GT vs FI - Side-by-side Comparison

[sptcoupe]

GT cars are really quick, but FI is incredibly fast. Have a look at this video showing FI and GT cars covering the same stretch of road course!

http://wimp.com/speedcomparison/

[aj81spider]

Wow...makes you appreciate just how fast the F1 cars are.

[kbee00]

I've have tried to explain to "non car" people how incredible F1 really is - once you get beyond the cost, politics, postering, Bernie, the FIA, the prima donna drivers, the money......oh well, F1 is a bunch of sh*t.....

But, what car can turn like an F1 car.....

I raced Formula Fords and even my puny 100hp motor could push me thru the corners at over 2g's - so to imagine a car could corner at 5 g's and brake at almost the same is abolutely incredible. Problem is, most people just do not understand what that means.....it's like saying a trillion dollars - just too much to grasp.....

I am going to Texas next year to see an F1 race up close .... I joined the Circuit of America website within minutes of it's opening. I have signed up for 8 tickets (max they allow) - and have 2 friends signed on.

Who wants to join a round trip from SE Wisconsin???

November 2012....

[ORFORD2004]

You have to be there to see the speed. The first time i saw a F1 in the hairpin turn in Montreal, the first thing you think is that car would never pass that corner...but it pass

[azruss]

Not sure being there helps, either. had a chance to stand at the start line for a AA fuel race. The cars disappeared so fast, it was anticlimatic. (0-60mph in 0.67 sec.)

[baltobernie]

Cool pix! I agree that not having a reference makes judging speed impossible. Like watching an arriving 747, looks like it's being held aloft with invisible ropes (at 150 mph)

Regarding the video, there's a very old one still out there somewhere showing an F1 driver having a cup of tea while a sedan and a sports car depart the grid, and ends up finishing ahead of both of them.

If you're a Top Gear fan, they had a Renault F1 car on their test track, and it was "only" 33% quicker than the fastest street-legal road cars, albeit some rather exotic ones. It would be interesting to put a stopwatch on the old video, and measure the differential on the vintage matchup.

[131]

F1 driver having a cup of tea while a sedan and a sports car depart the grid, and ends up finishing ahead of both of them.

That was Schumacher in a Ferrari.

P.S. The Yankee spell checker wants to change Schumacher to Schumpeter, maybe some of you yanks could explain what that is!

[Raze]

I've have tried to explain to "non car" people how incredible F1 really is - once you get beyond the cost, politics, postering, Bernie, the FIA, the prima donna drivers, the money......oh well, F1 is a bunch of sh*t.....

But, what car can turn like an F1 car.....

I raced Formula Fords and even my puny 100hp motor could push me thru the corners at over 2g's - so to imagine a car could corner at 5 g's and brake at almost the same is abolutely incredible. Problem is, most people just do not understand what that means.....it's like saying a trillion dollars - just too much to grasp.....

I am going to Texas next year to see an F1 race up close .... I joined the Circuit of America website within minutes of it's opening. I have signed up for 8 tickets (max they allow) - and have 2 friends signed on.

Who wants to join a round trip from SE Wisconsin???

November 2012....

Don't forget they're going to host V8 Supercars too I'm actually very excited the US is getting an F1 race again. I don't think you can appreciate how significant these cars are and how expensive/incredible until you see them live. I couldn't appreciate how crazy the LeMans Prototypes were until I got to walk around the pits at Petit LeMans, F1 brings even bigger names more serious about racing, I mean how can you knock that?

[MIGHTY 8]

Wow!
How impressive that one's mind can plan and think soooooooo far down the road. For hours and hours...

Thank you for sharing.

[ga.spyder]

Here it is"Fiat vs. Ferrari vs. Formula One" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNoh2ICL ... D5AFE90D39
You gotta see Schu reading the paper while the Fiat gets 1:25 sec head start

I was lucky enough to see the F1 cars at Indy.I have been to every type of big racing event(Daytona 500,Indy 500,NHRA,CART,IMSA)and nothing...nothing compares to Formula One!!! The sounds and sheer speed of the cars is breathtaking.I cant wait for the Texas race,and I am alo on the waiting list for tickets!!

[baltobernie]

Debbie & I used to camp at Watkins Glen for the USGP races every autumn. Boy, can it get chilly in upstate NY in October! You guys are so right - nothing is like seeing an F1 race live, particularly if you get the opportunity to see lesser cars racing the same circuit in prelims. What was great about the Glen when my 128 was new is that you could stand within 50' of the baby blue Armco and feel the cars go by. Standing near the end of the back straight and watching Stewart and the boys haul those cars down from airplane speeds to a sharp, downhill right turn is a sight, sound and smell I'll never forget. You could see the drivers, too, working the steering and leaning. Of course, those cars and circuits were much more dangerous. I was in the Ford pit when Jackie got the news that his protoge Cevert was killed.

I don't even watch F1 on TV now, it's so bogus. Ecklestone has ruined the sport. I'm a WRC fan now. (It is disheartening to see Mini (who has already scored one podium), but no Fiat product.

[ga.spyder]

I am still a F1 junkie,and think nothing of getting up before daylight to view the races live.I even play in a F1 fantasy league with some European fans(Spiddy invited me).Where do you get the WRC feeds? I really miss them on SPEED.

[baltobernie]

Discovery HD theater, a couple of weeks after the actual event. Five one hour shows! Preview, with news and recap of last event, standings, historical footage of the event. Three shows for the three racing days; the third day includes a new "Power Stage", which awards championship points for the stage independently of the race results. Extra incentive for non-podium finishers reaching the final stage of the race. Broadcast "live". Then a one hour highlights show with footage of key moments of the race, plus extra stuff not shown during the stages. Best part? Knowledgeable commentators that don't simultaneously scream "Whoa!" every time a guy puts a wheel off, constantly talking on top of each other, each adding hyperbole to the previous statement. Krist that effing Hobbs, what a putz.

Neither F1 nor WRC really feature wheel-to-wheel action, but the WRC comes off as much more demanding, 120 mph down a tree-lined dirt road. The fact that Raikonen driving a works car, the model which has won the last couple of years, he still can't ever do better than 7th ... on asphalt!

[Exit98]

I was in the Ford pit when Jackie got the news that his protoge Cevert was killed.

Bernie, we have a little more in common than a couple of yellow Spiders.

I was at that race too. My then fiance and I were at the FI race in Watkins Glen in 1973 & 1974. Both years we had pit roof seats and three day passes. In 1973 I almost fell off the pit roof when, on race day, I looked down the row of chairs and about six seats to my right was Sterling Moss. OMG!

Sadly there was a death in 74 too when Helmut Koinigg hit the barrier and was decapitated.

Remember the "bog" and the crazies that assembled there? Was it 1973 that they captured a brand new Greyhound bus, drove it into the bog and burned it to the ground?

My hero and idol was Jimmy Clark. I cried the day I heard the news. His obit in the New York Times was on the front page.

I enjoy WRC too, but I still follow F1. Yeah, there's a lot of crap, but oh my those cars are something. Imagine 18,000 rpms. I watch every race, and hope each time that it rains. There is nothing more exciting than watching them race in the rain. And Bernie, the young guys driving today are have incredible talent. This kid Sabastian Vettel is for real.

[FulviaHF]

Small world--I was at the Glen then, too. My first GP there was '72, and I was there in '73 to see Stewart's 100th & last GP, which of course never took place. The following year, I started to shoot there for Associated Press, so from the '74 GP through the 6-Hours in '80, I shot all the races--GP, 6-Hours, CanAm, TransAm, F5000, &c--I had credentials that allowed me anywhere behind the Aarmco--full access to circuit, pits, and paddock. My cameras & lenses traveled in foam-padded 50 Cal. ammo boxes, which fit perfectly into the front trunk of my X1/9 (and later my Lancia Beta Coupé).

One of our guys (UPI had facilities there, too) got the shots of Koenigg in '74. He burned a roll of b&w, which is what we shot for AP, and changed to color, which AP couldn't use, but which he sold to Europe. But he doesn't remember walking back to the press building--a trek of about a mile from Turn 7 where Koenigg went off. Thanks to drivers like Stewart, it got a lot safer in the following years; there were just too many deaths in the '60s and early '70s. I still have my program from the '72 French GP, and it's depressing to see how many of the F1 and F3 drivers lined up that day would die in the next half dozen years.

I loved the Glen circuit; I remember it from before the 'anvil' extension--when Turns 6 through 9 didn't exist (the shortcut that Nascar uses now). I knew every detail of it. Like where you could climb to the roof of a concrete block outhouse to shoot over the catch fencing. And it always rained on the 6-Hours; red-flagged the race one year. But the racing was always great. Just don't ask me about the deer I hit in my X1/9 on the way back to Ithaca where I was staying on the Saturday night before the '74 race. Car survived virtually intact and fully drivable, with just the loss of the right headlight; deer fared less well. Did you know that if you call the NY State Police to report you've killed a deer, the next question they ask, after "are you OK" is "do you want us to come tag it?" Like I said, don't ask...