Margaret von B. wrote:
"Pooh Bear" wrote in message
...


Andre Jute wrote:

So, PinkoStinko, you claim, in the thread "The fantasies of little men
knackered" and perhaps elsewhere (1) that from Adelaide in South
Australia to Darwin in the Northern Territory your little Audi can beat
the ton-up average of a forty-year old Ford Falcon GTHO?

I reckon it would be a dead cert actually.

UK motoring magazine 5th Gear recently ran a couple of 15 ? yr old
classics
- a BMW M3 and a Lancia Delta Turbo HF Integrale round their preferred
track. They were fun to drive but only actually a second or two faster
thana Ford Ka and a Transit van.


Interesting. Were the oldies on modern tires? I know very little about cars,
but I know many people heavily involved in motor racing and I've heard
countless times that modern tire technology is really the single biggest
advancement that has contributed to faster lap times.

Technology from the lower classes of racing filters down to road tires
eventually but in this case the test would have been crook if the older
cars were not on the originally specified tyres. You see, suspension
design, or fine-tuning of an inherited design, starts with the
available tyres to be specified for the car. Modern tires are better
than those fifteen years ago but it is the rest of the suspension in
which huge strides has been made. (Technically, the tyre is part of the
suspension -- the whole concept is a continuum.) Better roadholding in
any class of car, decade on decade, is also accounted for by specified
tyre widths creeping up incrementally; a key thing to watch out for is
that a fraction of a milimetre wider contact patch, caused by better
carcass construction in a tyre of apparently the same nominal width, as
a percentage can make a very big difference to that tiny patch through
which every aspect of automobile behaviour is controlled. Thus very
small changes in tyres can have a huge effect on lap times. Also, newer
cars are often front-wheel drive, which is a help on the curves of a
track.

Also, at least in F1, 2 seconds per lap is forever and millions (if not tens
of millions) in sponsorhip money.

Apples and oranges. Grand prix racing is on slicks. Even in the present
interregnum, when grooved tyres are enforced (a rule already changed --
they're going back to slicks), the tyres were stratospherically
specialized. That technology is too rarified to filter down directly or
quickly. The recent upsets in F1 were caused by problems in the
Bridgestone compound but that is a difficulty specific to the F1
stickiness/heat dispersion paradigm.

In passenger tyres, which have to last longer than c400 miles (or c70
miles now that tire changes are returning to F1), the compound is a
solved problem with only refinements foreseen; larger strides are
expected in carcass construction and some development of tread pattern
remains likely. However, in fifteen years even small incremental
improvements can add us substantially.

HTH.

Andre Jute