Mikey

There is a thing in science called "first order" calculations and I am quiet qualifed to do this if you knew what my background was. All the other things you talk about are "second order effects" and can be ingonred for a car traveling on a straight line at 160MPH. In Ben's situation it was simplly a question of grip (once he made the decision not to kill the guy in the Ferrari) and the CGT offered NONE. The CGT was never designed to deal with that situation. As Alexandar pointed it (and judging from the track side) it would have been best to hit the Ferrari.

I will be club racing in a few years, for now I can not participate becasue my board of directors has banned me from anyd kind of racing. The 2005 GT3 is weight reduced by about 250lbs and using a GT3 Cup wing ... the stripes are just for fun.

Bob Rouleau

Mikey - thanks for the very thought-provoking analysis. I think it is valid to assume that more downforce makes a car more difficult to spin. Whether a lbs/mm loading equal to an Enzo would have prevented the spin is not obvious. I am ignoring the FXX since it is a race car (and I saw one on track two weeks ago - talk about fast and loud).

I'm trying to understand all of the implications. Downforce, like anything else, is a compromise. On the 996 GT2, Porsche makes a point of telling owners to return the wing to its neutral position for road use. I did a lot of track miles in the GT2 and would not call it an evil handling car in spite of next to no down force.

A lot of downforce in the rear does tend to make the car want to go straight. Unfortunately it also creates understeer. In slippery conditions (say a wet road) an excess of rear grip makes a car reluctant to turn. Racers deal with this by trail braking - sometimes right up to the apex. Needless to say that proper trail braking technique is not something novices have much experience with.

I suspect that Porsche's design was oriented to balanced handling - crisp turn-in is a nice thing to have after all.

Note: I am not taking a stand here, your data certainly provokes a lot of thinking. I'm ruminating on the compromises - engineers have a saying "everything has side effects" - perhaps physicians do the same, Alex can tell us.

Mikey, thanks for going to the trouble to collect and post the data. I will be thinking about this more....

Regards,

Bob Rouleau

Jeff - Please, let's not get personal here. Mikey came back with some facts which are certainly thought provoking. That his views are aligned with Nick's should not mean that they are disregarded.

Best,

PogueMoHone

How do you know what decision Ben made, through a "first order" assumption or deduction?

Maybe you have your "Science" and "Sceance" mixed up!

It's a legimate exercise to explore the engineering of a CGT, but it is speculation (if not malicious) to try and relate that engineering to Ben's tragic event.

You have no way of knowing all the variables to arrive at a scientific conclusion. The probabilities point to driver error/overreaction.

M758

Mikey this analysis is nice, but you missed some very important points.

1) Downforce at 180 mph is not like stability at 60-80 mph.

The reason I point this out is there is alot of talk about the cars being hard to handle on the public roads. Well at speeds below 100 mph the downforce is going be rather low on any car. I know drag increases to the 4th power of speed so I would expect a similar relation to down force. Point is 1700lbs of downforce at 180 is not much at 100 mph so it is not fair to compare them. Also driver loosing control at 40 mph has nothing to do with downforce or lack of it.
Point is for low speed handling downforce is not a factor.

2) At 180 mph the CGT has more down force than a GT2 or GT3, Viper, F360CS, TT. My point is this at 180 the car has MORE stability than many most of the other cars on the list. Consider that a spin a 180 mph is not likly to be caused by overpowering the rear tires even with 600+ hp and you come to the conclusion that a 180 mph spin is going to be the result of a lift or change in direction.

Thus it is actually quite far to compare a GT3's stability at 180 with a CGT at 180. Of course in the case of the CGT you have some 390 lbs of MORE DOWNFORCE than a GT3. Seems to me the GT3 is down right unsafe at 180 if you assert a CGT lacks the downforce needed to control the car. We have not even begun to mention the issue of rear engine weight bias and issues of spin control/recovery that it creates.

My main points is this. Big hp or low hp the amount of power a car has does not correlate to is need for downforce. The need for downforce is driven by the high speed stability design targets. When you look at the numbers the CGT has better high speed stability that many other cars also capable of reaching 150-190 mph. That to me does NOT mean it "lacks downforce".

Bottomline is this...to make an evasive manuver at 150 mph in ANY CAR and it takes a very gentle input to the car. Be jerky or not smooth and the car is very likely to spin out of control. Of course once you lose control at 150 mph it can get nasty very quickly. In my mind the ONLY factor that the CGT contributed to the Ben's incident was due to the HP levels the car could acclerate to a very high rate of speed at that point on the track. More average cars could just as easily have been in involved in such and incident, but is just that they probably would have occured at lower speeds.

I have raced on that track in my 944 race car. It is quite possible that had I been presented with the same circumstances while driving my race car with the same reaction time as Ben, I too could have ended up in that wall. I would hope however that due my cars much lower speed (90-100 mph) in that area, that my contact with the wall would have resulted a survivable crash.

Nick

At this point, I think this thread has run its course. Whatever happens in the case involving the cgt is clearly not going to be influence by what is being posted here.

Jeff you notice I never respond to your insipid posts and do not plan to in the future. Give up your obsession with me and get on with your life or find someone else to obsess over.

gabbagabbahey

Nick please update the thread with news from the hearings, TIA. When is this going to be tried?

Crazy Canuck

Nick is nauseating.

W8MM

And all this time I thought you were testing various arguments of liability to see if they could easily be shot down by Porsche's lawyers.

You know, a little open-source research among friends

38D

I would still like to know Nick & Mikey's driving experience level.

1AS

I think I contributed to this discussion, which I think has been enlightening from many perspectives, because of my comparison to similarly powered race cars that have larger wings.
First, Michael, thank you for the data. They are illustrative of the point.
38D: There are lots of variables. But the CGT gets to ultra-high speeds much faster than other cars, and therefore puts the driver into a danger zone he may be ill-equipped to handle. My experience comes from racing a similarly-powered car (611hp in my case) and my observations of how much the wing helped.
Bob is unquestionably correct in saying the big wing may induce understeer. At track speeds in supercars, that is more manageable than sudden oversteer. You need to be able to trail brake if you want to drive a fast car fast. Otherwise. the car needs yaw control, at least for most drivers. When any product is aimned toward the public, there is a lowest common denominator factor. The CGT doesn't accomodate that.
Jeff, you know I love ya, but Nick has a point. He just tends toward hyperbole. His opinion adds spice to the board, and I tend to agree with him.
I still want one. AS

Nick

Mike, I am not part of the lawsuit. What I find incomprehensible is that people are maligned because they advocate use of availalble safety devices on all cars to assist in safeguarding the driver and passenger. This is a car enthusiast site and yet some want to drive a car as though they are in the dark ages.

This issue of stability devicing is no different than the arguments in the past regarding seat belts, airbags etc. Initially, there is always resistance and personal attacks against those that feel they are necessary. However, inevitably all accept them and become part of the safety systems of cars.

I have no doubt that in the future stability management systems like PASM and PSM will be in all all cars designed for use on public roads and highways. If the car is designated only for track use that will be a different story.

M758

This idea is something I have a strong distaste for. Be it the CGT or any consumer product. Just because Granda Ma Jones can't drive it does not mean the products should be designed so she can. Why not just sell only 4 cyl Toyota Camrys to people? What I think about the skills of the average driver makes me that that may even be to much car.

Lowest common denominator is way interest products get watered down into crap that serves the needs of those who have little to no needs. What happens to all those wanting more is we are left with crap.

Getting back to the point of this entire thread and my interest into.

I fear two things from this lawsuit.
1) Changes/limitations placed that will make all but impossible for "non professionals" to drive on race track. (Consider SCCA halting Pro Rally after a fatality)

2) A loss of proper performance cars being sold to the public. (recall Nader vs the Corvair)

For me personal I fear #1 more than number #2 since my financial ability to aquire new performance cars is quite limited. However my desire to spend time at the track is quite high.

Bob Rouleau

Nick - I understand your perspective. I side with the folks who do not want cars which are dumbed down to some lowest common denominator. Porsche cars with the GT suffix offer a phenomenal driving experience because the driver is not insulated from the experience by various black boxes. What use is developing a skill if you can't practice it?

The same sort of thinking would also flatten double diamond ski hills because someone with more ***** than brains will attempt to ski down it without the requisite skills. More people are killed or injured in ski accidents than in supercars.

Regards,

38D

AS, if you raced a 611hp car then you know how long it takes to really be able to pilot such a powerful car. Having read most of this thread, I believe that Ben was an experienced instructor who got into a situation he could not handle. It could have happened to anyone. I'm not sure a pro could have handled the situation. That doesn't make the CGT a dangerously unsafe car. When things are happening that fast, you literally have a few tenths of a second to respond.

And I'm not arguing that a wing would not make the car handle better. But I highly doubt that it would have saved any lives in this case. I also find the "I was there an saw the car float" comments highly suspect. Unless a person is in the car at that moment, they really have no idea what the handling is really like.

What I see is some people who are angry over their friend's death and are looking to blame anyone other than him. I also still have no idea if Nick or Mickey is even an experienced driver capable of understanding car dynamics. For all I know they are a couple of novices, but they just as easily could be top level racers...i really just don't know (hence why I asked).

In my opinion a series of unfortunately events culminated in this tragedy. No one person or single event is to blame. It is a chain of events, any one of which might have changed the outcome. It's really all speculation that is not going to bring either one of them back.