Race Car questions

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Why are many professional racing cars made so the door cannot open, and the driver has to physically climb in through the window? Is this to keep the car stronger and from falling apart at high speeds?

Is it true that some race cars use fuel blends that would not be advisable and even not be legal to use in standard road cars, like blends of methanol and such?

What are your favorite racing cars?

[demoncase]

Why are many professional racing cars made so the door cannot open, and the driver has to physically climb in through the window? Is this to keep the car stronger and from falling apart at high speeds?

Yes...it also means the body can be made a single piece monocoque- both lighter and stronger

Is it true that some race cars use fuel blends that would not be advisable and even not be legal to use in standard road cars, like blends of methanol and such?
Yes- Methanol based fuels are used as they burn 'cooler' than many fuels, the water vapour that they produce during ignition reduces detonation risk while raising compression. Higher compression is the goal for more power- and finding a way to do it without melting stuff is helpful.

The reason why methanol isn't advised for a standard road car is that your fueling system has not been set up to cope with it, the increase in compression can put stress on con-rods and bearings- but the real issue is how much water it sucks in (it's hygroscopic) and how much water vapour it produces as it burns: all that damp rusts carbon steels and attacks valve seats, valves, exhausts and so on.

It also reacts with aluminium on contact and corrodes it- so that lovely stressed-member engine block will rot away- again, that's fine for a single season of racing, but for a car that's going to be in use for 15-20 years, not so much?

Top fuel cars and similar run a mixture featuring all kinds of nastiness- but mainly nitromethane which is even higher octane and forms nitric acid and nitrosamines in the exhaust! (Ever go to a drag event and end up in tears?- That's because the cars are making a reasonable subustitute for tear gas)

FYI there is some methanol in low percentages in most unleaded road fuel- (3% in the EU) but it's part of the 20-30 blend components.
However, in many high-altitude countries (like Peru) 'Gasohol'- a blend of gasoline and methanol has been in use for decades- at higher altitudes the methanol is helpful due to it's lower volatility.

What are your favorite racing cars?

The 1921 Blower Bentley :)

[SuckSqueezeBangBlow]

Mazda 787b

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_787B

[Evil D]

Race cars that have solid body panels and doors that don't work are often cars that have a full tube chassis underneath so behind what would be the door there are just a bunch of cross bars and no physical opening door. This is to protect the driver, as a typical car door has a weak spot where the door opens, just like a folding knife has a weak point at the pivot. There was a time when building a steel tube cage inside the car hadn't really been though of (I guess?) so the chassis and the car body made up the whole of the car's rigidity, so having solid doors that didn't open helped to reduce flex. It helped that those older cars were often open top cars anyway that were easy to climb in and out of. Back in the early days of NASCAR when the cars were actually built from real street cars and the bodies were real street car bodies, they would weld those seams and remove all the innards from the doors and weld the roll cage on the inside. Another benefit to this is that the bodies of these cars are likely taking some abuse during the race, so the body panels can easily be replaced since they're just sheet metal.

Race gas is pretty much for higher compression and to reduce the chance of detonation. The reason your daily driver doesn't like (or at least won't benefit from) race gas is because it doesn't have a high compression engine, and many of those gases can hurt your emissions equipment and catalytic converters. I've ran Turbo Blue in my Mustang before, which is 115 octane leaded race gas, but my times at the drag strip were exactly the same because my engine wasn't built with a high enough compression ratio to take advantage of it. It doesn't have any emissions equipment so that part didn't matter.

Favorite race cars, that's a long list. Some of my favorites would have to be:

GT40 MkII that won Le Mans in '66


Bud Moore Trans Am 1970 Mustang Boss 302


1964 Ford Fairlane Thunderbolt 427, no particular race team, it's just one of my favorite cars ever

[LC Kid]

Hi Folks!



My Favourite Race Cars are a long-ongoing-list, but 2 of them I always remember are: :)


- Ferrari 250 GTO




- Porsche 917K



And that TA Mustang Boss 302 is just awesome! :D