http://www.metacafe.com/watch/37657/formula_1/

 

that looks fun... i should be an F1 driver

 

Great clip!

 

So what "ground effects" are they missing? Are you talking about the aero stuff underneath the car? I thought they could add aero stuff to the bottom, that's why Ferrari is always hiding the bottom of their car from the cameras.

 

balsy driving on both drivers part! Wonderful clip, and thanks for the link.....

Now that's RACING!

Matt

 

Awesome dicing! Tires were bigger too.

 

Really nice find ! Thanks for sharing

 

I've seent hat before love watching that clip! Thanks for posting

 

But Gilles was magical. I remember him in Canada before he 'made it'. From local tracks around Montreal to a 6 hour race at Mosport, it was always exciting and wonderful to watch him race.

 

The F1 cars of that era had side skirts that actually rode on the track surface sealing out the air under the body and creating a vacuum effect which allowed the cars to do phenomenal cornering speeds. At low speed, you could actually hear the skirts scrapping the ground. Note the skirts below on Gilles Villeneuve's Ferrari...



They were eventually outlawed because in the event of a breakage at speed, the cars would lose all traction and control, usually resulting in a heavy shunt.

The late 70's camera work in that clip really enhances the speeds of the cars...excellent!

 

If they were outlawed for a good reason I'm fine w/ that....but man, that looks crazy cool!!!!

 

Mitch: Aside from the skirts, the cars had large wing shaped pods on either side to push the cars onto the track. Some of the cars didn't even need front wings. The current GP2 series has the same thing, but without the skirts. It allows for much less "dirty" air behind the car, and much closer racing. The current aero packages in F1 completely scramble the air behind a car, making the kind of racing in that clip impossible these days.

 

There where a lot of reasons for the ban on the skirts, but the majority of the reason was that if the vacuum under the car was lost, the car went from being sucked to the track to very little grip in an instant.

Clipping the kerbs would break the vacuum, touching another cars' wheels would break the vacuum, running over a pebble or rubber fragment would break the vacuum.

Another issue was that the cars had virtually zero suspension travel making them incredibly brutal to drive and actually causing drivers to have vision issues due to the astonishing amount of vibration from the track.

Eventually the so-called sliding skirts where banned, this lead to extremely low ride-heights, which lead to mandated minimum ride heights, which lead to driver adjustable / computer controlled ride heights, which lead to......

You get the idea ?

The final solution was the 'plank' and the step in the cars, the plank rides lower than any other section of the car and is inspected at the end of the race to ensure that it was not dragging on the ground, and hence the ride-height was kept in check.