Renault F1 Crash @ Dubai Autodrome
tags:
Stumble ThisSo, you're Sheik Mohammad Bin Sulayem and your greatest wish is to drive a Formula 1 car. When the Team Renault F1 Roadshow comes to your country, the United Arab Emirates, you finally get that chance. Participating in a drag-style shootout against a Ford GT, you are ready to show everybody what you can do with a Formula 1 car.
When the lights go green, you put the pedal to the metal, only to crash the car into the pitwall 5 seconds later. The bill for the heavily damaged car? No more than $2,600,000. (nicked from http://presurfer.blogspot.com)
When the lights go green, you put the pedal to the metal, only to crash the car into the pitwall 5 seconds later. The bill for the heavily damaged car? No more than $2,600,000. (nicked from http://presurfer.blogspot.com)
Q: Why did he crash?
A: He was going too slow - there was obviously WAY too little downforce generated, which would have provided the necessary traction for the car to not freaking spin off while GOING IN A STRAIGHT LINE. If this would have happened in the first corner, I wouldn't make such a big deal out of it - and I wager it's probably what Renault expected would happen - but he must have been instructed against this a hundred times, yet he still made the mistake. So yeah, epic fail.
I looks to me like he just gave it a little too much gas, maybe coming out of a gear shift. Lack of downforce would explain it if he lost it in a corner.
Give me the GT. It's sexy as hell, and a normal human can drive it.
F1 cars are capable of going straight slowly without spinning; otherwise this would happen to everyone at the start of every race, when they first start.
Most likely he mis-timed the shift. It's like when you are driving a normal car aggressively, and you dump the clutch at an RPM that's slightly too high, the tires will chirp. This can happen even if you're already moving, and just shifting to 2nd or 3rd gear. In a normal car it's not too bad, but when you have that high a power to weight ratio the rear end just snaps loose from the road and goes where it wants to.
Ever since they took traction control off the F1 cars, even the pros do this sometimes. Usually they're exiting a corner when they do it, but it's happened on a straight too.
I just think he fucked up with the gears or something else. Isn't lack of speed associated with insufficient revs leading to a stall?
Please explain to my why the fuck you need downforce to go in a straight line? Extra traction, so your tires don't spin? This is not a drag race.
It's a pretty simple concept, you can apply as much torque as you want to up until your tires spin out of control and you hit a wall. He was leaving rubber from spinning tires before he either shifted wrong, or stayed on the gas and rode it into the wall.
I drive rear wheel drive but without so much power. I believe F1 are not 4-wheel drive.
^Grinter and NetRunner are right, EDD is not, and I'm a smartass
I also agree.
As a rallycross and autocross driver and instructor, I don't have a lick of F1 driving experience... but I know a bit about cars and handling.
This was a lack of experience with a VERY tricky class of car to drive. F1 cars are horrible beasts and extremely demanding. I would guess that one contributing factor (beyond lack of very fine throttle control by the driver) was that the tires were not yet warm.
F1 tires need to be warm. Very warm. Hot. You have to drive them hard to get them hot. Until then, they're not sticky. Whenever a driver pulls out onto the track, their tires are NOT up to optimal temperature. They have to carefully nurse the car through the first few corners, pushing hard enough to heat up the tires... not too hard, or they'll spin/slide... not too gentle, or they won't heat up the rubber.
It's a tough game.