Lap times

[Pcot]

Moto GP lap times around silverstone recently were just over 2 minutes.
Just looked at the F1 practice times from today, and they are around 1min 30seconds.
Are the cars using a shorter circuit....because they can't possible be 30seconds faster than the bikes?

[Brewsters]

At Jerez, a motogp lap is approx 1'40 - F1 is 1'15.........

Downforce through the corners, later braking. Television doesn't do F1 justice - the things are beyond logic. A formula 1 car can drive upside down at 120mph+ and it wouldn't fall off the upside down track - if you know what I mean! Still have two wheeels too many though....

[Condi]

For what its worth, the F1 cars break 150 meters later into one of the Silverstone corners, and some of the corners are flat out 6th gear bends for cars, but 4th or 5th gear knee down jobbies for bikes. The difference is amazing.

[Pcot]

So an F1 car really is 30seconds a lap quicker around silverstone than a moto GP bike!
Thats unbelievable.......

[jp-speed-triple]

Pcot said:

So an F1 car really is 30seconds a lap quicker around silverstone than a moto GP bike!
Thats unbelievable.......

why?

P/W/R is greater, contact patch is way bigger so more grip for braking, steering, accelerateing...they gain grip with speed where bikes don't.....they spend an order of magnitude on F1 over motogp....the driver is seated and held in place where the rider is 30% of the overall dynamic mass of a bike and has to hold on and move about to get round.....the list is endless.

f1 is still crap compared to a decent Moto gp Scrap (not that we've seen many in 2010).

Pace is all relative.

[R1 Loon]

At Brno the two wheel lap record is around the 1:56 mark by Stoner I think, set in 2008. David Coulthard holds the overall lap record set in 2002 with a 1:37 in tests for McLaren

Martin Brundle was talking about the difference at Silverstone on a bike when he mentioned a corner that's a "breather" for car drivers and you don't even notice it whereas on the bike it's hard on the brakes.

[hornetrider]

It is stunning watching the F1 cars FLAT and pulling 4G through Maggots.

[Tango13]

hornetrider said:

It is stunning watching the F1 cars FLAT and pulling 4G through Maggots.

In terms of downforce the modern F1 car is very restricted compared to 25-30 years ago.

When the turbocharger was king in the F1 paddock Mclaren came up with a design that used an exhaust blown diffuser to help the air flow from under the car so that it was sucked onto the track.

The engineers estimated that the car would be able to generate so much lateral G that the drivers head would be torn from his shoulders!! Fortunatly for the drivers the FIA implemented the flat bottom rule so the car was never built.

I can recommend reading "The 1000bhp Grand Prix Car"

Edited by Tango13 on Saturday 10th July 09:00