Why It's Impossible For an F1 Car to Go 300MPH

just how fast could an f1 car go if you really let it loose strap on just enough downforce not to take off and use a track that is 11 miles long honda actually tried this back in 2006. but i was wondering would the current f1 rocket ships be able to go even faster and is the 300 mile an hour barrier out of reach firstly f1 cars are definitely not made to do this they gain much more time over a lap by sacrificing straight line performance and using downforce to carry more speed through the corners but due to their light construction and immense power it is interesting to think just how fast they could go if you let them hit their top speed now we know that if you gave the car even more power and dramatically changed the aerodynamics you could get a car to go very quickly in fact the fastest combustion engine car the speed demon achieved an average of 430 miles an hour over a flying mile and you could likely do something similar with an f1 car entirely change the bodywork strap on an extra thousand horsepower and cover the wheels however we argue that it's not really an f1 car anymore so just how fast could you go whilst keeping the car legal and how would you go about doing this well honda tried this in 2006 when they took one of their cars to bonneville in the pursuit of doing 400 kilometers an hour they wanted to beat the existing f1 land speed record whilst also being a publicity stunt it was also interesting to see what an f1 car could achieve on the famous salt flats but what was amazing was they did it in a car that was completely legal with the exception of one thing but we'll get onto that later f1 engineering for both winning the world championship and these special events is all about innovation and continual improvement that's also what i aim for with my race driving improvement in my skills over time which compounds to large results and that's where i'd like to introduce today's sponsor skillshare they help you cut to the chase and pick up new skills very quickly whether you're a beginner or a pro we've used skillshare in the past to improve the quality of our content taking it from well below average to i'd say pretty good teaching us about framing and shot and lighting correctly christopher rose's course on how you can create amazing video on a budget is particularly good and there are also hundreds of other courses to help you build new skills like web design writing and leadership it costs less than ten dollars a month with an annual subscription and skillshare are also giving the first 1000 people to use the link below a free trial of skillshare premium membership and with that back to the video if we are going to stay inside the rules there isn't a whole lot we can do to increase the engine power however the major barrier to increasing top speed is the ever increasing air resistance the drag f1 cars can reach 220 miles an hour or so because the engine power can outweigh the drag force at these speeds so the force from the engine is fighting air resistance which looks like this we have the frontal area of the car that's how big the car is then we have the density of the fluid so for example the car would go faster through air rather than water then the coefficient of drag and this is interesting put simply it's how hard the air is working to move over the car so if there are lots of vortex generators wings with steep angles and diffusers that aggressively expand the air the air would be working harder with a higher coefficient of drag for example a high downforce and therefore draggy f1 car runs at about one but a tesla model s is five times less draggy at about 0.2 but this is the big issue that the force squares with speed and this is why an f1 car could never go 300 miles an hour if we look at the record mountain biker the world's fastest skier and the speed demon they all use a similar streamline shape to reduce drag they have a small frontal area and are very slippery now look at an f1 car and all of the various downforce producing components that create massive drag and they also have a large frontal area as they need to be wide to be quick around the corners f1 cars do vary drag levels from circuit to circuit as places like singapore or monaco require lots of downforce whereas monza requires much less this is such a big deal at monzo well known for being the fastest f1 track on the calendar that the teams often design aero packages specifically for minimum drag and maximum top speed they run very low wing angles and often remove a lot of the vortex generators on the car we made a video about that if you want to know how these work teams take drag reduction so seriously at monza that in f2 they have been known for actually removing the top wing element all together interestingly though the fastest speeds are often found in mexico despite the cars running with a fair bit of downforce it's because the circuit is at more than two thousand meters above sea level up there the air density is much lower you can see this with our equation from earlier lower air density means less drag force you may be thinking why not remove all the downforce well one of the aerodynamicists for honda's bonneville project willem tower explained to me and when you are traveling at that sort of speed even a formula one car would be capable of flying so the key was to remove as much drag as possible while keeping the car safely on the ground and that was exactly what honda did when they took their 2005 f1 car to bonneville but what would happen if you followed a similar process with a current f1 car a large contributor to the drag of an f1 car is actually from the tires they create a lot of turbulent air as they rotate and this can hurt the aerodynamics of the car at the rear so honda over inflated the tyres and reduced the camber normally f1 cars run a lot of camber to help with performance in the corners which isn't needed on the top speed run the more camber a car runs the larger the vortices that come off the wheels so reducing this saved a lot of drag the rear wing also produces a lot of drag in an f1 car you can see the difference it makes when drivers use drs they gain up to 10 miles an hour just by reducing the wing angle of the top element so honda took it off entirely but they found this upset the aerodynamic stability of the car the front wing would mean there is too much downforce on the front which can literally lift the rear off the ground what they did was genius they reduced the front wing angle to almost nothing now this not only reduces drag but also has another benefit the thing to know here is that an aerodynamicist is essentially trying to extract energy from the air flowing over the car and with the use of wings and the floor they create downforce however once his energy is taken from the air it is less useful further down the car so by flattening the front wing getting more energy to the floor the diffuser works better you get more rear downforce you got more traction you go faster and as we know the diffuser produces incredible downforce with a smaller drag penalty than a wing creating lots of downforce without slowing the car perfect for this application this extra traction was really needed the bonneville sole is a very loose surface the cars need to wind up speed over about five miles as wheel spin can be a real issue the tricky surface also meant the car couldn't use standard slick tyres we had to use intermediates or wets right just to have any traction to have any traction at all and in the end what are you doing you're moving salt that's what you're doing okay you're taking a load of so many kilograms of salt per second and you're spitting them in the air this lack of traction also created another issue when at high speed the slightest wheel spin or crosswind could be enough to lose the rear of the car and as we know from our video on why race cars fly sliding sideways can turn the car's downforce into lift and this surface could also cause the tyres to dig in and start a roll so honda decided to break the rule slightly in the interests of driver safety on a side note the driver for this project was alan van der merber who now drives the medical car in formula one they fitted a rear fin where the rear wing used to be and it was an active aerodynamic device it could actually sense when the car was getting sideways and use hydraulics to move the fin and bring the rear of the car back in line this would restore the downforce and stabilize the car now it would invalidate the run but this was there just in case for the run to count as the f1 land speed record they had to run the car over a flying mile in two opposite directions this meant building up speed over about five miles then doing a mile at full speed before using parachutes to slow down they'd then do a second run in the opposite direction and take an average all to ensure there is no advantage provided by the wind they did break their 400 kilometer an hour goal but only in one direction with the average being 390 kilometers per hour the car could definitely go faster they did over 412 kilometers per hour on the mojave airfield however not for a full mile but the real question i have is could a current formula one car beat this the current cars are over three seconds a lot faster around monza in qualifying than the 2005 cars and they have much more power so surely they would be much faster with all the downfalls taken off well we don't think so whilst the mercedes is thought to have around 1050 horsepower over 300 more than the honda around 170 of those are due to the hybrid system this wouldn't be able to produce the power needed for long enough to complete the flying mile they rely a lot on the braking zones on circuits to regenerate this power and make them so much faster the cars are also 150 kilograms heavier now however weight is actually helpful at bonneville when you have such a loose surface traction is very important and so more weight means more grip however the biggest issue would be how big the cars are now they are over 200 millimeters wider than the 2005 cars and are a lot longer even if you make the car very aerodynamically efficient there is no guessing around the difference in frontal area something that is very important in reducing drag in 2020 valtteri bottas was the fastest car on the straight at monza hitting 360.8 kilometers per hour back in 2005 on the same piece of track the honda hit 350. if we compare this speed difference the relative power difference and the difference in width the 2020 car produces about 45 percent more drag than the honda and when you factor in that they actually have similar power over a flying mile the 2020 cars would most likely be slower to make things worse there are upcoming restrictions to reduce speed in f1 so we think the 2005 honda will be the fastest f1 car there will ever be and this is why they couldn't do 300 miles an hour the cars are optimized for a completely different job the aggressive bodywork and the wide stance means that the coefficient of drag and the frontal area are just too high then factor in the limitations on power and you have a car that would struggle to meet the 250 miles an hour mark for them to exceed 300 miles an hour they would have to become something entirely different the most powerful f1 cars were from the 80s they produced 1 350 horsepower and used rocket fuel to find out why click here cheers and i'll see you next time

Channel: Driver61

Views: 854,824

Rating: 4.8911862 out of 5

Keywords: Formula 1, Driving, Coaching, Motorsport, Engineering, F1, Racing, Incredible Motorsport, Driver61, Mercedes, Honda, Bonneville, Land Speed, Land Speed Record, Pirelli, Michelin, Tyres, Vortices, Aerodynamics, Design, Slipstream, Drag, Power, Hybrid, VTEC, 1000 mph, fastest car in the world, speed record, engineering explained

Id: ErzH4f7SrxI

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021