What would an F1 car in race trim in a standard street car slalom. What sort of number do you think it would pull? I'm guessing ~80mph. Streetcar like width and wheelbase limit the benefit of increased grip, low weight and low cog...any thoughts?
Remeber, it's got 920HP to scoot through the corners, powerful brakes to slow down if needed, and carn turn almost 5gs of lateral acceleration. Some cars at 70 or so mph get... I guess it would be about 1g?
If they set up the car for maximum downforce and adjusted the suspension geometry for maximum mechanical grip IMO it would be more like 100 mph. That is to say if they could setup the car for the slalom. If they had to use a setup from Monza, for example, it might be a little lower. Stock street cars can pull nearly 1g, so an F1 car which weighs 1/3 as much and has wider gumball tires should pull much more than that.
This won't answer your specific question about slalom times, but there was an article from Performance Car magazine in 1992 (reprinted in the "Gold Portfolio" book from Brooklands) comparing the 348, F40, and the 643 Formula One car at the Mugello Circuit. Here is a chart of the findings.
Some of those acceleration numbers are a little slow, no? I was also suprised that the lap times of the 348 and F40 were even that close to each other.
I suppose a better question would be, "What elements of a 4 wheeled vehicle make it better or worse for a slalom test?".... I personally think wheel track and wheel base are severely limiting factors or how fast one can go through the slalom. An F1 car really wouldn't get a large downforce effect due to the relatively low speeds. I'm wondering why are a car such as the EVO can match a Z06 or Viper and how about a Mazda MP3....that just *kills* the slalom.
short wheelbase, but at high speed handling, its a negative...slalom is only one measure of handling.
In this case of the Evo v/s the Z06/Viper, the Evo has a shorter wheelbase and is narrower. It also gets its power down efficiently to the ground with AWD. The Z06/Viper have too much power and makes it difficult to control through the corner w/o overdoing the throttle. Also being wider it requires a longer arc. Just my guess!
Running a slalom is more about how the car's mass dances through the cones. You have to continuously load the tires front to rear to get the car to turn in then be more stable as you clip the apex. A car like the viper (which by all accounts hustles through the slalom due to the massive tires and amazing engine) requires very stiff suspension setup to be able to handle loads of 500 HP and 180 MPH. It is also designed with built-in stability to keep the chassis from getting bent out of shape in the hands of an eager, but inexperienced driver. Cars like the Lancer are set up very differently - allowing a little more weight tranfer onto their symetrically sized front tires, and therefore it's not hard to find a great rhythmic pendulum action for slithering through the cones at around 70 mph. It's the same reason my car scored "higher than that of cars like the Chevy Corvette Z06, BMW M3 and Subaru Impreza WRX" (http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/comparison/articles/57200/page005.html). It's just a different setup - like an autocrosser verses an oval car. And that's why it's not the only stat to measure handling - skidpad measures most of the other side of the coin: steady state grip. As for the F1 car, you would need an amazing amount of skill to do it, but I'd be will to bet the car could pull 100 mph easy.
I'm with the majority... I beleive an F1 car could pull 100mph through a slalom, however, not to sound like a nerd, but the driver would need nothing short of Jedi reflexes to be able to actually get the thing to do it at that speed.
Performance levels in F1 continued to increase until the end of the '94 season, with the cars putting out around 800bhp. Then for '95, new regulations resulted in significantly less downforce and a power drop to around 600bhp. So the 1994 engine power levels weren't seen again until the year 2000. The power and performance levels have increased every year since '95, with the top engines currently at around 930bhp @18,500rpm, and the rev limiter usually being set to 19,000rpm. They're actually capable of a maximum rpm over 19,200rpm. The maximum braking G's listed above are quite outdated now... modern F1 cars will pull over 4G's under braking... just lifting off the throttle will result in over 1G of deceleration due to the drag from the aero devices. Maximum lateral G levels are now well over 5G's. Another thing, with regards to the slalom... it depends how tight it is. F1 cars have very little grip at low speed. Low speed also results in cold tires, creating even less grip.
I think today's F1 car will be faster than say a Lotus Elise or so. But I am not sure by how much. Probably will not be 30 mph faster as speculated by some of you ... because: - Aerodynamics will be no help at such low speeds. And aero grip contributes to a lot of an F1's speed. I may be wrong but I think in slower corners on the circuit, an F3000 car would be as quick as an F1 car. The F1 car leaps ahead on the straights and faster corners. - grooved tires will not be that grippy for such violent transitional changes - Too much power - the traction control will be going nuts and cutting in pretty much everywhere. But no one will know till someone actually tests an F1 car...
Miltonian, I have that story also. A great read. It gives an insight in the incredible forces that the driver of a F1 car endures.
wow, i thought the 348 had a little more power than 300 hp.... jeez, a subaru impreza sti gets close to that.. lol... jeez, that figure needs a little beefing up
