And the winner is:
Steve McQueen vs Lewis Hamilton Video
And the winner is:
Steve McQueen vs Lewis Hamilton Video
How cool is that? thanks!
Fantastic....
Bit such a crying shame they edited Steve giving Lewis the "V" sign.....What does flipping him your index finger mean? It would have been so much 'better'
with a "V"....so apt for this year....
OK, so now let's think about this. Could a modern F1 car beat the 917 around LeMans? Assume the F1 car has 'standard' gearing (which would limit it to what, 190-200MPH??). Would the 917's superior top speed down the long Mulsanne be enough to make up for the F1 car's superior cornering speeds?
Great subject, Curt.Originally Posted by CurtEgerer
Here's what I think. Modern F1 cars generate huge downforce, in order to generate astounding lateral loads in curves /corners & during braking. 4+ g cornering loads several times a lap are old hat, and 5g braking forces are endured by the drivers when braking from top-speed. This allows the modern F1 open-wheel single- seater cornering speeds which would be way beyond what a 917 was capable of. This is all designed into today's F1 cars for one specific purpose: to shorten lap times.
My take on your hypothetical question above is that today's 2.4 V-8 800HP 18,000 rpm limited top-line F1 car & driver combo with a typical "Monza" aero set-up (a relatively low down-force but max. top speed compromise) would probably embarass the 917 by at least 20 to perhaps as much as 30 seconds. That may be a ballsy S.W.A.G. on my part, but is based on todays La Sarthe configuration. Don't forget the chicane the Club d' Oest put in the middle of the Mulsanne straight a few years back, ( ostensibly for safety.....remember Dumbrecht and the "flying Mercedes" which wound up in the trees at 237 mph) which would deny the 917 the benefit of it's sustained topspeed and throw additional advantage to the F1 car.
Acceleration from a standing start would be the first place the F1 would begin asserting its superiority. The only place the 917 might do better is accelerating from approx. 150 mph & up. If you recall, during development of the McLaren FI three-seater road car during the early '90s, they tested it against their then current McLaren F1 single seater and found that the road car, with 627 HP accelerated much more rapidly from approx. 150 mph to its top speed than the 900+hp open wheeler. Makes perfect sense, as the road car makes a mere fraction of the downforce ( measured in hundreds of pounds at best, as opposed to tons on an F1 machine) because the F1 car requires most of its available power to overcome aero drag so it can generate downforce. The modern F1 car is an extremely "dirty" aerodynamic object with the "best" of them having aCD of way over 1.0 Everything is sacrificed to push it down onto the track surface.
I would estimate the maximum lateral loads a 917 with period tires could generate are probably less than 2 Gs, with braking forces probably just exceeding 1.0 to 1.5 Gs.....that ain't even close to today's McLaren, as weak & worthless as they are this season.
JZG
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
NO! As McQueen said, "you're in MY movie and on MY track" (no sissy chicanes)
A 50MPH advantage for the 917 over 3.7 miles down the Mulsanne - is it enough? Probably not.
That probably should read: is it enough? most certainly not,.... not even close.- is it enough? Probably not.
Just when you get your hopes up that the 917 might salvage something out of this uneven contest by invoking hypothetical topspeed, evil old Goriup counters by bringing up the 917's other major disadvantage vs. modern F1 cars ( among many, I might add ) no matter who's movie or track: antiquated, relatively small, cast-iron rotor equipped brakes.
With todays carbon fibre discs, pads, wheel / aero assemblies and tires, even Fisichella in a Force India could carry full ( albeit lower ) topspeed far deeper into a corner. The 917 would have to start it's braking 100s of feet earlier to set up for it's much slower passage through any given corner, loosing much time in the process. We won't even discuss some of the curves at La Sarthe where good, comitted drivers in a modern cars would not even have to lift at all.
Coming out of the corners would be another area where todays F1 machines would demonstrate the crushing progress we've witnessed in top-level motor sports in the last 40 years. Up to about 150 mph or so, I think the F1 would make the 917 look like a 912 being overtaken by a 935 coming on boost......and in my version of the movie, my F1 would have KERS that works, which would just plunge the dagger deeper yet.
Summation: F1 - higher entry speed
higher speed through curves / corners
higher acceleration out of curves / corners
No, 917s were amazing and I really look forward to Haywood or van Lennep putting on demo laps at Daytona during RR IV, but competitive today ? Please !!
Come to think of it, the 917 might not do quite as badly against a modern F1 at Daytona. Much kinder to top-speed machines......but then McQueen wouldn't have a role in that movie.
JZG
Before it became Ruprecht, my Porsche was a '70 911 T
Paying member No. 895 since 2006
" slavish adherence to originality wasn't for me, because the car wasn't as good as it could be."
Rob Dickinson's response when asked what motivated him to build Singers
In McQueen's movie the F1 car has 1970's air... it doesn't know how to help a modern F1 car....so John your logic is flawed.....
In fact I'd say that the F1 car is on period F1 tyres...
Ha... lets see you wriggle out of that one....
I'm not giving up that easily .... conveniently, the track was exactly the same length in 1970 as it is today - 8.476 miles. Pedro held the lap record in a 917 at 3 minutes 13 seconds @ 155.4MPH average speed.
For comparison, Capello's record in the Audi R8 in 2002 was 13 seconds slower with a 11MPH slower average speed - probably due mostly to the chicanes on Mulsanne I'm sure. But the point is the R8 is every bit a disguised Formula 1 car (with gearing and aero optimized for LeMans). So we don't need to do much guessing as to what a modern F1 car can do at LeMans - it's substantially slower than an R8. So just take the R8, install F1 bodywork and gearing and watch the lap times climb big time.
OK, so the Mulsanne is 3.7 miles. Let's allow a half mile for braking and acceleration zones and knock that down to 3.2 miles of top speed. And let's give the poor old 917 the benefit of the doubt and assume it can do 250MPH flat out (this is a MOVIE, right?). With the F1 at 200MPH, that's a 50MPH advantage over a distance of 3.2 miles .... hmmmm, that gives the 917 a 11.5 second advantage exiting the Mulsanne.
Maybe the King of Cool is in with a chance
AWESOME homework and calculationsI'm not giving up that easily .... conveniently, the track was exactly the same length in 1970 as it is today - 8.476 miles. Pedro held the lap record in a 917 at 3 minutes 13 seconds @ 155.4MPH average speed.
For comparison, Capello's record in the Audi R8 in 2002 was 13 seconds slower with a 11MPH slower average speed - probably due mostly to the chicanes on Mulsanne I'm sure. But the point is the R8 is every bit a disguised Formula 1 car (with gearing and aero optimized for LeMans). So we don't need to do much guessing as to what a modern F1 car can do at LeMans - it's substantially slower than an R8. So just take the R8, install F1 bodywork and gearing and watch the lap times climb big time.
OK, so the Mulsanne is 3.7 miles. Let's allow a half mile for braking and acceleration zones and knock that down to 3.2 miles of top speed. And let's give the poor old 917 the benefit of the doubt and assume it can do 250MPH flat out (this is a MOVIE, right?). With the F1 at 200MPH, that's a 50MPH advantage over a distance of 3.2 miles .... hmmmm, that gives the 917 a 11.5 second advantage exiting the Mulsanne.
Maybe the King of Cool is in with a chance
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