i always thought that any racing sport should have an unlimited class competition
sailing car racing etc
maybe just have some very basic criteria like has to have at least 2 wheels or must have a sail and a hull i thought drag racing with funny cars and dragsters were unlimited but maybe i misremember
I think street racing is the only unregulated racing, other than breaking the law.
Maybe street racing in a hybrid or "Smart for 2" car would be legal. ;~) I don't think you can be ticked for speeding if you are not actually speeding
In essence, the All American Soap Box Derby does have an "unlimited class".
It's known as the Ultimate Speed Program. It was instituted for those teams that wanted to continue to build homemade cars, but it's not for the faint of heart. I know one team that spent over $100K testing and building a car. The team was led by a guy who owns a company that makes bob sleds for a number of Olympic teams, so he had the facilities, the engineers and the labor to build a winning car.
Do a Google image search for "soap box ultimate speed" for some cool images of Ultimate Speed cars.
There's a picture about 4 rows down of a driver lying flat on her back. She is wearing prism glasses so that she can look through a small window at the front of the car. Once the hatch is closed, the car is completely smooth along the top.
We modified a Masters division car for my daughter to drive in the Ultimate race. The only team we beat was a team that took a Thule car top ski carrier and added some wheels. (2nd row down on the image search, the last last I looked) We didn't expect to do very well, but it got us one more year of building and racing, so it was worth it.
interesting maybe unlimited does not always make sense
even with the millions they spend on america's cup boats they still have to build them with constraints
maybe where they are already spending millions in the top class an unlimited class would make more sense hydrofoil sailboats might be interesting to see racing
Good thing you didn't use a lot of clamps. Those saw horses can't support many clamps. ;-)
An unlimited sailing class doesn't make a lot of sense. You really have to have a length class to make it a race.
Again, there is a difference between "street" cars and open-wheel cars, dragsters, etc.
...and a big-assed engine?
There is an "unlimited" class but I don't believe that means there are no rules. I don't believe turbine engines are allowed.
Oh yeah? LOL
Electric Comet wrote in news:n1j3rn$4cm$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
As desirable as that is, eventually you run into the twin problems of it being too expensive and too fast for safety on any available course.
Pretty much all forms of car racing require exactly 4 wheels, and they have to be on the 4 corners of the car (this rule being because someone built a car with 3 wheels on one side, and 1 on the other).
No, drag racing hasn't had an unlimited class since the
50's (or maybe early 60's). The only unlimited class I can think of would be LSR at Bonneville.John
Maybe you didn't notice the foam adaptors on the saw horses. They serve two purposes.
They keep the bottom of the car from getting scratched and they soften the weight.
Maybe Leon should have tried them. I still have a set I could send him. ;-)
As desirable as that is, eventually you run into the twin
---------------------------------------------------------- Cost doesn't seem to be a problem for L Ellison or Bill Koch when they won the America's Cup in their respective years.
OTOH, neither one of them were going to lose.
Whatever it took.
Lew
"Cost" was one of the 2 main reasons the Soap Box Derby Masters division almost became extinct. Having the expertise to build a highly customized car was the other. The thing is, you really can't have one without the other.
Building a highly customized car was not cheap, nor were all of the weekend trips to other cities to race. Weekend rallies were used for 2 things: seat time for your driver and testing of different tune-ups, weight distributions, etc.
It was no coincidence that the families that we saw at rallies weekend after weekend were the same families that qualified to race in the World Championship races in Akron, year after year.
The problem was, those of us with highly customized cars (and high spend rates) were the ones winning all the races. Eventually, the other families stopped showing up and many families never even bothered getting into the Masters division. Their kids would race in the 2 lower divisions and then move on to other activities.
There was a few years when the 6 driver minimum at the weekend rallies couldn't be met. Instead of not racing, 1 or 2 fake names were placed on the grids so the other kids could race. Akron made believe that they didn't know what was going on for a while but eventually had no choice but to eliminate the customizations. It worked. It took a few years, but the Masters Division, while still the smallest division, is thriving now.
It still takes some expertise to build a good Masters car and it still cost more to build a good Masters car when compared to the lower divisions, but it's back to being within reach of almost all families that want to move up.
you are thinking inside the box
interesting and dangerous but not unlimited it seems but close i would remove the human from the vehicle and make it autonomous
Electric Comet wrote in news:n1o07v$ore$1 @dont-email.me:
Well, 40-odd years of experience says there isn't an outside to that box. The last unlimited automobile race series was the Can-Am in the late 60s, early 70s. Which ended because it was simply too fast and too expensive.
Well, that would be another way to bring racing to an end. If there's no human in it, it's no longer a sporting competition, and spectator interest will rapidly approach zero.
John
still requires human ingenuity
you are saying it is only sport if someone can die at it
why not remove the danger element and place the control into remote hands
lsr is a huge spectator sport
Robot wars are pretty neat.
That has already been done, it is called a video game.
Removing the human from the car would and calling it a sport would be like calling chess a sport.
Does this make chess any more of a sport?
Call it what you like! I like the second picture. LOL
Have you heard of Chess Boxing?
This doesn't make Chess a sport but it's one reason that pawns don't like to be promoted:
which ones the ones i have seen are just RC bots
they are still fun to watch but not fully autonomous
even autonomous cars are not fully autonomous there is an operator
there is also RC robot wrestling which is fun the bots are 2 feet tall or so and dressed like pro wrestlers
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