Of course, this will be after permits and approval from citizens, and then the roads will have to be cleared of parked cars and I only get just 3 days to practice and set a timed attack run, but yes, I would like to take on the Karasawa/Motomachi area outlined above (and can be found here).
“Wait. Those streets are narrow. You can’t just run a GT car, and even some usual hillclimb cars wouldn’t fit.”
That’s because I’ll use something this size.
The car will be bespoke, a hybrid fan car (yes, that fan car) that combines GreenTeam Stuttgart’s punchy electric setup & small size and a naturally-aspirated small-displacement V10 plant as a generator.
What I’m imagining for the fan car is making the downforce fan controllable, such that I can get the stratospheric amount of downforce on demand (i.e. at the first 3.2 kilometers). It will still keep spinning the whole run, but I want to control fan speed during certain stretches.
Here’s the basic laundry list of everything I want and need in the car:
- Power (I’ll use the juice pack in the Stuttgart car and a custom 1.5-liter V10 engine together as one stressed member, so there will be challenges)
- Gearbox (carefully-selected ratios to get out of corners immediately and still pull on the straights),
- Aerodynamics (balance resistance to scraping with effectiveness, and make the car as slippery as possible with focus on exhaust-blown unnderbody, while aiding turn-in with rear wing DRS and air braking, endplate rudders, and movable front wing elements),
- Suspension (magnetorheological dampening to take the brunt of the weird, sudden change in elevation and still take the downforce),
- Tires (bigger, wider, tougher, stickier Bridgestone Potenza slicks to cope with the downforce),
- Brakes (must be regenerative) and
- Cooling (both the batteries and the ICE plant) will be designed with top German Formula Student teams and BMW.
Now of course, this is some Evel Knievel-level shit, and the chances of dying here are even bigger than when you race at Isle of Man, plus the car I’m imagining sounds like something only Phineas and Ferb can come up with, but this is something that’s squiggling in my head for some time now, and the craving to do a flat-out max attack lap on streets is hard to suppress.
I also think this will be a wicked test of dexterity and skill.
In any case, this will be one insane event when it becomes real, but if I pull off a clean, fast lap (only 4 flying laps), of that piece of city, it’ll be an immense success.
That, and I just want a widebody Ultra-FSAE car to call my own.
Paint scheme will be black and neon teal.