Lexus Drag Race

[Leon]

Might want to cross this one off you list. ;)

[Leon]

Woops! That was suppose to be in an email.. Sorry

[Markem]

So Cross the Lexus off the list or Drag racing in Bahrain?

[Ed Pawlowski]

Not to worry. Some of us liked seeing it.

[woodchucker]

That looks so fake. I find it hard to believe that it happened. I would understand if it were further down the track, but I doubt it was going fast enough to have enough lift underneath.

I think it's fake..

[krw]

I've seen like crashes, even with NASCAR cars. Performance cars are designed to create a vacuum underneath. All you have to do is get a little air underneath and they fly like a kite.

[Jerry Osage]

I agree. Do a stop motion at 15 seconds and full screen - there are no tires on the right side. Especially apparent on the right rear as the auto rotates. Also, that amount of mass doesn't "float" like the image does for a second. As you stated, not enough speed.

Jerry O.

[John McCoy]

Jerry Osage wrote in news: [e-mail]:

No, I beleive it's real. I went and googled the team name; the car is actually pretty much TA/FC class (i.e. it's not any sort of stock car). It's at about half track when it lifts, judging by the timing lights on the centerline; probably about 180 to 200 mph, which is plenty fast enough to lift. Being a funny car it also is very light, so the floating is typical behavior...really the only surprise is that the body didn't come off the frame.

John

[Ed Pawlowski]

Last time I was at a drag race (decades ago) the AA fuel dragsters would lift the front end just from the torque at the start. They just keep getting faster.

If you've never been a drag race fan, you'd have no idea of the speeds achieved and how fast you get to them.

Top Fuel Dragster (TF/D). The rail dragsters, or "diggers", are the fastest class. Among the fastest-accelerating machines in the world, these cars can cover the dragstrip in less than 3.8 seconds and record trap speeds over 325 mph. Top Fuel cars are 25 feet long and weigh 2,320 pounds in race-ready trim. Methanol fuel mixed with up to 90% nitromethane is used.

Typical Funny Cars Top Fuel Funny Car (TF/FC) Similar to their Top Fuel counterparts but with a shorter wheelbase and a carbon-fiber body that loosely resembles a production-based automobile, Funny Cars, or ?floppers,? routinely run in the 4.0s and can exceed 315 mph.

[Casper]

Like moths to a flame?

[John McCoy]

Ed Pawlowski wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Yeah, you don't see that so much now because all the fuel cars have wheelie bars. If the front wheels come up more than a tad, the wheelie bar hits and unloads the rear tires, and then you get a big cloud of smoke instead of a wheelstand.

TA/FC, like the Lexus in the video, run low sixes at around 270 in the NHRA. I doubt the Lexus would quite do that, since the team didn't look like they really had a handle on what they were doing. Still pretty fast.

John

[DerbyDad03]

Someone should tell this *electric* drag team about those wheelie bars.

Watch it from the start or FF to 1:00 minute for the real fun.

[Leon]

Well these cars tend to lift their front ends anyway, think wheelie, the flat bottom of the vehicle catches air and that is that. But there does seem to be little damage to the retainer fence.

[DerbyDad03]

Damage to the fence can be seen in this video. If they faked it, then they faked it from 2 different angles. I'm thinking it's real.

Here's a still from the other end of the track:

Do a Google image search for "lexus is drag crash" (no quotes) for more.

[DerbyDad03]

Here's a video from another angle. Do a stop motion at 24-ish and then again at 48-ish. Right side tires are clearly visible.

If they faked it, they faked it from a couple of different angles and with a couple of different video qualities. They also backed up their fake video with fake followup news reports.

I vote "real".

[woodchucker]

ok, I'll recind, he is farther down the road then I thought, the damage to the fence looks real, the severe left trajectory in the air is still questionable, but that can be an airfoil effect.

I'm in on real now.

[John McCoy]

woodchucker wrote in news:Q-OdnTTa7 [e-mail]:

This is getting way off on a tangent, but going to the left like that is common when cars fly. If you can find video of the Mercedes at Le Mans a few years back, they did the same thing. I suspect it's a gyroscopic effect due to the rotation of the internals of the engine.

John

[Phil Kangas]

"John McCoy" <

More likely driveline torque. As the pinion gear drives the ring gear, one rear wheel gets an increase in load while the opposite wheel gets unloaded enough to act like this. The wheel more lightly loaded will have less friction than the other allowing slippage.

[John McCoy]

"Phil Kangas" wrote in news:men8ei$nc1$1@dont- email.me:

That would make sense if the wheels were on the ground. However, the cases I'm thinking of (including this case with the Lexus drag car) the car didn't start turning until it was in the air, all four wheels off the pavement.

That pretty much forces it to be either an aero effect or a gyroscopic effect.

John

[Phil Kangas]

"John McCoy" <

It's aero at that point. Try swinging a piece of cardboard into the wind.. ;>)}