Fine calculations like this one put engineering professionals to work finding the best balance and the greatest angle of attack. Come back out this morning and put just a little bit in it in the middle. 'It was a personal best, went 3.81 last night. 'We made a good lick last night,' Slavens said. He emerged uninjured but couldn't say the same for his wounded race car. More than ever, racing at all levels has become more technical. Slavens, during a testing pass, was along for the ride as his 1969 Camaro went airborne. Clearly this is a topic that takes a great understanding of physics and aerodynamics. This innovation came about in 2013 to prevent the sanctioning body from restricting speeds.ĭownforce is calculated as: ½ (wing width in meters) x (wing height in meters) x (angle of wing) x (lift coefficient) x (air density) x (velocity). When moving backwards, a handful of tabs suddenly appear on the top and on the hood of the car to prevent the crash from going airborne. When going in the correct direction, the flaps aren’t visible. NASCAR cars however have a unique use for flaps and downforce. It’s armed with a pair of 102mm turbochargers, and enough power to send it into the air. NASCAR vehicles also use this technique to create a stout and blocky profile. But what happens when it does go bad The video below shows Tim Slavens driving his 3,500 horsepower ’69 Chevrolet Camaro at the Georgia Motorsports Park’s Lights Out 12 drag racing event last Wednesday. Instead of adding anything onto landspeed, the body design is often elongated and smooth, creating a slippery shape. These attachments can often be manipulated by the driver inside the car to change the amount of drag and are hard to miss. The most obvious racing examples of aerodynamics would be in open wheel cars, where appendages called spoilers or wings are added for downforce. The less drag, the faster the car goes.Īerodynamics, downforce and drag are essential to the design of any vehicle, whether it is in the air, on land or on water. An aerodynamic car slices through the air, thus creating as little drag as possible. Instead of creating an upward force, fast moving air is manipulated to push the car to the ground, thus preventing airborne crashes.ĭrag is the friction of wind against the exterior of the car. The same concept used in aeronautics to lift airplanes off the ground is used in racing to keep cars on the ground. This added pressure on the tires also results in more grip that makes the car easier to handle.Īerodynamics is the manipulation of downforce for additional speed, handling and apparent weight. Drag Racer Escapes Injury After Huge Airborne Corvette Crash: Video 0 by Sam McEachern Sponsored Links Drag racer Shannon Poole, who features in Discovery’s popular Street. This is important because in racing, downforce is used to keep the fast moving vehicle adhered to the surface of the track. The more downforce, the heavier a car appears to be. In racing, that object is clearly the racecar in motion.ĭownforce racing specifically is when air moves at high speeds over the surface of the car. Simply, force is an object of mass that is moving. Defined in physics as: any interaction that will change the motion of an object when unopposed. is a prime example of a slippery surfaced car designed to implement downforce.įorce is an abstract concept. The Frisbee CANAM car driven by Al Unser Jr.
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