The absolute fastest "cars" in the world tend to be the jet-propelled vehicles solely built to break land speed records (I believe the current holder is this car: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThrustSSC)
A jet car isn't going to be able to be driven very easily on a closed race course, though. :)
Many cars are designed to be fast in one way, but not as quick in other ways. Cars designed just to go straight (like dragsters) do not need loads of speed-robbing downforce for taking corners quickly.
Formula 1 doesn't even hold the fastest lap ever recorded by a sanctioned racing series... as far as I know, that would be CART / Indycar, who achieved a 241mph (387kph) qualifying lap at Fontana (http://www.prnmag.com/columns/44-columns/66-who-holds-the-wo...).
But Formula 1 doesn't run on banked ovals like Indycar does.
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has hosted a lot of series, including both Formula 1 and the NASCAR Nationwide series. There's a comparison of record lap times at the end of the Wiki article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_Gilles_Villeneuve). At least here, it seems that Formula 1 is a fair bit quicker than Indycar and loads quicker than the saloon / sport type cars. For this particular type of course, they probably are the fastest racing class.
sheer speed isn't what sets records here, unless they engineer the car to have ridiculous levels of down force it won't break the top 10. the cars that run sub seven minute have the combination of acceleration, deceleration, and cornering ability, to pull it off. Not saying they cannot but considering the efforts the big names have been at this a long time and take a lot of their racing expertise to create cars which can do it.
So yeah, an anything goes car will go much faster than an F1 car. But it's going to suck at cornering. We currently don't have anything that can hold such high average speeds as an F1 car can. Not even in any very lightly regulated sport.
For interestingness' sake, modern WRC cars reach speeds of 220kph over gravel.
Top speeds of F1 cars are around 360kph (the Bugatti Veyron can do 430kph), but F1 cares more about cornering speed than top speed.
From Wikipedia:
> The large downforce allows an F1 car to corner at amazing speeds. As an example of the extreme cornering speeds; the Blanchimont and Eau Rouge corners at Spa-Francorchamps are taken flat-out at above 300 km/h (190 mph), whereas the race-spec touring cars can only do so at 150–160 km/h (note that lateral force increases with the square of the speed). A newer and perhaps even more extreme example is the Turn 8 at the Istanbul Park circuit, a 190° relatively tight 4-apex corner, in which the cars maintain speeds between 265 and 285 km/h (165 and 177 mph) (in 2006) and experience between 4.5 g and 5.5 g for 7 seconds—the longest sustained hard cornering in Formula 1.
I think probably the fastest accelerating ever car with a driver was the Vanishing Point drag racer which did 0-60 in about 0.25 secs using a peroxide rocket. Not very practical for everyday transport though https://youtu.be/7QC6tymIvKA?t=209
Top 50 in a 1000HP car (The fastest accelerating production car, short the Rimac) on one of the fastest tracks in the world is not exactly hard. The ring is mostly a speed, accel, and nuts track. (That is, long wide-open sections, lots of slow turns then accelerate, and lots of hairy off-angles and sketchy blind turns.)
Also, the Model S may be top 50...but the 50 ahead of it is basically every supercar made in the last 20 years and all of them have less HP to go faster.
Just to put some numbers to that... at the Nordschliefe in 1974 Lauda dipped under 7 minutes. The original Veyron managed 7:40 in 2005. BMW engineers estimated their 2006 car could lap it in 5:15.
Basically, put a few corners in and I don't think it would even be close. There's quite a few cars that can claim a faster top speed than an F1 car though.
I'm not convinced of that. When reading about this, I saw that someone did try a BMW F1 car, and it was pretty fast but not as fast as this Porsche. Then someone estimated the F1 car, unrestricted, could potentially be in the low 5 minute range. Now people in this thread are saying of course a F1 car could beat this record. I would only give it even odds since it sounds like speculation by people who are overly committed to their assumptions.
What I find impressive at any rate, is the motorcycle record of barely over 7 minutes.
All the latest super cars breaking records using electric motors. The fastest car Car & Driver ever tested is the 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder — 0-60 in 2.2s. A hybrid, just like the new P1 from Mclaren.
The article says that the speed is a record, but besides 'supercar' (which is what?) it does not say for what kind of car on what kind of track for what distance. Can anyone here explain it to me?
The RUF (Porsche) needs 460hp to break 213mph. The next record breaker needs 618hp to break 221mph. The 241mph record is made with 806hp. This continues incrementally until the current record holder, which needs 1350hp to hit 278mph.
It took three times as much power and three decades of computational advancement to build a car that could go a mere 65mph faster than the 1983 record breaker.
Side note: the listed horsepower numbers before 1980s are basically made up. You can safely assume SAE J2723 horsepower (what cars use today) is ~60-75% of published value for cars older than 1980 (and about ~80-95% for cars between 1980 and 2005).
As a concrete example, current Formula 1 cars reach their fastest speed at the Mexico Grand Prix, held at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City. Current race record is 372.5km/h (231.5 mph)[1].
The elevation of the track is around 2200m, and as you say the loss of drag more than compensates for the loss of engine power. Though being turbo engines helps as I understand.
Fastest production car from the 60's that I can think of would do 171 mph (Lamborghini Miura). The fastest production car today will do damn close to 100 mph more than that (Bugatti Veyron Super Sport).
Certainly the top speed of either of those cars isn't practical, but the reason that the Veyron can go so much faster is that there have been massive improvements in automobile technology since the 60s, in just about every every way imaginable. Safety, efficiency, control, materials tech, aerodynamics, etc. That we still drive so slowly can be probably attributed to momentum in automotive laws and/or driver skill / lax license requirements. If we were willing to invest more in our roads and stop thinking of driving as a right instead of a privilege, we could be driving much faster today.
It's the fastest in acceleration. Bring it to the Nürburgring and it's by far not the fastest car. Even the Porsche Taycan Turbo S is more than 2 seconds faster[0]. Driving quality or how good a car is is not defined by how fast a car can accelerate.
A jet car isn't going to be able to be driven very easily on a closed race course, though. :)
Many cars are designed to be fast in one way, but not as quick in other ways. Cars designed just to go straight (like dragsters) do not need loads of speed-robbing downforce for taking corners quickly.
Formula 1 doesn't even hold the fastest lap ever recorded by a sanctioned racing series... as far as I know, that would be CART / Indycar, who achieved a 241mph (387kph) qualifying lap at Fontana (http://www.prnmag.com/columns/44-columns/66-who-holds-the-wo...).
But Formula 1 doesn't run on banked ovals like Indycar does.
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has hosted a lot of series, including both Formula 1 and the NASCAR Nationwide series. There's a comparison of record lap times at the end of the Wiki article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_Gilles_Villeneuve). At least here, it seems that Formula 1 is a fair bit quicker than Indycar and loads quicker than the saloon / sport type cars. For this particular type of course, they probably are the fastest racing class.
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