I go to bed every night I kneel and pray to God hoping that Red Bull would go and confirm the theory that an F1 Car going at a high level of speed can earn enough down force to be able to drive upside down in a tunnel.
@@nicksokolis6343 Yes indeed. But perhaps even on the track, he doesn't need to care about lap times, because usually for Gordon Murray the lap times are shorter than anyone else's.
Mind you, it does that without forced induction. These days everything is going small engine + turbo, SRT be like, nah... I respect it. Old school push-rod, big cylinders, big engine, big noise.
From a benchmark standpoint, it's not much to talk about. For most people however, that's about double what their daily driver makes, so it's more impressive.
@@OzwalR : Point still stands though. 600HP sounds like nothing if you compare it to the latest hypercar engines that are pushing 1600+, but like you said most people aren't driving cars anywhere near what the Viper puts out.
@@campkira they always say something along the lines of, "In a long, rounded tunnel, you could drive up the wall to and drive upside down on the ceiling then come back down before the end of the tunnel." As in you're travelling at the optimum speed for downforce as you enter the tunnel.
It would be very expensive and difficult to pull it off though. I mean the physical conditions need to be basically perfect or someone dies. Also the engine might not survive upside-down for long enough, and if that stops working then someone dies.
@@mavvh1054 so I shouldn't ever say that my motorbike can reach 250+ km/h on a public road because I'm not going to do it? It's a marketing thing dude, showing the insane amount of downforce it has that it could theoretically drive upside-down. If it's got that much downforce imagine how good it is at a track, that kind of thing
Oh yea! Twice the track length with one simple 180 degree twist of the track... It would take some pretty amazing engineering, but it would be oh so entertaining to watch a race on a track like that. Also, the drivers are already very impressive athletes or they wouldn't be able to drive these monsters that corners measuring multiple G at every corner, but on a Möbius race track they would also spend half the time inverted...
See if you can do an interview with Gordon Murray and talk about the t.50 with him, that would be great to watch, and I'm sure you would have a lot of fun
You also need to make sure your grip allows you to put down enough power to maintain speed while upside down. Not huge but worth including. Your definitely right about needing a very smooth road surface. Would probably have to custom tune your suspension to avoid lifting the nose when hitting small bumps. And then there's the special turn signal to indicate that you'll be going upside down. That'll probably put the cost over the edge.
This channel is really awesome, you explain things with a excellent clarity and everything is so easy to understand. And also the contents are really enjoyable. Congrats
That’s what I love about EE (Jason)! The Engineering explanation of the things!!! I love the white board! This is what the people need to know and understand! I always say to my friends: “Is not only about HP... and it is not about 0-60...is about Aerodynamics and car dynamics in a Racing track too!!! Thank you so much Master Jason!!! BTW: I loved the part: “Rant Begins... End Rant” lol God Bless You Sir!
Well, the fan may always be on but there are flaps that can close in the regular T.50 that will essentially just suck air along and streamlining the aero. The difference is whether flaps are open in the defuser or the engine cover bit.
I find it funny how in a previous video he mentions that the fan cars down force is underwhelming and now he’s in cited on how overwhelmingly good it is
There is no way that fan helps get that amount of down force. A vehicle body produces a small amount of lift due to its overall shape, this technique reduces that lift and reduced drag. So the resulting vertical forces will have relatively more forces in downward direction than it would have without that fan. No matter what, the vehicle body needs few components that produce negative vertical forces.
7:30 The faster entry speed for corners after a long straight depends on how tight the corner is, as shown in F1 racing. The downforce is proportional to the speed squared, so the effect is small/none for F1 cars entering tight corners at low speed. But for moderate corners, they can stay at full throttle with no braking ... impossible for most race cars.
Yes the entry speed is always based around how tight the corner is, but I think your missing the fact that this is a FAN CAR so a good portion of its down force isn't reliant on speed. You are partly right, it will of course still increase at higher speed, but the fan creates a low pressure zone under the car regardless of speed, so even tighter slower corners, will have higher corner entry and carrying speeds. I didn't hear specifics on how much the fan system makes at a standstill, but I'd assume its higher than that of the road car, as the underbody could be able to take full advantage of the fan system, at least i would think. The 2j and brabham certainly did, I'm really interested to see more, and to see it break some lap records, and I'd love to find it in some sim style racing games, since I'll never ever get to actually drive or likely even see one for real.
@@mattwells1036 Great point! I read the fan runs on a separate 48V battery. I'm sure Murray knows what the fan DF is, and I agree it must be significant. Perhaps there's some info from the Brabham (sp) F1 car, but comparisons to the T50 road car seems like a bit of a stretch.
@@kevink2315 I believe in engineering explained's first video on the road car he does say what that version makes, and from what I remember it wasnt too much and was more so used to decrease drag, its possible the fan part only adds a few hundred lbs or kilos, but with the track only aspect, that the underbody would be lower, and be better designed to create a larger downforce. He did list the total in this video, which is pretty high at 1500kg, but we dont know as of yet how much is from the fan system. I'd guess most is from the areo. Itd be cool to see, if the amount of downforce is enough to take a low speed cornering from say 1g to 1.3 itd be a nice increase, but what I've been hoping for ever since learning about fan cars from the chaparral 2j in gt 4, and the red bull in gt5, I was hoping for something that has some serious gains, say 1 whole g on top of what itd do without at lower speeds would be crazy and awesome. It is only running on a 48v electric system so who knows if itll be as crazy as I hope lol.
I put Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires on my charger scat pack and it made a world of a difference. It almost feels like a sports car instead of a big heavy sedan. I can toss it around confidently with so much cornering grip now. It takes a lot to oversteer even when I am heavy footed into a slow corner. I also shed half a second on my 0-60 time from 4.4 to 3.9.
@Jeroen Haveman For sure, the newton is the proper force unit to use. Gear heads in metric nations are familiar with torque measured in newton-meters. That being said, most North Americans who toss "pounds" around think of it as an amount of material (nails, produce, people), i.e. "mass" NOT the force usually experienced by said material or object at earth's surface. How many would have even heard of the term "slug" let alone know what it means? Not many I'd suggest. I'll confess I had to look up the metric equivalent, as the definition (1 slug is the amount of matter that will accelerate at 1 ft/s^2 if a force of 1 pound is exerted on it) is not very intuitive to me. But the metric equivalent makes a whole lot more sense: 1 slug of "stuff" equals approx. 14.6 Kg - that's clearly one chunky unit!
Great job, great explanations. Only thing I didn’t hear mentioned and was expecting, was a sidebar discussion on how all this downforce hurts straight line aerodynamics (drag coefficient). Lots of downforce is usually cuts down on top speed due to detrimental effect on Cd.
My first day of automotive class the teacher talked about horsepower vs grip. He had car A and car B going around a track. Car A had much better grip. He did the cornering grip math for each car then extrapolated out how much horsepower you would need to catch up with the car with better grip. It’s been 20 years so I don’t remember the exact # but I remember being shocked at how much extra power was necessary to make up for better grip. Would love to see a video of you breaking it down further.
Let's put it like this. Every inch of lowering the cg is equivalent to adding 50 HP in the corners. I think it was Ferrari who said that. In fact till date, no hypercar even making 2x the power has ever beaten a GT3 on track.
Simplified discussion about lateral grip. Lateral weight transfer in corners and tires working together by judicious use of spring rates and sway bars allow my Subaru to regularly pull, according to my datalogger, 1.5 gees peak in corners with no aero, on Bridgestone RE71Rs while autocrossing. I'm looking forward to trying the Yokohama A052 tires next season.
What I kind of love/hate about this car is the styling simplicity. It looks like any other ordinary bog standard superstar, but I feel like they left a lot on the table in terms of visual impact.
Most cars, what they do matters more than how they look. Moreso for this, because a) the track clock doesn't care, and b) went by too fast to see it well anyway :)
@@THESLlCK It's big because it's benchmarked against the best headlights of any supercar out there which includes the latest Porsches and the Bugatti Chiron. Also they've hidden the ducts and cooling in that long headlight casing. The T33 has a much smaller set of headlamps though.
I greatly appreciate the non-overly-drawn-out basic principles explanations heading in to the punch line. It's my favorite part. And of course, the common sense analogies that "make sense" and get an "oh, I see now", the greatest talents shared here. And production basics, all of them, plus the useful/purposeful diagrams, cutaways, extracted component demonstrations - these are all used to provide absolutely top shelf explanations. (I'm crossing my finger God forgives me for complimenting a Californian.) BION I'm not sucking up for a free ƎE shirt, but am surprised to see none on the description's Amazon link.
How about having a 'baloon' in the tank hold the fuel, and the space around it is presurized. Pump picks up in the baloon. No air in the baloon = no starvation issues.
Fun video. I remember they used to say this about the Saleen S7, back when it was released. Taking a look at some old articles, I believe once it exceeded speeds of 160mph, it could achieve this.
So IF you would really drive upside down: - the fuel pump(s) would run dry, because there's no fuel anymore on the bottom except it's some kind of balloon system - oil pressure would drop, even if it's a dry sump system, because the oil would move to the cylinder heads/pistons and - oil would flow out of the crankcase ventilation system - coolant and brake fluid circuits would suck in air - feel free to continue
I like that uncompromised vision of Gordon, he doesn't compromise road setup for track setup or vice versa. The main thing here which even you failed to mention in the T50 video where you felt the fan was overrated was the ride height -- the road car drives 5.5 inches off the ground so the venturi effect is not going to be anywhere near a race car. A race car like a DTM? I doubt if you could stick a finger underneath. What that does is, it makes the venturi effect and the role of the diffuser much, much stronger. That's where the fan really shows what it's got. A car like that is almost vacuumed to the ground. The fact that the T50s can get to 210 mph with almost twice its weight in downforce means it's remarkably aerodynamically efficient - for comparison, in a top speed run of the Senna, which makes much less downforce and more power, it got up to 170-180 mph easily, and then it hit a wall of drag and somehow just barely struggled past 200 mph. And you can't really drive that car well on the road - ride is super rough, the wing is a giant parachute, mpg is abysmal, getting the bottom scraped and damaging the vortex generators is too easy, R tires are useless in rain, and on and on it goes.
Thankyou for the caption at 10:00. I was going hoarse shouting "How well is that V12 going to work when changed from overhead cam to overhead sump!" :-D
1:26 I learned that the hard way. I built a car in Automation to make the fastest lap time possible, and the first iteration had a 2650 hp 10.5L V10, and each subsequent variation had a smaller engine with less power until the current version, which has a 6.1L flat-6 with 2100 hp. The extra power was getting wasted in wheelspin, and the extra weight obviously made turning harder, so I focused on reducing wheelspin, reducing weight, and increasing downforce. To date, that car is still the fastest thing I've ever built, and it's "only" 7 seconds down of the fastest car ever in Automation around the test track.
8:11 I remember hearing that CART racing cars when they were to race on urban streets, the sewer covers had to welded down because the cars could pull the sewer covers up with the aero..it was shown in " Driven (2001 film)"
It’ll be very interesting to see what this car can actually do on track. 4 second advantage around a 1 mile track vs Viper ACR is nuts. Jason, please do a video on how this version of the T.50 has so much downforce when the calculation for the street version was not all that impressive. From the sketch, only the front splitter and the rear wing are substantially different? Maybe spit angle has something to do with it?
The Grip = (m + Df) / m equation, which can be rewritten as 1 + Df / m will just give you downforce per unit mass, not the total amount of grip, which is proportional to weight + downforce, assuming a constant coefficient of friction.
The SI unit for force is obviously N but it is perfectly fine and common to use kgf too, but than that's on you to be aware of that. And note that is kgf and not kgm, just as in imperial you have lbm for mass and lbf for force. Just have to be aware of what you're using and in what context and that's the same for metric and imperial. And if you want to use imperial and be proper with your equations (i.e. avoid using fudge factors) then you have to use the SI equivalent and measure mass in slugs and not lbm which will create the same "issue" in reverse.
DTM cars according to wikipedia make 3000+ kg of downforce. Mental. They are the fastest GT spec cars out there and they only make about 600 HP. Of course, they use some massive slicks. You should tell us about DTM. This car is remarkable for its size, but given the specs and tires it wouldn't be racing in a professional race unless GM gets a series organized. But I think it should beat a GT3 handily on racing slicks.
DTM isn't GT spec at all. It's a silouette series with near zero technology in common with roadcars. The T.50s is probably faster than FIA GT3 even on road legal tires, considering how much lighter and more powerful it is.
You are right, there are a lot of unbelievable stats on this car. Almost like they are too good to be true. Please do another review after this thing is actually out and does fall short.
It annoys me to no end that people insist on measuring forces (usually downforce) in kilograms. A kilogram is not a unit of force. It's mass. Mass is a universal constant based on the amount of matter in an object. A 68 kg item on earth will be 68 kg everywhere in the universe, but a 150 pound person on earth would weigh 351 pounds on Jupiter, but you'd still be 68 kg. On earth, there is a constant relationship between mass and weight (which is a force) because of gravity, but it's still wrong. I am really glad that you addressed that because no one else does.
It's weird to calculate downforce as a constant weight, doesn't make much sense as it works only for one velocity value. The T.50 does not work like a "regular" fan car as the fan just improves the diffusor, so downforce is still very much speed dependant.
I love your white board calculations as always.. but of course we can not really take the 'maximum downforce' for any speed.. so that circle calculation would become a bit more complicated, since Df really is also a function of v. edit: Or maybe you did take that into account but thought it would be to much of a mess for the board
Seeing a car drive upside down would be an amazing publicity stunt. Very dangerous stunt given the speed needed and building the track wouldn't be cheap but I think it would be worth it. I think this trick would be pretty easy with an RC car designed for this purpose. Driving up a wall would be doable too provided you had a ramp up to it and hit the ramp with enough speed.
This is all very interesting and relevant. But what I really want to know is what happens if you drive it upside down and the tunnel ends? Will it just crash on it's roof after flying upside down steadily a short distance? Or will it start doing somersaults because there is still downforce but no more surface to push down on?
I guess the answer is, 'it depends' 😉 A lot of the downforce on this car comes from ground effect (ceiling effect when upside down), that will be gone. What is left probably isn't enough to keep the car in the air. The next important thing is the distribution of the remaining forces, if they are perfectly balanced it will land on its roof but that seems highly unlikely. Any imbalance will cause the car to rotate (probably causing it to lose more upforce), so somersaults are the most likely outcome I guess.
Please make a video all about the vacuum system in cars. Been working on vehicles for years, still have no idea how they work. I can fix them, but I have no idea why it's important for so much, and just how it works in general. Thank you
Power to weight ratio is closer to superbikes so the kind of engines can be as well. Quite common to see 1000cc super bikes on the 180-200bhp range (NA, of course)
