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by tame3902 787 days ago
Colin Champman's own words:

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...
1 comments
jrflowers 787 days ago
This is a good point because if a race car accelerates into a wall and destroys itself and kills its driver it can still win a race
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cduzz 787 days ago
Old time car races were really dangerous.

I think the worst accident was the 1955 Le Mans Accident that killed 85 spectators.[1]

It looks like the years (between 1952-1980) of 1956, 1963, 1965, 1972, 1976 and 1979 are noteworthy because those are the 6 of 28 years when a driver wasn't killed[2]...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_Le_Mans_disaster

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_fatalities

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Rinzler89 787 days ago
Yep, but car racing today is orders of magnitude safer than it was decades ago, especially in F1. An insane amount of money, research and regulations has been poured into increasing safety by the FIA.

F1 tracks, cars, suits and helmets today are so safe that even on violent crashes at >45G[1] or flaming infernos[2] of gasoline and lithium, the driver can walk out of the wreck with a just a broken rib or a burned hand, whereas in the past that would have meant certain death or at least being crippled for life.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x45fLUTHCuk

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ7_En2xEm4

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