“Honda hopes to reach 250 mph in future tests. Amazingly, the street-legal Bugatti Veyron has already hit such speeds on public highways.” Is this really that amazing? I mean, it is a Veyron. V-Sixteen, Quad turbo, uber cooling system…250 seems about right. And about time someone did it, if you ask me.

Damn straight. Oh, and can we get some videos of these 250+ speed runs on public highways?

i dont think salt flats is the ideal surface to run a F1 car. im sure in the right conditions/surfaces it would be capable of well over 250mph.

I wonder what downforce setting they were using. 220 seems low for an 800+ hp car that weighs almost nothing. I bet you could gain significant speed with fairings over the wheels.

So you think running on a differant surface would make the F1 car faster by 30 + MPH? I doubt that.

The surface would make a BIG diff! the 1st thing i thought about is the tires, they were not engineered for sand, there would be no grip and they might even shred themselves . 2nd, it might look smooth but its a very bumpy surface so there needs to be alot of down force on that car. like was stated, 220mph is really low for an 800hp soup can.

You can’t put fairings over the wheels because then it would not be race legal anymore.

They should run it on the cape canaveral runway. You know, the one the space shuttle lands on. Thats smooth, long and probably pretty good for high speed runs.

“Since then, an unofficial dry run at the Mojave airbase in California last November saw the team successfully achieve their 400 kph (249 mph) target. In fact, South African driver Alan van der Merwe, who will again be at the wheel this week, bettered the mark three times, with a best of just over 413 kph (257 mph).
Now Honda’s aim is to set an official record on the far more challenging surface conditions at Bonneville. The car being used for the attempt is a specially prepared, but race legal, chassis based on the team’s 2005 007 machine.”
http://www.formula1.com/news/4656.html
Surface actaully made a 37mph diff…

The reason why the speed is so low is because the downforce on this thing is so much that it literally sticks to the road. The Bugatti on the other hand struggles to stay on it because it has not even the quarter of this car. Without downforce you would be looking at 260 – 270 mph even

No it would not be 260-270. It would be more like 0, because without downforce, and on the relatively bumpy salt flats, it would crash at those speeds. But theoritically, you could be right.

Well, if your car is hopelessly uncompetitive in F1 I guess this is one way to win something….,

Lets fire some more engineers at Honda F1. Then the car will break 300mph on salt flats , not a racetrack which it was created for. Then we won’t have to worry about that nagging constructors or drivers championship.

Or maybe we can get the Super Aguris to try it too.
Sato could not possibly crash out here.

You ever notice how many experts there are in forums, who claim or pretend to be engineers ?
You ever notice that these “engineers” know everything about cars from aerodynamics to fluid dynamics to mechanical, material, electrical and even chemical engineering ?
Who are these FULL OF SHHH. . . . I mean KNOWLEDGE based people ?
Why haven’t they come up with the world saving peace keeping idea ?
Where do they work that they can post on forums all day ?

They’re losers like yourself

Funny you should say that, That Guy. Because i have come up with the world saving peace keeping idea, but there’s no money in it, so i killed the project.

I figured out how to achieve world peace. However, I can’t quite figure out how to get a 500 mile wide astaroid to hit the planet. But when I do, you’ll all be the first to know.

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From my understanding of the laws of physics, if there were an upside-down surface with which to drive the F1 car balls-out, in theory one could go even faster than rightside-up, due to the pull of gravity coupled with the downforce of the car.

Meanwhile, I am curious if they are changing the final drive ratio or the individual gears in the gearbox to attain those high speeds.

-he who stacks pork

That Guy: which post are you referring to?

I seriously doubt anyone has driven their Bugatti Veyron at 250mph on public highways. Present videographic evidence.

Formula 1 cars aren’t built for top speed, they are built for acceleration. Formula 1 cars are only used on tracks with straights that are not long enough to even reach 250 MPH. So it would be pointless. Also, formula 1 cars generate more downforce than they weigh, so this means a lot of drag.

jae, although the chances of takuma sato crashing on the salt flats is low, he would probably manage to have some sort of mechanical failure and total the thing… those salt flat wrecks get scary…
how is it that honda hasnt noticed the lack of logic in this? ‘ok, we have a decent driver (button) and good financial backing, yet we are nowhere close to winning anything… how should we spend our money?’
‘lets set a world speed record!’
‘BRILLIANT!!!’

High downforce is the enemy of top speed. Look at the fastest land vehicles that run at Bonneville, they are basically tubes with little or no downforce. If you all are the race fans you all claim to be day in and day out here you would know that teams are always searching for the perfect balance between downforce/cornering/tire wear and high speed/less traction in the turns.
No doubt the car would be using special tires for the test.
The governing body that oversees records on the flats is very specific in classifications of vehicles that are attempting records. Add fenders and you would probably totally change the classification. And the ’salt’, not sand (thus the name ’salt flats’) is actually fairly smooth in the actually running lanes pending wind etc…
All in all this in a interesting exercise.

F1 cars are teh hawt badness!!!!

Fastest road-legal car produced… British… 270mph… should be a treat – watch this space!

Hmmm I seriously doubt Montoya reached 232 mph on the Monza track. Unless he totally skipped the first chicane while going flat-out .
When F1 raced on the old Hockenheim track (the fastest track on the calender) the cars attained top speeds of about 225 mph. The straights were longer than the Monza straight between Parabolica and the first chicane after start/finish.

I would love to see an F1 car do a couple of laps on the Indianapolis oval. I wonder if it would be faster on average speed than the IndyCars.

Wait, for the guy who daid that someone got an F1 car up to 257, where was that? Was it official?

it says mojave airbase, so i’d bet it was on a runway… theyre kinda meant for speed…