Category Archives: Racing

If you have two things with wheels, then you just gotta see which one is faster.

The Nissan Deltawing Explained

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The Nissan Deltawing finally got a chance to prove itself two weeks ago coming in fifth at the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. The car survived two collisions, one at Le Mans and one during practice for Petit Le Mans, before finally getting a chance to finish a race and showing the world what it could do.


The entire Deltawing concept has revolutionized how people think of race cars. The car has proven that it has competitive speed while using half the power, fuel and tires thanks to greatly reduced aerodynamic drag and a well thought out design. Now we get the privilege to see how it drives and to understand the engineering that makes it work up close thanks to Chris Harris and the DRIVE channel. Harris takes the car around Road Atlanta for 5 laps to get a feel for its character before having the its creator, Ben Bowlby, guide him through the suspension systems. They touch on a few interesting engineering concepts. Watch the video and we’ll talk about them afterwards.

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Top Fuel Dragster at 3200 FPS

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A Finnish tech magazine put together this incredible high speed footage of the Ahonen Racing top fuel dragster piloted by Olympic ski jumper Janne Ahonen. Shooting the car at 3200 frames per second allows us to see the individual cylinders firing out of the exhaust and the drag radial wrinkling on launch. There’s also some interesting footage of the end of the run where the tires are deformed from centripetal force and the turbulence eddies from the rear wing are visible because they’re compressing the moisture out of the air. Combine this with the time lapse of the team rebuilding the team and the multi-plate clutch and you’ve got a great gearhead video.


Tekniikan Maailma magazine at FHRA Nitro Nationals with Ahonen Racing Team from Tekniikan Maailma on Vimeo.
Source: Autoblog

Circuit of the Americas is Open For Business

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The Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas officially opened last week with less than a month to spare before the Formula 1 American GP is scheduled to take place there. Our first look at the track layout came courtesy of the Codemasters F1 2012 video game a few months ago. The actual track looks even more challenging and technical in person, especially the crazy uphill hairpin Turn 1 that Mario Andretti is calling the track’s “marquee corner.” It’s definitely going to take a talented driver to master COTA and I think there’s going to be a fair amount of passing under braking and in turns. The first official lap of the track was driven by Mario Andretti in the Lotus 79 race car that he drove to become the F1 World Champion in 1978. The second lap was done by Lotus test driver Jerome D’Ambrosio in a current Lotus F1 car. D’Ambrosio’s lap gives us a good idea of what the F1 race in a couple of weekends is going to look like. Here is D’Ambrosio’s lap with his commentary.


This second video is the full on-board footage of Mario Andetti’s lap and D’Ambrosio’s lap in HD. Unfortunately embedding was disabled so you’ll have to click over to YouTube to watch it:

Circuit of the Americas First Lap

Here’s the track map again just so you don’t get lost with the on-board footage like I did:

Circuit of the Americas via Sport Rider

Sources: Circuit of the Americas and contactscott on YouTube

Hot Rod Drag Week 2012

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Hot Rod Magazine just posted the coverage from their Drag Week event. The premise of the event is simple to say, hard to accomplish. Racers have to post the quickest average quarter mile elapsed time at 5 tracks in 5 days. Competitors are also required to drive their cars on 1400 miles of public roads between the tracks. The goal of the event is to find the fastest drag car that is also street legal and reliable. There are several classes, but the video focuses on the insanity that took place between the 2500+ horsepower monsters in the Unlimited Class.


Source: Motor Trend on YouTube