Just for my own interest what is the answer to this please?


Which would be faster over say 10 laps at Silverstone in the dry - an F1 car or a race bike?


And in the wet?


Cheers, David

 

Well Coulthard (in an old F1 car) slaughtered Guy Martin on on a race bike recently.
Google it, he did 3 laps quicker than Martin could do two.

 

I watched this, it was pretty good but the bike came up short.

 

F1 cars slaughter bikes in both braking and cornering

I suspect due to the simple physics of have 4 wheels not 2

 

a Moto GP Bike V F1 car may have been closer Imo,
would a F1 car manage 10 laps on certain tyres ?
Remember DC was messing with tyres and the bike just ran the tyres it rolled up with.

 

Check a circuit where they both race like Catalunya ??

 

We had a similar question recently about F1 cars against LMP1 (WEC) prototypes. IIRC the F1 car was about 7s/lap quicker around Spa. There are no times available for Barcelona which is a more twisty circuit than Spa and many reckon it would be much closer there and possibly the LMP1's would be quicker.

 

Sorry i was meaning moto gp vs f1 lol

 

It's the aero that does it. There's been a fair few of these done over the years with more normal cars and it ends up being fairly close but as soon as start bringing aerodynamics into the discussion the car disappears into the distance.

Really depends who's strengths you play too though, on a single lap the F1 car takes it but on the flip side the LMP1 car would take it in an endurance race (especially over 24hours).

 

Well put it this way, Rosberg fastest lap at the weekend was 1:35.548 (race pace) and Marquez lap record in quali last year was 2:00.234 around silverstone.

 

Aero - as in creating the ground-force - yes quite probably

I remember speaking to a guy who had driven a fairly recent F1 car (a few years) ago

and he said that the most impressive thing about was not the acceleration but the breaking

if you weren't careful you would brake to a stop before you got to the corner because you invariably broke way way too soon

 

I'll assume you mean downforce (given ground force was a mid 2000s gardening show) but yeah. Several years ago Top Gear did a race between a V8 Atom and a BMW S1000RR and the end result was actually quite close.

 

yes correct

 

Interesting comments, thanks guys. Silverstone is a fast track so I guess the cars would have the edge on top speed say 220 for a car and perhaps 190 for a bike or am I wildly out, I hadn't thought about the breaking though. There can't be much in raw acceleration up to say 140-ish but perhaps the cars have the edge.


I guess a wet track would favour the cars which can afford to slide around a bit although I am always amazed to see the angles that bikes can manage on a wet corner.


Looks like the cars have it.


David

 

The cars have it in every area; braking, acceleration (once rolling at race pace) and cornering speed. Check any track you like and the F1 lap times are so much quicker than the bikes.

 

the v8 atom and the s1000r are not even remotely close to being in the same performance league as a moto gp or f1- cant speak for the bike but a formula 1 can corner at 4.5g ffs

 

I think you've missed the point slightly there...

 

This year at Catalunya the MotoGP bikes did race day on the same track layout as the F1 boys. Fastest race lap for the bikes was a 1'43.589 and for the F1 it was a 1'26.948. Perhaps worth pointing out that neither Mercedes finished a lap due to a small coming together...

 

But an F1 car would implode after 50 laps, unlike the LMP1 cars. Having just been to the 24 Hour Race in Le Mans it makes F1 look like a 100m sprint.

 

probably isn't a lot in it with top speed, I don't know what the top speed of an F1 car is but I think you are in the ballpark (probably not at silverstone though) and a motogp bikes fastest top speed to date is approx 217.5mph (Iannone, Ducati at Mugello).

Coincidentally, a few years back Marc Marquez fell from his Honda down the straight at Mugello in practice, at 210mph, and slid down the track on his chin. He still raced that weekend.

As for lap times for bmw s1000r (wsbk) against motogp bikes, there really isn't that much in it, couple of seconds maybe. In fact, at this years IOM TT races padgetts raced a Honda RCV213 (motogp based bike) against superbikes and it didn't trouble the leading bikes. The rider did have an off in practice though so probably slowed him down a tad, but even before the off his fastest lap was a few mph slower than the superbikes.

 

These F1 vs bike questions are virtually always cropping up on car forums as the car drivers are desperate to think their cars are quick (not you DavidLock).

As NeilH has said the aerodynamics on F1 cars are such that the comparisons are entirely pointless and meaningless. If you removed the aero from the F1 car the bike would be quicker, with it the speed differential around the corners means the bikes have no chance. The F1 car wins again on braking as the aero helps again (to begin with) and it has way more rubber on the road. The bikes actually accelerate faster and at some circuits have a higher top speed.

If you compare the bikes with cars without F1 aero the results would be circuit dependent, although the cars would firstly need a lot of power to get a look in in the first place.
And the bikes could be used on the road without much fuss, try that in an F1 car and see how you get on.

And all that aside, back on the road the bikes you can buy from the showroom for around 15K will still annihilate virtually any road car you can think of in all respects with similarly skilled users.
Unless it's wet.

 

I think there is a significant power to weight difference. The MotoGp bike is around 750bhp per ton, the F1 car well over 1,000bhp per ton with 2 broad tyres to put the power down rather than one relatively narrow one.

 

The bikes are c.250bhp and 160Kg giving over 1500BHP/tonne without rider.
I'll concede the tyres bit, but the aero is still the thing that makes the big difference.
Unless it's wet.

That £15K showroom bike manages around 1000BHP/tonne without rider.

 

Sorry about my dodgy maths, you're quite right re bhp/tonne with the Motogp bike about the same as the F1 car.

Not sure what you mean about the wet though, unless you mean that rain really seals the deal in favour of the F1 car.

On a slightly different tack, it's interesting that Mark Higgins got that Subaru around the TT circuit within a few mph of the fastest bikes. Assuming it didn't take off and land in a garden it would be interesting to see what an F1 car could do there, assuming you could find someone daft enough to drive it.

 

I doubt an F1 car would be that great round the TT to be honest, a lot of the circuit is simply to rough for something like that to really work. What you want is something more like the 208 Sebastien Loeb took up Pikes Peak.

 

I'm sure that's right, even Higgins says the Subaru was tricky to handle on some parts of the circuit, so a garden visit for an F1 car would be a probability. That Pikes Peak vehicle would be interesting though!

 

Yeah you'd need to redesign the suspension for a higher ride height and more compliance. Then you'd have to rework the aero package to allow for the loss in downforce. Then the wheels/tyres/brakes would all need looking at too. What you'd ultimately end up with would vaguely represent an F1 car at best.

 

I guess the right driver in the right car would exceed the bike record, but perhaps perversely I hope that no one does it.

 

There's an interview with Higgins in Evo this month, makes for quite a good read. By the sounds of it unless something drastic happens with the bikes, then the right car/driver combination could at least match the bike times (not sure about beating them by any significant margin though).

 

Apparently Higgins' car was well down on bike pace on the straights (some 40mph) so made its time up on the bends. A car with bike pace would probably crack it, but from the Evo article the ramifications involved to make the attempt seem so extreme that it may never happen.