Loeb at Pikes Peak

Just watched it again, and I was wondering:

Now that the road is all paved, is there any reason why you couldn't drive some sort of formula car up the hill. I know those are the fastest things in European hillclimbs, so I'm guessing modern day turbo, sucker fan formula car would be the fastest thing up the mountain.

Just thinking out loud.

Also, did anyone else noticed the guy diving off the road at 0.48 in the movie?

Interesting note that came out of one of Loeb's posts to his home page in French: Peugeot had calculated the car was capable of an 8:17.

He took 4 seconds off the theoretical best time for the car.

fanfoy wrote: Just watched it again, and I was wondering: Now that the road is all paved, is there any reason why you couldn't drive some sort of formula car up the hill. I know those are the fastest things in European hillclimbs, so I'm guessing modern day turbo, sucker fan formula car would be the fastest thing up the mountain. Just thinking out loud. Also, did anyone else noticed the guy diving off the road at 0.48 in the movie?

My guess is something like Loeb's AWD monster:

1. Puts the power down much, MUCH more effectively considering how many very slow corners there are (~45km/h).
2. Being turbo'd, his car isn't suffering as much loss of power up the mountain.

Granted you could fix that on the second one, but I still think AWD has an even more distinct advantage in this scenario.

fanfoy wrote: Just watched it again, and I was wondering: Now that the road is all paved, is there any reason why you couldn't drive some sort of formula car up the hill.

IIRC, the cars at PPIHC are more powerful than any formula car.

In reply to z31maniac:

Also, what's the effect of that high an altitude on aero? I presume it's much less effective in the thinner air?

In reply to Keith Tanner:

That's pretty amazing. Sounds like Peugeot needs to find some better engineers.

It's just proof that Loeb breaks the laws of physics.

Knurled wrote:

fanfoy wrote: Just watched it again, and I was wondering: Now that the road is all paved, is there any reason why you couldn't drive some sort of formula car up the hill.

IIRC, the cars at PPIHC are more powerful than any formula car.

Current F1 cars are ~750 + 80hp for 6.6 secs per lap from KERS. The old turbo cars in quali trim were in excess of 1300hp..........I think recently the V10 cars were in the 900-950hp range.

But if Koneisgiesisgeseesgsegsesges can build 1200hp E85 monsters based on GM blocks, I'm sure an enterprising team could do the same and stick it in a Formula style chassis.

But there would really be no point, even modern F1 cars on the sticky degrading tires typically aren't putting down full power until 3rd or 4th gear and north of 100mph.

petegossett wrote: In reply to z31maniac: Also, what's the effect of that high an altitude on aero? I presume it's much less effective in the thinner air?

Aero becomes less effective as well as the engines make less HP, less oxygen per unit of air, which is why the unlimited class is almost exclusively FI. Turbo's can make up the deficit to an extent by spinning faster.

For instance, last year the BBC team were saying at Spa-Franchorchamp the cars were making 1% more HP at the lower portion of track vs the higher portion..........and that's only around a 375ft difference.

Not starting at 8000+ ft and ending at 14000+ ft

I'm not saying to just take an F1 and run it at Pikes Peak. Actually, you could not because the rules require a steel or aluminium roll-cage.

They have a division for open wheel cars, so I'm talking about a custom-made single-seater.

They have pretty free regulations.

But they have a minimum weight requirement for every configuration, so the rules might make this not viable.

The key for many hillclimbs is acceleration rather than a top speed. Even Loeb is going extremely slow in some of those corners. My opinion is there is currently diminishing returns on more power, grip during acceleration is key. So awd is definitely advantageous. The power has to get to the ground repeatedly. You never end up with a clean road like you'd have at a track, so you really need all those wheels churning. In terms of safety, you wouldn't catch me driving an f1 style car at a hillclimb. Trees, rocks and wildlife would discourage me from an open cockpit ride(including bikes). I've only wrecked once during a hillcimb, and I ended up on my roof sliding down an embankment. In an open cockpit car, it would have buried my head in the earth. Certainly proved to me the usefulness of the A-pillar fia style support bars in a cage.

sachilles is right on the money, the first thing I learned about hillclimbs is they are NOT momentum events. It's important to be able to accelerate quickly to get back what speed is invariably lost in the turns and as the altitude increases the power drops, this usually means either a big engine or boost coupled with good traction for fast times. That's why boost is in the Jensenator's future.

As far as an open car, in my case the cage is high enough over my noggin I don't think it would be a problem with this exception: if there was a stump rock etc sticking up where I happened to land, that would not be advantageous. But in that case I don't think a piece of 20 ga sheet steel would make a whole lot of difference. I might be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time.

z31maniac wrote: Current F1 cars are ~750 + 80hp for 6.6 secs per lap from KERS. The old turbo cars in quali trim were in excess of 1300hp..........I think recently the V10 cars were in the 900-950hp range.

Okay, so I have two, maybe three, street cars at work right now that are more powerful than those prissy little go-karts...

I'm not sure an open wheel would be the hot ticket. I suspect it's a dying class at Pike's Peak really - it's also the one with the lowest hanging fruit for picking up a record, I think it's the only class where the current record was set on dirt.

But if you were building the ideal car, you'd want enclosed wheels for the superior aero. Wheels are really messy from an airflow standpoint. And with an average speed of ~87 mph, that's important.

and to beat the dead horse, acceleration on a slope is a different ball of wax than on a level plane. To give you an indication, I run a largely stock 02 wrx which is the 2.0 liter version. I do have the computer tuned and a full exhaust setup. I run Toyo RA1 tires. We do standing start launches, and at my best, and least steep launch, I can do 0-60 between 8-9 seconds. They were around 5.6 seconds stock on flat ground with oem tires. The incline really changes things.