That is, without a doubt, one of the finest burns I have ever seen here. Well done!

Every party needs a margarita blender made from a race boat!

This is the coolest thing I’ve seen all week! I especially love the old front engine boats! Here in South East Michigan, they’ll dust off some vintage boats and run them around during Grand Prix and APBA weekends. Fantastic machines. As for the newer stuff, I’m partial to the non-turbine boats. It feels like the…

Thanks! Now I know who to bug when I have questions about boat racing!

Awesome! Are Crackerboxes similar to Jersey Skiffs? And what’s the second man doing? Do they use a separate throttle man and wheel man, like the big ocean cats? Or is he there as traditional “ballast”? I’ve been following hydroplanes since I was a kid in the 80s, but I’m just now really starting to appreciate the…

It’s like the poor people version of Jersey Skiff racing (which itself is the poor people version of hydropane racing):

Same peak power as Gale Banks’ truck, but with less torque? I say bring it to Pike’s Peak next year and put your aquavit where your lutefisk is.

My experience is 50/50. One was so completely plagued with valvetrain noise death rattle and electrical gremlins (the annoyingly intermittent variety) that I pulled it out and started swapping an older Mercedes diesel in. Of course, this is after replacing every sensor and electrical component on the vehicle. All…

On your last paragraph there: A Cup car has a frontal area of 2.24 m^2. Their Cd is unknown to me, but empirically I know that the speedway cars generate 2,500 lbs of rear downforce alone. No idea about the front, but I’d be surprised if it’s not somewhere over 500 lbs. Probably more. Remember, downforce brings a…

I’ll just say this: I used to live in Atherton, California. The parking lot of Menlo-Atherton High School was lousy with McLarens, AMGs, Porsches, Maseratis, and any number of other super pricey cars. I never knew there were that many rich kids in the world with parents that stupid. I used to think to myself “If…

Lol, I generally don’t get so worked up about things... but then I start day-drinking and it all goes downhill from there!

Yeah, almost no normal car has downforce. I suspect some of the track-pack-ish Mustangs might be close to aero-neutral, but I can’t back that up.

“...mirror-finish cylinder bores...”

The new tunnel is a fascinating machine, with all it’s belts and stuff. And of course, everyone loves GMAL! There’s a lot of history in that machine. If you ever get a chance, check out WindShear in Charlotte, NC. It’s owned by Haas and operated by Jacobs. It’s a super efficient operation and their data quality…

Sort of. If your V-max is right at the end of the 1/4, that means you’re no longer accelerating at the end of the run. In reality, the fastest way to the back of the track is to maintain as steep an acceleration curve as possible for the whole distance. So you really want to be still accelerating as hard as…

The article says nothing about the vehicle’s level of prep. Nothing. Automatic V6? Texas Mile Shelby? NHRA Pro Stock car with a borrowed license plate? Nothing. Oh, and compared to ANY super car, a Mustang is EXTREMELY slippery. Cd under .400 for a supercar is pretty much unheard of, and the Mustang is sitting around…

The article says nothing about the vehicle’s level of prep. Nothing. Automatic V6? Texas Mile Shelby? NHRA Pro Stock car with a borrowed license plate? Nothing. Oh, and compared to ANY super car, a Mustang is EXTREMELY slippery. Cd under .400 for a supercar is pretty much unheard of, and the Mustang is sitting around…

The article says nothing about the vehicle’s level of prep. Nothing. Automatic V6? Texas Mile Shelby? NHRA Pro Stock car with a borrowed license plate? Nothing. 

When we aerodynamicists talk to each other, we say “C-D-A”, which is (Cd)*(Af) or sometimes even pounds-force of drag. Cd is just a pretty number for magazines and management!