When did F1s have the greatest top speed?

[Ardius]

Couldnt they wear fighter pilot style suits? The ones which actively inflate around your legs to keep the blood in your head at high G's. They could also strap the helmet to a 4 point bungie rope style mounting to minimise neck strain.

Robin.

Possibly, but we also get into other safety issues, such as the ability of the human body to actually react faster and faster. It would also become increasingly difficult to build cars that allow the driver to survive accidents and also to minimise the spread of debris onto the track and the possiblity of debris flying out of the circuit.
Circuits would look more and more like Abu Dhabi or Bahrain and Monaco would eventually be removed.
The faster the cars go, the more the human body becomes a restriction on performance. I would prefer somewhat for the cars to be in a state where the drivers are able to control them manually despite the restriction on technology. I don't know whether F1 should just be about technology, it should have its place but I don't think it should dominate the sport's future, to the point where we do away with drivers.

 

[Kakumaki]

I remember Raikkonen hit about 374 km/h with McLaren during qualify at Monza, 2003 maybe?

 

[Dotini]

FYI, the world closed course speed record:

"a four-cylinder Olds engine mounted in the rear of a streamlined Indy car chassis went even faster; propelling A.J. Foyt to the current closed course record. Running on the 7.7-mile Firestone test track at Fort Stockton, Texas, he recorded a 257.123 mph lap speed."
http://prnmag.com/articles/newswire/66-who-holds-the-worlds-closed-course-record-aj-foyt.html

The record of 268 mph by Rosemeyer and Auto Union in 1938 doesn't count as it was set on a closed off stretch of the German autobahn.

Beyond any dangers to the drivers of such speeds is the danger to spectators. I'm sure all of us can cite the 1955 LeMans tragedy which took over 80 lives.

Respectfully submitted,
Dotini

 

[NapoleonMikey]

Couldnt they wear fighter pilot style suits? The ones which actively inflate around your legs to keep the blood in your head at high G's. They could also strap the helmet to a 4 point bungie rope style mounting to minimise neck strain.

Robin.

You would have to develop a different type of suit compared to what fighter pilots use. Pilots take vertical G's causing the blood to rush to there legs during a turn. Drivers experience horizontal G's where the blood is rushing from side to side in the body. But even with a G suit pilots cant take long exposure to high intensive G's. So I question how good it would do a driver who is experiencing high G loads for a long race period.

 

[Robin]

Possibly, but we also get into other safety issues, such as the ability of the human body to actually react faster and faster. It would also become increasingly difficult to build cars that allow the driver to survive accidents and also to minimise the spread of debris onto the track and the possiblity of debris flying out of the circuit.
Circuits would look more and more like Abu Dhabi or Bahrain and Monaco would eventually be removed.
The faster the cars go, the more the human body becomes a restriction on performance. I would prefer somewhat for the cars to be in a state where the drivers are able to control them manually despite the restriction on technology. I don't know whether F1 should just be about technology, it should have its place but I don't think it should dominate the sport's future, to the point where we do away with drivers.

I think the main issue is that F1 cars were once better than they are now. If the cars returned to that kind of level of performance (2004) I personally would be happy to see it stay capped at a that level for the foreseeable future rather than go into another level of speed and technology. The sport has regressed somewhat so its more about bringing it back up to what it was a few years ago. Juding by all the sneeky aero growing back and KERS it seems to be happening!

Its like when Concorde went out of service, that was a moment the avation industry went backwards!

You would have to develop a different type of suit compared to what fighter pilots use. Pilots take vertical G's causing the blood to rush to there legs during a turn. Drivers experience horizontal G's where the blood is rushing from side to side in the body. But even with a G suit pilots cant take long exposure to high intensive G's. So I question how good it would do a driver who is experiencing high G loads for a long race period.

I'm sure though that figther pilots fly longer hours than a 2 hour F1 race and in a combat situation there would be very high prolonged G's in all axes including the horizontal. Its just the fact that F1 drivers are currently in no way trained to those kind of levels. This is why you have fighter pilots driving land speed record cars. I'm sure though with the right type of suits and training such a sport could happen but it would be prohibitively expensive!

Robin.

 

[Ardius]

Its like when Concorde went out of service, that was a moment the avation industry went backwards!

Not really, Concorde wasn't cost effective. It made more sense to produce aircraft which although fly a few hours slower, carried far more people in far greater comfort for far cheaper.
As an engineering excercise, it makes no difference really, though I agree that its sad its gone now, it really didn't have much purpose beyond being an icon.

I don't see the change from 2004 to now as the same thing at all. The reason we lost the V10s was to supposedly make things cheaper. Subsequent regulation changes, particularly 2009 onwards have been made to attempt to help the racing. I don't see much difference either, so what if the 2011 cars don't set new lap records? They can't continue to get faster and faster.

 

[Robin]

Not really, Concorde wasn't cost effective. It made more sense to produce aircraft which although fly a few hours slower, carried far more people in far greater comfort for far cheaper.
As an engineering excercise, it makes no difference really, though I agree that its sad its gone now, it really didn't have much purpose beyond being an icon.

I feel that the two can be compared because from a technical standpoint they are very similar. It was pushing the boundaries of its type and I feel it would have been great if the design was an ongoing project which could be further improved and developed. Unfortunately for Concorde it had to be both a technical exercise and commercially viable. A formula one car doesn't have paying passengers who need good luggage space, leg room and cost effective mileage, it just needs to win at any (reasonable) cost. So from the viewpoint of technical ability Concorde was the F1 car of the skies and if there was a series for it to race in it would still be around today! Thats what I meant when I said the aviation industry went backwards.

Robin.

 

[Ardius]

Concorde wasn't restricted by a governing body of a sport though, the reasons for its decline were pure logical reasons. Its not a failing of the aviation industry, and it wasn't backwards of airlines to choose a more economical solution. Just because something is technologically impressive, doesn't make it the correct choice, it just makes it impressive.
You might like to think Concorde was the best aircraft ever, but as a commercial aircraft, it was a complete failure. This is a failure of design, not application or regulation by others. There is nothing "backwards" about it, except that Concorde's designers were stuck thinking about speed when the age when speed was all that mattered had long past.
The death of Concorde was not a shame because the aviation industry had ignored it (or had gone "backwards"), it was simply a shame because it was an icon of technology. It was an old plane serving a very small market which barely existed anymore when it went out of service. There is no shame to be thrown at everyone for not embracing supersonic aircraft, because the reasons for not doing so were pretty logical and made a lot of sense, i.e. it was never going to be a success.

Formula 1 on the other hand is a sport, where the fastest cars and drivers compete against each other. Regulation comes from a need to keep the sport interesting, safe and running even in dark economic times. I don't see the change of regulations away from the fastest regulation to new ones as backwards either. There came a need for a cheaper formula because small independent teams were going bust (Tyrrell, Arrows, Jordan, Minardi..) and manufacturer-backed teams were completely dominating the sport. This wasn't a failure of the 2004 regulations so much as a failure of the sports governing body to address an issue which had really started in 1998. Continuing with the 2004 regulations would have killed the sport very quickly, the established manufacturer teams would have continued to out-spend the smaller teams, and with no way of finding a huge advantage, the big money is where the small performance leaps were found.

 

[ExigeEvan]

I'm sure though that figther pilots fly longer hours than a 2 hour F1 race and in a combat situation there would be very high prolonged G's in all axes including the horizontal. Its just the fact that F1 drivers are currently in no way trained to those kind of levels. This is why you have fighter pilots driving land speed record cars. I'm sure though with the right type of suits and training such a sport could happen but it would be prohibitively expensive!

Robin.

NapoleonMikey is correct. A G-suit would be little help to a F1 driver because the acceleration (change in direction) is in the wrong plane of movement.

But I don't think blood loss is the issue. A fighter pilot only has to tweak his wrist to control a fighter jet and the controls are at his side, a driver has to turn a steering wheel with his arms raised.

In terms of endurance, a fighter pilot would not be pulling considerable G-force for more than a fraction of his flight, unless of course he was dog fighting, dodging missiles and performing complex bombing runs constantly.

 

[Greycap]

I'm sure though that figther pilots fly longer hours than a 2 hour F1 race and in a combat situation there would be very high prolonged G's in all axes including the horizontal.

Longer hours, yes. Longer hours sitting in the cockpit flying straight from point A via point B to point C and then back home. But I've never heard of a two hour dogfight, the longest known "real" jet duel lasted for 10 to 15 minutes depending on the source.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Just a note on the speed and danger thing, most deaths I can recall in motosport haven't been attributable to the maximum speed of the car.

and..

Is it not at least a small part of the attraction?

 

[Ardius]

Yes, we must accept at some point that motorsport is inherently dangerous, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider safety an issue. We should always attempt to make the sport safer, it can never be safe enough.
Making the cars faster will be more dangerous, I think motorsport is dangerous enough as it is and we are lucky we haven't had more serious accidents of the Henry Surtees nature.

I don't think its particularly clever to suggest we allow faster cars simply because motorsport is dangerous anyway. Sure, we may as well ban motorsport if we don't want any danger at all, so we have to accept that an element of danger is kind of necessary. However, I wouldn't be happy with the FIA if they knowingly brought about regulations which would make the sport more dangerous without the necessary alterations in safety...e.g. Group B rally.

Now, we obviously aren't talking about making the cars slightly faster, we are talking here of why not let the sport evolve as it did before the 80s (without limitations on speed of the cars)? As I said earlier, F1 is already close to a limit of human ability. Allowing the cars to get faster and faster isn't the way the sport should go anymore.

Somehow, I don't find watching drivers barely control their cars very attractive, nor do I find remote control or AI racing interesting either. There should be an element of danger, but within a safe limit.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Now, we obviously aren't talking about making the cars slightly faster, we are talking here of why not let the sport evolve as it did before the 80s (without limitations on speed of the cars)? As I said earlier, F1 is already close to a limit of human ability. Allowing the cars to get faster and faster isn't the way the sport should go anymore.

Somehow, I don't find watching drivers barely control their cars very attractive, nor do I find remote control or AI racing interesting either. There should be an element of danger, but within a safe limit.

So the future of top level motor sport lays in increased safety and efficiency then... I can handle that, but it seems counter to what F1 is about, at least to me anyway.

People do tend to fondly remember the old days of F1, where bravery was more important than safety, and many people enjoy seeing drivers 'on the ragged edge' barely managing to wrestle their cars between the barriers. We don't need 20 Chuck Yeager's on the track admittedly, but it would offer more of a spectacle for the masses than watching cars on rails following the one racing line of a track, shaving an imperceptible 0.001 secs of each others time.

.. having said that, FWIW, for me F1 was about trying to build the most amazing cars, rather than the on track racing so much.

 

[Ardius]

Well, yeah I would love to see the cars a little bit more on edge, but thats completely different to drivers barely being able to keep up with the performance of the car. We're not talking correcting a bit of oversteer here, we're talking, imagine if we let the rules loose and didn't limit the speeds of cars? Are we really sure that the drivers would be able to keep up? I don't think so and some nasty accidents would surely be the result. Thats why I use the Group B rally example - cars that even the best drivers in the world couldn't control.

I agree that I liked F1 for being about amazing cars, but now they will have to be amazing in other ways than just speed, or rather increase in speed compared to years previous.

 

[Dotini]

I'd like to see them race in open top 1000hp cars with almost no downforce and crummy brakes.

But with fenders so they could rub and mix it up some in the corners.

 

[Ardius]

That sounds more like NASCAR , well except for the open-topped bit....and 1000bhp.

As long as F1 doesn't go spec-series, I'm happy. I don't feel the cars have to be rediculously faster every year, they do need to be the fastest on a track, which currently they still are.

 

[Pupik]

On the morning of January 28th, 1938, Bernd Rosemeyer established a new speed record over a flying kilometer of 268mph with an Auto Union streamliner on the German autobahn, very similar to the one in GT4. The was a Grand Prix car, as Formula 1 was not formally established until 1950.

And 171mph was his average speed at the Avusrennen in 1937...it's likely that record will never fall in Grand Prix racing.

He later set the record on the autobahn, but in the same year. In January 1938, Mercedes wanted to get a jump on the flying kilometer record, and did so with Carracciola at the wheel. Auto Union persuaded Rosemeyer to challenge the record, which he tried. After one slower run, he couldn't beat it. Carracciola tried again, but had to lift when he encountered crosswinds after exiting from underneath the overpasses.

At this point, the story goes that Rudi advised Bernd not to try a run, for safety reasons...not sure if this is the cautionary part of the legend or not...but the truth is Bernd went fo it, but the car crashed on autobahn near Darmstadt, and Bernd Rosemeyer was killed on January 28th, 1938 in that accident.

I think the closed-autobahn pissing match ended after that; not that the AVUS circuit was any safter with its Wall of Death.

 

[YellowG1]

That sounds more like NASCAR , well except for the open-topped bit....and 1000bhp.

As long as F1 doesn't go spec-series, I'm happy. I don't feel the cars have to be rediculously faster every year, they do need to be the fastest on a track, which currently they still are.

I always thought F1 should do what MotoGP does with Moto2. Moto2 is more or less a spec series--completely the opposite of MotoGP: tons of bikes on the grid, very close racing, bikes are more or less the same. It's a ton of fun to watch, often more so than MotoGP, but you still can watch MotoGP to see the fastest things on two wheels.

F1 might be well-served to make GP2 more of a companion series and less of a feeder series to F1... have them race on the same weekend and track as F1 rather than a wholly separate schedule.

 

[Ardius]

That could be said of almost all feeder and junior series though (there are more drivers, teams and sometimes better racing) because they are cheaper. It wouldn't be good for F1 either...it would detract and divide the audience. GP2 already gets good coverage, has relatively decent racing (but not that much better than F1) and is close to F1 speeds.
Considering that MotoGP is not in a great state right now, I'd say it isn't such a great idea.

Its also comparable to Champcar/Indycar...which didn't end well either.

 

[AlexGTV]

Wouldn't F1 as a spec series be very dangerous? I mean the reaction times are already very short, the sport is open-wheel and contact is catastrophic.

 

[Tired Tyres]

Wouldn't F1 as a spec series be very dangerous? I mean the reaction times are already very short, the sport is open-wheel and contact is catastrophic.

Nowhere near as dangerous as the six second per lap closing speed between the current quick teams and the slow cars at the back.

A Spec series would be great as it would show who truly are the best drivers rather than who has the best car but what would be in it for the teams? It would be an end to the constant development of cars which is one of the high points of F1 today.

 

[Ardius]

Wouldn't F1 as a spec series be very dangerous? I mean the reaction times are already very short, the sport is open-wheel and contact is catastrophic.

What's dangerous about a spec-series? Spec-series means all of the cars are exactly the same specification, it doesn't mean the cars are super fast.
GP2 is a spec-series, Formula 2 is a spec-series, Indycar is currently a de facto spec-series. None of these are any more or less dangerous than Formula 1 is.

A Spec series would be great as it would show who truly are the best drivers rather than who has the best car but what would be in it for the teams? It would be an end to the constant development of cars which is one of the high points of F1 today.

It wouldn't necessarily show who the best drivers are though, because a specific car can only suit some drivers and not others. Look at Kamui Kobayashi, he looked like nothing in a spec series, but with a car more tailored to his style, he comes alive. I also don't buy into the "the best drivers are most adaptable" - even Lewis Hamilton is disadvantaged with a car that doesn't suit him, just because he is more able to drive around that, doesn't mean he isn't disadvantaged and isn't visible to us.
Then you have drivers who sit in series for several years gaining masses of experience before winning during a season when there are more rookies (e.g. Pastor Maldonado, Giorgio Pantano, etc).
Plus the fact that just because each driver has the same car, doesn't mean they have equal chances. A driver who is at a top GP2 team like ART or iSport will benefit from the best mechanics and engineers, who help him setup the car better or provide faster pit stops and better strategies.

The plus part of a non-spec series like Formula 1 is that the team can develop the car to better suit the driver's style, which is far easier than simply changing setups.
For the most part, GP2 champions are some of the best drivers out there..but then the same can be said for F1. Someone that is a backmarker or midfield driver in GP2 barely gets noticed. Someone who manages to drag their backmarker car to a 10th place finish gets noticed, partly because F1 is more popular but also because we appreciate that the driver was driving an inferior car - we can appreciate the achievement better.

 

[lbsf1]

That idea of having a spec series as a kind of leader into f1 would be great, abit like a better thought out A1.

I want f1 to be the pinnacle of racing, my favourited drivers are all from way before I was born from the Turbo era where cars were fast as hell and you respected the drivers for what they did, putting their life on the line every time the got in the car.

My idea would be let go all restrictions accept safety ones. If they keep strict safety regs then casualties would be no where near as high as the turbo era however the letting go of engine/areo restrictions would bring back the excitement.

This idea won't raise cost that much either, now teams are having to push to get whatever little extra they can out of basicly the same equiptment however if the regs were lifted then they could go down completely different routes and probably get more powerfull engines cheaper then the present ones, and not have to be constantly looking for loopholes in the rules to be sqeezing through.

 

[Ardius]

Open regulations are more expensive in terms of gain (or rather, potential loss). Sure, the budgets the teams would have wouldn't be much different, but spending millions down a route that fails could end a race team, rather than only losing a few tenths. It would also be far tougher for a smaller team to be competitive as they would be required to either continue to copy a bigger team or to somehow develop their own route.
For example, today Williams spend their budget on aero parts which are slightly different to McLarens. If they fail, they are only a few seconds behind and can fix the issue. If they spent it on say their own V12 engine or got a manufacturer to develop one, if that failed they would be miles off the pace and it would be difficult to catch up again.

A spec-series is the opposite, it is immediately cheaper, but has drawbacks as I outlined in the post above. And as Tired said, its not really "F1" anymore if there are no constructors and no difference between the cars.

I don't see F1 changing in this way in the foreseeable future, only if we had a major, major boom in the economy would open regulations make sense. As it is, F1 is stuck having to try and keep costs down, attract companies and avoid being a spec series.