My vote would have to go to Colin Chapman and his
Lotus F1 Car whose body was designed as an inverted
wing. Jim Hall's "Sucker Car" was depending on that
snowmobile engine to suck the car to the road standing
still or moving, while Chapman's design depended on
the forward movement of the car to take advantage of
airflow to hold it to the ground. If Hall had done
that, his car would no have been banned so quickly...
Of course, Chapman's design was banned too eventually,
but then the F1 cars don't run on slicks any more
either!
I think they should have reduced displacement to limit
speed before introducing "grooves" (treads?) in the
tires!
John Donohoe
1961 Lotus Seven
--- Tom Crain <tomcrain@gulftel.com> wrote:
> It was only a short blip in racing history,
> disallowed by a rules change =
> but Jim Hall's "Vacuum Cleaner" Chapparalls used a
> small engine driven =
> fan together with flexible skirting to suck his cars
> down to the track. =
> In its short life it proved very effective in
> allowing higher cornering =
> speeds.
>
> [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type
> text/x-vcard which had a name of Tom Crain.vcf]
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
|