What if 1930s Grand Prix cars had Wings? - Assetto Corsa Experiment 

It would be interesting to see the Type C with the wing, plus modern tyres and modern brakes. And maybe we could get to see what that beast will accomplish against moderns cars in a modern track?

Dear Lord... just watching a simulation of a 1930's car is terrifying. I love everything about this video, from the fun "what if" scenario, the excellent commentary, and lack of stupid music. Hats off to you, sir.

My thoughts on the subject is this: I think they would benefit from wings, but only slightly, especially with those tires and suspensions. And the downsides outweight the upsides... There's a reason why the 1930s is arguably called the "Golden Era of Grand Prix racing". There were several design breakthroughs that were, at times, so far ahead of the technology of the time, at times, we can be sure that they don't know the full extent of the potential of their designs! The cars were powerful and fast, and the tires became an extremely important consideration. Tires were a limiting factor to the performance of those machines. As we know, they were cross-ply design, and were pretty narrow. Now, we knew that that's not really ideal, but it is a combination of they don't really know that at the time, and the technology of the time could only allow them to do such. The tires also use canvas for its casings, and natural rubber. Synthetic rubber had been around by then, but it is still very new, and expensive to make, so it is ultimately not used on those racing tires. Thanks to the design and materials used, those tires were, consequently, pretty sensitive to heat, on fast tracks such as Mellaha (Tripoli) and AVUS, for example, it would be better if new tires were to be carefully run in before pushing, or else, they would literally disintegrate in just a few laps. But, I think it is very hard to be careful with new tires, considering that they had to deal with, at times, more than 400hp, and bags and bags of torque. The width of those tires means that there's not much lateral grip to get from them. An engineer friend of mine said that according to some sources, those cross-plies could only handle about 1g of cornering load before slipping. Also, thanks to the varied road surfaces of the track of the time, roadholding is a important thing to consider, and with all the bumpy and uneven surfaces, they tend to use soft suspensions (soft when compared to today's racing cars). The cars themselves were designed to slide around the corners, using the inherent lack of grip of the tires to, ironically, make it 'round the bends in the fastest way possible. So, okay, putting wings on them, I think, would cause the suspension to bottom out a lot, and also increase the grip, but not much. The one thing they might do, is to drastically increase heat buildup on those 1930s tires and make their life shorter. As a final thing, I think I would like to end with a piece I remembered reading somewhere. Eng. Robert Eberan-Eberhorst, the designer of the Auto Union Type D, later recalled that "if only they had those mid-1960s-era tires to fit in the D Type back then..."

That Type C, though - when I've mastered that car, I'll know I've learned Assetto Corsa. You have to respect it at every turn, you need your concentration at 100% for the entirety of the time you're 'at the wheel'. It's so unforgiving of the slightest mistake...yet an absolute pleasure to drive when you're on your game. Too much understeer, surprise oversteer when you least expect it, sometimes it likes accelerating quickly, sometimes not, some things change but one thing stays the same - it always wants to kill you!

What if 1930s Grand Prix cars had 3-Spokes?

This man is truly asking the BIG questions of our age.

I'd love to see how the various decades of racing cars would do with modern tires sized appropriately for the power/weight of the cars.

At 90mph you are definitely benefiting from the downforce. While testing on Miatas, difference between ones with and ones without wings was pretty big on tracks with average speeds under 80mph. Formula student cars usually don't even get close to 60mph and all competetive ones run extreme aero packages.

As Jimmy Broadbent would say: WANG

Always like the history lessons attached with the videos on this channel.

I noticed in the first lap, you were more or less guiding the car through the corner with the entire car. The second lap seemed like your steering input was more precise. I'm thinking for that track something more like a traditional F1 set up, or 60's/70's winglets and wing set up might have worked better. For several obvious reasons, all of which you have pretty much stated. But this was a very cool experiment. Very cool video.

Man your channel is so underrated, how come you have "only" 30k subs? The quality of the content is amazing and even i with 30 years as a car and racing fan and working in the busines learn something new almost every video i watch. Keep it up, this channel with explode earlier or later!

Smokey Yunick put a wing on his Indycar in 1963 and says in his autobiography that Colin Chapman studied it intensely. I've always placed that car as the start of the wing wars.

I would very, VERY much like to see a Type C with an F1 style forward and rear wing so you could really balance the forces around the CG.

Man, I love stuff like this! It is amazing that Assetto Corsa allows you to do these "what ifs" so realistically. But that also is a tribute to your modding skills, Jake. Thank you.

Fantastic video! wonderfully paced and edited, can’t wait to see more!

Bravo! Top notch, quality viewing right there. The subject material, the production, the research. Brilliant!

The whole presentation of the video and cinematography is just on point. Good job!

Jesus, that was terrifying. Whole new appreciation for drivers of that era.

As usual a wonderful video, i never get enough of the historic context that you put in your productions. I think would be interesting doing something similar with another great breaktrough in motorsport, electronic aids, i'm curious to see what features like abs or slip control gave to racing cars in term of performance. Anyway, thank you!

In updating the physics model, I didn't hear you mention drag. Just weight and downforce. Were you able to modify the drag function somehow to add wing drag into it? Seems not, because you actually hit a higher max speed with the wing than without it (162 with it, 160 without). I thought maybe your exit speed from the last corner might have been higher with the wing, but your speed under the bridge was 120mph in both cases - the same. This was really fun to watch. I had never seen this sim before. Thanks for the vid!

What a great vid! Really enjoyed that, great work and keep it up!

I'm only a third of the way through but this video is excellent. Great commentary, great edit. Great job, man. Thank you.

What an awesome video this was! Great job man

Great video again. Great information, great entertainment and obvious passion are what makes these videos so great. But don't get me wrong I also enjoy watching you race. A lot. I hope the 66 season is still going.

Wonderful video idea; it really makes you wonder why racecar designers didn't discover downforce sooner. My fave example: The Opel RAK rocket car program utilised simple wings, but primarily to keep the wheels on the ground at high speed. Most notable was the RAK 2, which reached 148 mph during a record run at AVUS in 1928 (only 60 mph off the land speed record at the time). A rocket-powered car with wings in the 1920s - it's still a futuristic idea 100 years later!

Good story... really good story, Jake! It's like a "back-to-the-future" movie of some kind.. really fascinating! Also to think, they were so close to put on the wing by real, back in the 1930!

Auto Union Type C: Pikes Peak Version. 🤣

the production quality is amazing holy crap!!

Great idea very interesting. A wing on an older model race car. Love the videos and track and car history lessons!

Your videos are so epic man. Keep 'em coming.

A really interesting test. Thank you for thinking about it and, above all, for doing it.

i could listen to you talk all day. love your voice and scripts. also for a non native german speaker, your pronounciation is very nice

These videos are art. So much to appreciate!

Did you change any of the car's setup except the wing? I thought that it would allow you to stiffen the suspension a bit that would help counter the top weight roll in those early bends without becoming too skittish on other parts of the track. Great video overall though, thanks for all your usual excellent output. Also 6 secs on a 3:30 minute lap isn't a small improvement, that's almost 2 secs a minute and would normally take years of development to achieve.

Really this is brilliant content. It's fascinating to see things like this put together. This track was a good test track for it, for sure. I guess somewhere like a period Monza you would have lost out with the wing.

props for the editing. this is the first video I've watched from you and actually, I'll leave a sub here. also props for your german pronunciation (coming from a german)

Great video, loved the thought behind it. There was a version of the Type-C which had double rear wheels which was used for hillclimbing, I wonder if the downforce along with the increased rear contact patch would have helped solve the loose rear end, especially at high speed.

Love the history in your vids man thank you

Amazing video! I love this era of racing. Thanks so much!

Love the giant tachometer, very industrial! Very cool video, sorry I missed it originally.

Your videos are outstanding, Thank you very much making such enjoyable entertainment.

What a great idea for a video.nice work!

"The wings will blot out the sun! Then we shall race in the shade"

Really interesting video! Nice done.

The first half of the video was amazing, you should consider doing more exclusively documentary style videos in the future, you have great cinematography skills and a very appropriate voice for narrating that kind of content.

I just love your videos, right up my alley.

Literally the quickest 22 minutes of my life. Great video.

One of the best Video I have watched in the last few weaks realy intresting.

I live for this kind of content

Your episodes are getting better and better and definitely crossing into the world of real racing history. But what you are leaving out was the Chaparral 2E had another innovation which cost its reliability and kept it from dominating the 1966 Can-Am season. Because of Jim Hall's connections at GM engineering as well as being an innovator, a decision was made to attempt to run an automatic transmission in the 2E, something that Chaparral continued to experiment with over the years. Without a whole lot of success... The price of being an innovator.. If they had run a standard gearbox, it is almost guaranteed the 2E would have dominated the series and downforce research and development would have accelerated that much quicker. Keep doing what you do, your series continues to improve and it is highly appreciated.

I like the way you do the constipated voice to make it sound like you are talking while you drive rather than dubbing over laps that you did earlier lol. Great vid though.

I feel like the 6 seconds that you went fester is a bit skewed. The lap with the wing had some clearly faster lines. I think 3 seconds is more representable

Interesting experiment, would love to have seen the data for those laps! I know you doubted it's benefit in the first part of the lap, but I noted you were already 2-3 seconds up when you exited the corner with the pot-hole, so it seemed to have gained time fairly equally around the lap. I noted you were able to brake much later into the corners (almost trial braking style) and crucially, your accelerating out of every corner was much better! I know you will get the benefits of the downforce more at higher speeds (downforce is squared with speed essentially), but that extra mechanical weight certainly helped to grip up the wheels better! P.S. amazing introduction - the cinematics were lovely to look at!

Dude wtf Broadbent who, 2min of you vid blows most you tubers out of the water absolutely awesome glad I stumbled onto it this is the way to do a RU-vid vid & with assetto truly wicked @wacoon I love everything about this video, from the fun "what if" scenario, the excellent commentary, and lack of stupid music. Hats off to you, sir. I COULDN'T AGREE MORE !!!!

Another great video 👍

that gap between knowing how to do it and it actually being implemented reminds me of solar panels. solar panels were invented in 1839 45 years before the internal combustion engine but it wasn't until like 2010 where it was actually being used everywhere.

I'd love it if you'd make a video explaining how you make experiment videos like these.

Finally a coffin with a wing so it can fly the driver to heaven

Well done..I enjoyed watching and listening.

Its interesting the Type-C and its rival the Mercedes W25 overtopped Fritz von Opel’s RAK rocket car run (238 kmph / 1928) which had mid-body inverted aero wings (negative lift) to keep it planted on the AVUS straight. It couldn’t make the banked turns as the rockets were fixed and the steering inputs were to keep the car straight over the bumps. I suspect because it wasn’t a wheel driven car, after its successful demonstration that project moved on to a rocket train and rocket aircraft, the focus of the racing teams may have been more on each other. Part of the trick was to get the wings over the axels, but the mid-body idea makes sense for a single wing set.

Early day racecar drivers were crazy, that must have been scary as hell

Holy shitballs this channel is gold man... 🥇 Subbed. Keep it up man 😃

Great video 👍 quality content

More experiments like these please!

Gotta love simulators for allowing such "what if" scenarios for cheap. Love your videos

alternative title:man drives plane around racetrack

Very cool! :) I am thou skeptical of the modifications. The wing might look simple but it's still a result of many, many years of engineering. That thing produces massive downforce. With the amount of power the car has, and tightness of the track, drag means little. But just getting that much downforce in such a small package would not be as easy back then. Plus, knowing how AC does tyre load sensitivity, car in the video likely had a bit more grip than it would be possible with the tyres they had. If there is one thing studying both history and engineering taught me is that generally what we call today brilliant or revolutionary ideas were still just small increments back then. And engineers of old knew a lot more than it seems today. Most of them likely knew downforce would be good, but there would be many indirect reasons for the technology to adapt slowly. Also, when doing any reality check of car mods, downforce is the most common/biggest thing getting over exaggerated ;). Still, by virtue of "been there, done that" i appreciate the work that went into the video. Cheers!

New subscriber here! Great video! (it would be interesting to see overlapping images of both laps…!)

This is tremendous. Also the fact that you can bastardize cars is also tremendous. Love it. Merry Christmas everyone.

PLEASE MAKE MORE LIKE THIS

Gotta say… Well made video👍

Good driving. Wing or no wing this is a pretty hard car and track to master

Haha great video Jake. My thoughts are the height and weight of this wing would induce the car to be top heavy in fast corners. This would create more roll effectively lifting the inside wheels from the track and reducing overall grip. So sort of undoing what you were trying to do. I wonder if fitting a lower, lighter wing would have a different effect?

I'm trying to have a break from sim racing but now you have made me need to go back to AC for a classic bit of fun, that track looks amazing. What graphic settings are you running for AC?

Since the weight slowed you down a bit, are you thinking of trying two smaller 60s style wings as well?

How close the Germans were to discover the potential of downforce in the late 1930's? They actually discovered ground effect, and measured it in a windtunnel, but the engineers considered it a measuring error... The Auto-Union Type D slipstreamer for speed record runs was developed and prototyped in scale models to maximize stability, reduce lift, and minimize drag. One version in 1938 featured what we would call sideskirts today, and other unusually shaped body panels. This effectively sealed the floor and acted as a Venturi tunnel. They wanted more stability and less lift, and they accidentally got both through downforce. The model was measured in a windtunnel with zero lift. The rig was only set up to measure lift, not downforce. Rather than realizing that the measurement was correct, and that the model undid all of the natural lift and more, the measurement was seen as an error. At first look, they were not being too unreasonable - every single time before, they measured non-zero lift. Usually they struggled to keep the car on the ground at high speeds. Some models produced so much lift that they would take off, some would stay on the ground but unloading the wheels to varying extent, but no model ever produced downforce. Considering how brilliant and Germanly pedantic the engineers were, some of them with experience from airplane engineering, I would say that they were literally one shower-thought away from realizing what was actually going on with this model, measuring it again, and exploring it. This "accidental ground effect" version of the car was very stable in tests. And it had just a tiny but more drag than the conventional designs. So they made it in full scale and ran it in speed record attempts, without realizing what they were doing. That's the car Berndt Rosemeyer died in during a speed record run. Crosswind destabilized the car, some overloaded body panels probably sheared off, he could not catch the slide, and the car flew off the highway at a huge speed. The development of this version was discontinued. But in the midst of GP technical regulation changes between 1937 and 1938 (a switch from a maximum weight formula, to a minimum weight formula + engine displacement limit), and expected developments into the 1939 season (power-to-weight ratio was getting insane again), they had spare weight to play with. They actually considered running compact slipstreamers on some slower circuits. Porsche even submitted a viable design to Mercedes, you can find a blueprint scan under the name "Mercedes T90". With all of this, rather than strapping a wing on the car, they might have been pretty close to coming up with ground-effect slipstreamers. The next time ground effect was used, that time intentionally, was in 1960 on the insane Bluebird-Proteus CN7 land speed record vehicle, which is a story and a half in itself. And then Colin Chapman with Lotus 78, but that is a well-known history.

I love the documentary style intro

It would be interesting to see this car with wings attached directly to the unsprung mass, applying downforce to the wheels without causing any heave compression in the suspension.

In AC the auto union is the craziest death machine ever developed for racing, but… the engine is one of the coldest sounding ever! Bruce Mclaren is the racing God.

FYI at 14:38 when you read the time off, I'm assuming you got it from the clock you inserted in the top-right of the video? If so, the end numbers are the frame count, and since your footage is at 60 fps, the 48th frame is actually 48/60th's of a second, or 0.8

Bruh that looks like the coolest sprint car ever!

This engine sounds AMAZING!!

I've always wondered, how do you make the needles on the dash rebound like that instead of just moving in set intervals?

Fascinating, I am glad they didn't figure this out until the seventies. At least we had clean slidey racecars up until then.

You're such a storyteller!

Great vid, awesome idea. Now all wil be courious, what gain would give a proper channeled floor with huge diffuser 🤔?? Because there is a massive amount of room under the car body to attach slick spliter-side channels-diffuser assembly😁.

Is there a downoad link for the winged version?

Hey great vid! Who's version of a vintage monaco do you use in AC?

Another great study by professor Jake, keep'em coming please..... Love how at noon he changes his labcoat for a leather cap and goggles and trashes his creations around. Top dude, Top channel, Top entertainment....

3:02 man that was done perfect!!

Great video thanks sir I love these what if Grand Prix cars😎💪✊🖖🤔

That driver POV in a 1930s Grand Prix car is properly terrifying indeed. I don’t think I’ll ever know how these drivers did it with such primitive tech and raw tracks

What program do you use to actually add the wing?

what i wonder is .. is the wing placement are impacting on the car setup .. on this exemple the wing act like a front wing with majority of the downforce focusedd on the front tyre .. if you placed the wing at the back what would have changed ?? lighter direction ? more nimble? less bouncy ?? i would love to have your opinion. greetings from france.

Seen that car in real live at the Klausen Memorial. It was epic 👌

Its amazing that Gran Prix HP did not catch up with pre war Auto Union and Merc -Benz till like the 80s.

Did you model the huge drag this wing produces?

Did you add the massive additional DRAG? Doesn't seem so by your straightaway speeds....?

How did you put the wing on?