MTosi

I've seen/posted the first one a few times, but I'd never seen the second, simply amazing, the slow mo's, no way to describe it except

Sean F

crap...he shuffle steers. There goes my hero.

sjanes

With a steering wheel that big, I think you kinda need to. Cool video though.

RedlineMan

Pffff....

Dude... you ever drive a bus 100mph?

MTosi

With positive camber and 3 locks end to end

Veloce Raptor

Notice how early he begins countersteering to catch oversteer...

Larry Herman

Sean, it's all a bunch of hooey. Either you know where the steering wheel is, or you don't. And if you don't, you'll never be quick regardless of where you keep your hands.

Gary R.

That's my uncle Juan! Cool video!

Sean F

I think we need a sarcasm smiley for Rennlist...I was joking guys. That steering wheel is the size of a hula hoop.

BTW, there was an interesting discussion during the broadcast of the F1 practice yesterday about how difficult it is to compare F1 drivers from different eras. Several good points were made, the one I thought most interesting was I think from Hobbs who said something like the biggest difference was that the drivers in Fangio's era pretty much knew that they'd die in the saddle. Look at the first video and you can see why.

DrJupeman

Eh, maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not all that wowed by those videos.

RedlineMan

hmmm...

Take your car, put four space saver spares on it (that have been sitting in the sun for 5 years), and then go cut some hot laps.

DrJupeman

Sure, great. I just don't see the brilliance in the videos, space savers or not. You see some slides, whoopee. I commend the bravery, but I don't see the videos as any rare display of talent. I'm not bashing the guy or his reputation, I'm just reacting to what is in the videos and not being biased by who is in the video.

MTosi

You forgot to put up the duck and cover smiley with a comment like that, now your leaving youself open for attack

He's driving a car with as Redline man suggested something equivilent if not worse than current space saver tires, he has drum brakes, positive camber, a front engine car with a big heavy ol' V-12 making 300-400hp, a chassis designed with no consideration for "balance", a non synchro gearbox, and on certain cars LEAF spring suspension like my dads 85 dodge ram pickup. To make it go fast, it shouldn't look fast, just smooth, remember how little grip there actually is, the limit is alot slower than you would expect (also he has camera's strapped to the car, and in that era they weren't the size of camcorders, lol).

Ohhhh yeah and the track's he ran on didn't have run off, guard rails, painted lines for reference, marshalls, curbs (of the beneficial sort, usually just 6 inch vertical ones to destroy your front suspension), or just about anything. Usually there were just tree's, forest, spectators, wall's, ohhh and I forgot the once saftey measure they did have.... the occasional haybail that would catch fire if you hit it. He had a degree of precision to his driving modern drivers can't comprehend (developed from trying to stay alive).

DrJupeman

Yeah, I know all that about the cars, except the Maserati 250F in which Fangio had perhaps his most famous drive was 220-250 hp, hardly 300-400 (source: Wikipedia, so if you want to go edit the 250F article to 300-400hp to cover your tracks, you can... ). What I'm saying is I don't SEE the greatness in those videos. Hell, he's driving along by himself for the camera in those videos. I think real race footage showing him school the other drivers might be more impressive.

As for your second paragraph, if you're left speechless by people facing danger, there are many other YouTube videos we can post of barnstormers, crocodile wrestlers, etc. Bravery is not the same as driving talent.

Btw, continue your attempts to flame me as much as you want. I've never said I'm knocking Fangio, drivers of the era, saying I could do the same (which is what RedlineMan seems to imply), etc. I'm just saying the videos don't wow me. Frankly, I'm more impressed by videos like Hans Stuck at the 'Ring in that race M3.

MTosi

That was hardly a flame..... I had alot more stuff but, I held off

Power wise it depends on generation, some of the cars he drove had 225-275, some had over 300hp, I shouldn't have included 400hp, since nothing ever realy exceeded 350hp.

It's all about subtlety, just because someone look's like they are going faster doesn't mean they actually are. Remember the limit on a 50's GP car was well below that of even a new street M3, so it may not look fast or impressive, but you have to grasp the era and cars to fully understand.