1. A racing car has only ONE objective: to WIN motor races. If it does not do this it is nothing but a waste of time, money, and effort.
This may sound obvious but remember it does not matter how clever it is, or how inexpensive, or how easy to maintain, or even how safe, if it does not consistantly win it is NOTHING!
2. Having established this what do we have to do to make it win:
(i) Simply stated it must firstly be capable of lapping a racing circuit quicker than any other car, with the least possible skill from the driver, and doing it long enough to finish the race.
(ii) After this, and only after this, and with absolutely no compromising of objective (2)(i) one has to consider how expensive it is, how simple, how safe, & how easy to maintain, etc. NONE of these aspects must detract one iota from (2)(i). “Good enough” is just NOT good enough to win and keep winning.[1]
Early race cars were not paragons of safety. I don't think I'd go so far as to say that Chapman intentionally made his cars less safe to make them faster, but I also don't know that he'd have spent any weight budget to make them safer than the regulations required.
IE
"if it's possible to make a winning car win by having the wheels fall off of it as it crosses the finish lines" -- that's okay
VS
"If it's possible to make a winning car win by having the wheels fall off of it as it crosses the finish line, then it bursts into flame and kills the driver" -- that's probably no okay.
But there's a lot of grey area between the two, and that's where winning teams won (and occasionally lost drivers / spectators). Old time car racing was blood sport.
They were death traps, racing drivers were way more cautious back in those days because any slightly severe accident was likely to result in death or severe injuries. Reliability was garbage too so basically just crossing the finish line was a great result.
For a professional race car, I don't think safety is an overriding concern, given its intended use case.
I think the late Robert Dewar (of AdaCore fame) made a similar comment about fighter jets: Is it really a domain for safety-critical engineering if the only thing that prevents the plane from disintegrating mid-air is a continuously running computer program?
tame3902|1 year ago
1. A racing car has only ONE objective: to WIN motor races. If it does not do this it is nothing but a waste of time, money, and effort.
This may sound obvious but remember it does not matter how clever it is, or how inexpensive, or how easy to maintain, or even how safe, if it does not consistantly win it is NOTHING!
2. Having established this what do we have to do to make it win:
(i) Simply stated it must firstly be capable of lapping a racing circuit quicker than any other car, with the least possible skill from the driver, and doing it long enough to finish the race.
(ii) After this, and only after this, and with absolutely no compromising of objective (2)(i) one has to consider how expensive it is, how simple, how safe, & how easy to maintain, etc. NONE of these aspects must detract one iota from (2)(i). “Good enough” is just NOT good enough to win and keep winning.[1]
[1]: https://jalopnik.com/colin-chapman-s-simple-and-chilling-def...
jrflowers|1 year ago
cduzz|1 year ago
IE
"if it's possible to make a winning car win by having the wheels fall off of it as it crosses the finish lines" -- that's okay
VS
"If it's possible to make a winning car win by having the wheels fall off of it as it crosses the finish line, then it bursts into flame and kills the driver" -- that's probably no okay.
But there's a lot of grey area between the two, and that's where winning teams won (and occasionally lost drivers / spectators). Old time car racing was blood sport.
https://petrolicious.com/articles/lotus-f1-cars-were-so-frag...
qwebfdzsh|1 year ago
They were death traps, racing drivers were way more cautious back in those days because any slightly severe accident was likely to result in death or severe injuries. Reliability was garbage too so basically just crossing the finish line was a great result.
fweimer|1 year ago
I think the late Robert Dewar (of AdaCore fame) made a similar comment about fighter jets: Is it really a domain for safety-critical engineering if the only thing that prevents the plane from disintegrating mid-air is a continuously running computer program?
unknown|1 year ago
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