Designed to go as quick as possible on everything from hairpin bends to long straights to sweeping turns, an F1 car must be set up as a compromise to cope with a range of different challenges.
But if an F1 car was set up for straight-line speed only, how fast would it go?
The Lucky Strike BAR-Honda team will attempt to find out when it tries to set an official Formula One land speed record in October on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The car, which will be a completely legal F1 car capable of passing technical inspection and entered in a Grand Prix, will be driven by BAR-Honda test driver Alan van der Merwe.
BAR’s sporting director, 2003 Indianapolis 500 winner Gil de Ferran, is no stranger to speed, having regularly raced at speeds faster than 220 mph in North America.
“To imagine a F1 car running there is bizarre and totally offbeat,” de Ferran said of the Salt Flats, “but this is what it is all about. It’s a challenge for us all, but the spirit of the land speed record and the people we have met since we started this project are also a reminder to us of the pioneering spirit that symbolizes our own sport.”
In order to set an official record, the car must maintain an average speed over a measured mile and then within one hour average that same speed again in the opposite direction over the same mile length.
BAR-Honda’s goal is to achieve at least a 400 kph (249 mph) average speed to set the record. While F1 cars have briefly reached speeds of 370 kph (230 mph) at the fastest point on high-speed tracks such as Monza in Italy, maintaining a higher speed for a full mile in the demanding conditions of the Bonneville Salt Flats presents a host of challenges.
While flat, the surface is bumpy. Because it is so light, the F1 car suffers from a lot of wheel spin. The salt is caustic and corrosive to the F1 car’s metal parts. The car wanders from side to side down the 30-yard-wide seven-mile-long track. In an initial test on the Salt Flats, van der Merwe said it was the most difficult thing he had ever done in a racing car.
“If a F1 track was this bumpy we’d pack up and go home,” he said. “It is not the usual sensation of speed that you get on a racing track because there are no reference points.”
Guy Savage, BAR-Honda’s deputy technical director, is overseeing the project.
“We are constantly asked how fast a F1 car can go,” he said, “and the truth of the matter is that we don’t know because they are not built to go fast. They are built to accelerate, corner, and brake.
“It is a very difficult job because the harder we push that car forward, the more the forces of drag pull us back. So we have to strip the car down completely while still keeping it legal. The tires and wheels account for 75 percent of the total drag of the car, and this will be the main hindrance to the car’s top speed.”
The car will run with the bare minimum of aerodynamic downforce aids such as wings and flaps. Extra ballast will be added to stabilize the car at speed.
