Upside down cars

[deevlash]

As everyone knows an F1 car can theoretically drive on the ceiling when its at full pelt, or at least the old ones could. So in this time of everyone scrambling for every penny available why havent any of the teams done a demo where they gave this a try?

Im thinking red bull with "crazy" dave driving along a track with a corkscrew section to invert the car and another corkscrew to get it back on the flat after a short period. Red bull have a history of promoting insane stuff like Robbie Maddisons crazy step up/down in Vegas at new year.

The media coverage would be huge surely?

[T_Pot]

your very bored aint you

[Rude-boy]

deevlash said:

The media coverage would be huge surely?

So would the cost of building the track to prove it on, then you'd have the H&S brigade all over it like a rash.

Closets you will ever get to seeing it happen would be if there were a few coders with an F1 simulator, a couple of days and a driver. Never happen in real life though.

[deevlash]

more H&S rubbish than this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLejkyXbJlc
or ken block taking his impreza round a snowboard fun park?

[Rude-boy]

How many people would he have wiped out if that had gone wrong, worst, worst case? How many with a upside down F1 car doing 150mph+?

I haven't seen (or don't recall) the Scooby one, but I doubt the danger to the public was far less than it even appeared from the vids. It is also a totally different game, extreme stunt riders and drivers do this for a living, no one drives an F1 car upside down for a living, or at least intentionally.

[deevlash]

you could do it on a specially built track in the desert somewhere, it would just be a one off, not an intergral part of a new permanant race track. The track could be surrounded with marshmallow incase it went wrong and then the fans could eat it all afterwards

[mrmr96]

deevlash said:

you could do it on a specially built track in the desert somewhere, it would just be a one off, not an intergral part of a new permanant race track. The track could be surrounded with marshmallow incase it went wrong and then the fans could eat it all afterwards

I like your thinking.

However at about 180mph the car would be covering about 80 meters per sec, so for 2 secs upside down you need almost 200 meters of inverted road. Plus, I expect, a very gentle roll into it. And out of it. And enough run up to get to 180mph before the roll.

Plus you would have to make the geometry of the rolls very smooth so as not to exert more than 1-G of upward force.

I think that a MUCH more viable plan would be a windtunnel based experiment.
If a full scale tunnel capable of 180mph exists (don't know if it does) then you could hang the car under a flat 'road' surface turn the wind up and then cut the ropes holding the car up. I would expect you'd need something to stop the car rolling backwards in the wind, but it MIGHT be possible that with the force with which it's pressed into the 'road' (ceiling) and the sticky tyres, it might be possible to hold it on the footbrake.

Not quite 'driving' upside down, but possible feasible and still very very cool.

[Obiwonkeyblokey]

Thats all well and good, but would it take off?

[deevlash]

Obiwonkeyblokey said:

Thats all well and good, but would it take off?

curiously in this situation if it did take off it would smack into the floor

[T_Pot]

Obiwonkeyblokey said:

Thats all well and good, but would it take off?

wouldnt that be, take down?

[stifler]

Oil scavenging would be a bd.

Sorry, yes opf course it would work.

[deevlash]

stifler said:

Oil scavenging would be a bd.

Sorry, yes of course it would work.

I hadnt though about that, a 2g corkscrew might fling enough oil up to the bottom of the sump allow a short upside down section?

[StevieBee]

F1 Racing Magazine ran an article a while back dispelling this myth. Whole load of reasons why it wouldn't work including oil and fuel feed and IIRC, something about gravity acting differently on objects being pushed up rather than down. If I can find the mag' I'll post the details.

[stifler]

deevlash said:

stifler said:

Oil scavenging would be a bd.

Sorry, yes of course it would work.

I hadnt though about that, a 2g corkscrew might fling enough oil up to the bottom of the sump allow a short upside down section?

Cheers for correcting my crepe speelong.
How much downforce do the cars currently have? If you are putting a car through a 2g corkscrew and the car is already producing the equivalent of 2g in downforce you will be overloading a lot of components. Also are you talking about a "loop the loop". Or do you mean where the camber of the road goes through 360 degrees. Very different problems involved in both.

Does the 27 mile circular tunnel at CERN have a flat roof? :tin-foil-hat:

[DSM2]

[quote=mrmr96
I think that a MUCH more viable plan would be a windtunnel based experiment.
If a full scale tunnel capable of 180mph exists (don't know if it does) then you could hang the car under a flat 'road' surface turn the wind up and then cut the ropes holding the car up. I would expect you'd need something to stop the car rolling backwards in the wind, but it MIGHT be possible that with the force with which it's pressed into the 'road' (ceiling) and the sticky tyres, it might be possible to hold it on the footbrake.

Not quite 'driving' upside down, but possible feasible and still very very cool.
[/quote]

Of course a ful size tunnel with WS of over 180mph exists. what do you think most of the F1 teams use?


And wouldn't it be easier just to leave the car on the belt and measure the downforce. If it's more than the mass of the car.........well, QED.

Finally of course, that's exactly what most of the teams do, which of course is where the original theory comes from.

[mrmr96]

DSM2 said:

mrmr96 said:

I think that a MUCH more viable plan would be a windtunnel based experiment.
If a full scale tunnel capable of 180mph exists (don't know if it does) then you could hang the car under a flat 'road' surface turn the wind up and then cut the ropes holding the car up. I would expect you'd need something to stop the car rolling backwards in the wind, but it MIGHT be possible that with the force with which it's pressed into the 'road' (ceiling) and the sticky tyres, it might be possible to hold it on the footbrake.

Not quite 'driving' upside down, but possible feasible and still very very cool.

Of course a ful size tunnel with WS of over 180mph exists. what do you think most of the F1 teams use?


And wouldn't it be easier just to leave the car on the belt and measure the downforce. If it's more than the mass of the car.........well, QED.

Finally of course, that's exactly what most of the teams do, which of course is where the original theory comes from.

I think F1 teams (and indeed most other researchers) use scale models. (either 2/3 or 50% I believe is common for automotive design) So it's not totally obvious whether one which is capable of true 180mph wind and large enough for a full sized car actually exists.

Of course it's easier to do it right side up an measure it. I'm well aware that this is what teams do and where the 'theory' comes from. The point of the thread was how to create a publicity stunt centered around this theory.

Hence rigging up a full size car, actually upside down, in a full size full scale wind tunnel would fit the bill.

[stifler]

Wasn't there a story a while ago that Red Bull were going to try this? Or was I imagining it?

[peterguk V6 KWK]

Obiwonkeyblokey said:

Thats all well and good, but would it take off?

It might with a conveyor belt..

[cod man]

They could re-enact the minis in the sewer scene from The Italian Job - no need to build a special track, they'd just need a good wipe down after the experiment.

[Jungles]

It would be a cool (and expensive) experiment, but wouldn't there be fuel and oil problems when the car is upside-down? And where will they run the car? Channel tunnel?!