the end of the race the only thing that anyone is going to remember is who got to carry that checkered flag down the mountain [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is seats went baby needed that happy days oh yeah are you ready i'm not done yet

Channel: SuperfastMatt

Views: 498,853

Keywords: Robin Shute, Shute

Id: fDEPSRrfjps

Length: 26min 43sec (1603 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021