Holy Flying Race Cars Batman!

[woody]

Rich Boy sports

"I love the speed channel when they focus on anything but NASCAR and powerboat racing"

What's wrong with APBA... too foreign for y'all flatlanders?
To rich? A fool with money could buy into a 'rental' Mannerfelt Bat Boat to race spec class for a shitload cheaper than lots of other motorsport racing...if getting wet was their Jones.

F1 seems to me just too much like huge $ tossed out for ? but that maybe the point? Excess for the point of proving excess? Nice cars & great drivers no doubt but to what end? Sponsor dollars and TV coverage to make it all happen...

Take the money away and on any given weekend y'all still find folks racing on dirt, asphalt, water, air LOL on all sorts of equipment...picking a favorite is difficult.

I want a hypo snowmobile that can run at the Rock against the ricers and swop rollers for skis, plus a Fountain fishboat with 3- 250 4 strokes

But I'm not a rich boy, and I am happy to entertain within my limits

 

[Grant]

Woody, I'll agree that the $$$ costs have gone crazy. But that applies to all motorsports. Ten years ago you could buy a competitive NASCAR operation and run it a year for around $10 million. Now a single car team that runs back of the pack spends that in a season.

Powerboat racing is very $$$$. Especially now that the drug money that used to fuel APBA is no longer around, kinda like IMSA was in the 80's.

just some of the technology that has trickled down from F1 in the last 20 years.
Turbo's and the software to run them. BMW's turbo monsters from the early 80's were based on a 1.8 liter road car block.
Active suspension, now banned in F1
Traction Control, soon to be banned in F1
Use of composite materials
Use of exotic materials
Wind tunnels used for car design
Finite Element Analysis
Computer simulation and testing
Rapid prototype and 3D modelling
Smart materials
Data collection and transfer

I could not walk out to my 2003 Cooper S and show you a single part that came from F1, but I could show you hundreds of parts that would not be there if it were not for the technology that comes from F1. Kinda like the space program - would we have velcro, teflon, laptops, powered hand tools, or the like if we had not gone to the moon?

Hey I will watch two rednecks racing lawnmowers - I don't care, I bleed gear oil.

My favourite racing is
F1, world Rally, Rally Raid's (Paris-dakar), 250 and 500 bikes, Superbikes, Isle of Man TT, SCORE trucks, DTM (German touring car)