At the recent Chilli-Bowlmidget nationals, and impromptu category evolved, the "flip count". It reached 30 something this year, but with fast little open wheel cars on an indoor quarter mile dirt track...flips are not out of the question. Flips among midgets and sprints and other types of open-wheel cars virtually alwaysresult from a mechanical interaction....collisions, hooking a rut, left side digging in .......an exercise in Newtonian physics.
However, if one is designing, a racing stock car, from aclean sheet of paper,why would it's fundamental shape be that of anFOIL?This type of shape produces aerodynamic lift......it's hardly new news either. Swiss mathematician and physicist, Daniel Bernoulli, accurately described the phenomena in his 1738bookHydrodynamica..... elucidating the natural law now known as the Bernoulli Principle.
The infamous Daytona Ricky Rudd/Bud Moore/Wrangler/teardrop-Thunderbird crash of 1984 was among the first examples of this phenomena. Rudd slid sideways exiting turn four, the car lifted, flipped in mid-flight, landed, and began a series of violent snap rolls....Bernoulli's principle resulting in another classic display of Newtonian mechanics......potential energy becoming kinetic.
But that was 1984, the phenomena was rarely understood, and NASCAR was still utilizing basic Detroit body shapes. It's THIRTY YEARS down the path, and we are now designing purpose-built racing stock cars........where every single dimension is carefully chosen. In the recent Duel at Daytona, Clint Bowyer's crash was exactly like Rudd's....except the car landed on of all fours. Roof flaps and shark fins and this and that, have all helped, but when the fundamental design is that of a foil.......it's gonna lift. Mankind has known that for 276 years now. Maybe flipping race carsarethe goal.
updated by @bobby-williamson: 12/05/16 04:04:08PM
