spinningmagnets said:
high voltage has its place, but not near the masses of idiots!
I am offended that you would talk about me like this in a public forum, how dare you! (*begins crying like a 13-year old bchild)
He's just jealous of what high voltage you really are.
The RAF's Spitfire and Hurricane have one thing in common with racing: Colin Chapman, who was already racing while in uniform. I suppose the two planes were a bad influence on him, the man known for saying "Add lightness." But there's more to consider in comparing the Hurricane to the Sptifire.
The Spitfire was planned as a 'Home Guard' aircraft, following the prewar theory of the 'Pursuit' aircraft, hoping to defy the preward logic of "The Bomber will always get through." It was light, short ranged, given largely to aerobatic combat. In 'Fight for the Sky' the legendary legless fighter pilot Douglas Bader referred to the Hurricane as the more stable, therefore more accurate, gun platform. The Japanese built the A6m Reisen along the same theory as the Spitfire, resulting in an even less stable platform. The Hurricane's was also the better armored plane, making it more suitable to attack a target that could fire back. This, as well as being the more suitable cross country attack plane, is what led to the Hurricane shooting down more planes even though the Spitfire outnumbered it 3-2. The Spitfire may have been more exciting, but the Hurricane was more stalwart.
So Colin Chapman left the RAF and took up building his 3rd race car, the 1st he completed before enlisting. One thing you could depend on with a Lotus. It would be light. It would also be uncomfortable, he was said to remark that if the cockpit wasn't too tight it was too large. So questions lingered over the death of his best friend, Jimmy Clark, in a Lotus. The Italian government threatened legal action when Jochen Rindt died in a Lotus at Monza. Then came the death of Ronnie Peterson in the wreck of his backup car, the last years' design Lotus 77. He would remark that if there had been a newer Lotus 78 available as the backup car Peterson may have survived the accident. One lesson racing is always teaching is about safety.
So one lesson to learn is not to be addicted to lightness. Another light car, the venerable F5000 Lola T330 series, was considered a potential inexpensive replacement for the Indycars in the 70's Mario Andretti, who'd raced the T330's, expressed his doubts but agreed to run a mock 500 mile race at Indy. The chassis broke under the strain of the higher speeds of ovaltrack racing, considering that in roadracing the car spent much of the race under 100mph and was rarely if ever on banked turns so such light construction wasn't nearly so challenged. A morphed reconstruction of the T330's succeeded in the more physically demanding reboot of the CanAm series that had allowed new structural support to be added.
Just a thought that there's plenty of racing out there in cars much heavier than the current Formula E. So a bigger car with more batteries and a more powerful motor has great potential to excite the fans as it goes faster and farther than the Formula E does, without ever switching cars. I'd still rather see a pitstop to swap batteries than the driver jumping out of one car and into another.
Oh, don't forget, the first year of hybrids in the Grand Prix a crewman was electrocuted on pit row. No battery swap involved. No such thing as perfectly safe in this world.
