When money exceeds talent

Joe T · 10 Jan 2018 at 08:17

Thanks!

Conscript · 10 Jan 2018 at 09:39

BigDannyO said:
Absolutely! Seriously, I know I've banged on about it, but the podcast I linked to is a very interesting essay on the subject and addresses all the points in the thread. Worth the 40 minutes if you can spare it.

So the hypothetical "normal car" can speed up faster than it can slow down?

Nasher said:
It's nothing to do with speeding up. At high speed if you press the throttle in and the brakes, the brakes on most road cars will overheat, the braking power will fade and they may not be able to stop the car.

With big ceramic or race spec brakes you might be ok. But your not going to have those on 99% of cars and the stopping distance will still be huge.

I would echo that it would be well worth listening to the podcast, because they proved you fundamentally wrong here. They did several tests in the car (a Camry, I think?) where they attempted to bring the car to a stop using the brakes whilst the throttle was still wide open. The brakes were able to overcome the engine, if I remember, the braking distances wasn't even that much longer. They did the same test in a more powerful car (a Mustang) and found the same - the brakes were able to bring the the car to a stop even at full throttle.

I heard the podcast a few months ago. Very interesting, if a little harrowing. It's definitely well worth a listen, and as Danny said, it addresses lots of points in this thread.

Jonnycoupe · 10 Jan 2018 at 13:53

Yeah it’s traction limited due to grip between road and tyre so the engine adding power just adds more to the thermal energy the brakes have to deal with to retard the speed. The brakes are massively over engineered for repeat Vmax stop In context of engine output.

Of course as the engine rpm slows with speed the power also drops away.

Jonnycoupe · 10 Jan 2018 at 13:56

Nasher said:
It's nothing to do with speeding up. At high speed if you press the throttle in and the brakes, the brakes on most road cars will overheat, the braking power will fade and they may not be able to stop the car.
.

If you rest your foot on the brakes maybe... if you actually try to stop the car you won’t have much of an issue.