thank you fast man , i would love to be make the trip, i would learn so much
do you have any feelings toward my statement about the drag vehicles?
or the aerodynamics vs horsepower on how they each have their way of overcoming resistance and friction (2 wheels aerodynamic efficiency 4 wheels ability to handle more force/power) or is it kind of like using a saw to cut cement blocks or a jackhammer to break the same cement apart, ending in the same result ?
would you say they have equal value when it comes to top speed , or is one more important than the other when you take these key elements
Taper41,
Hotrod made a few important points in his post.... areodynamics in drag racing - especially when stock bodied cars began going faster than, say, 150 mph (I am thinking PRO Stock here) in the 1970s, the auto manufacturers were building cars for improved fuel economy and two ways of achieving that was by building the cars both smaller and "slipperier"... The PRO Stock people (and most other drag racers) were constantly using ever newer body designs for the cars they were running - and the speeds increased along with their doing so (although, in the specific case of PRO Stock, there were, I believe, rule changes with regard to minimum weight and increased engine sizes) ... other factors did come into play as well - things such as improved traction tires, "launch" theory, transmissions, larger airflow cylinder heads etc.
Okay, now, in the case of dragsters one has to look back at the perennially competitive cars in the 1960s and 1970s.... the classic "rail job" look of the "slingshot" dragsters of the early years of drag racing was constantly being updated - most noticeably by building full bodies over the frame rails ahead of the engine and applying aerodynamic tricks to bodywork around the cockpit.
With the advent of the rear-engined dragster in the early 1970s, new aerodynamics came into being ... one thing that helped the rear -engined cars (nearly immediately) achieve quicker ets and terminal speeds was with the air being more effectively displaced by the cowling around the driver who was then ahead of the engine, an aerodynamic advantage that was soon capitalized upon by pretty well ALL top fuel and faster dragster builders came to be.....
This spawned a brief era where fully streamlined dragsters were seriously experimented with.... several met with ignominious ends and none that I recall worked out as the builders had hoped.... Don Garlits (and his cadre of assistants), of course was one of the biggest innovators of the era... going so far as to contract a renowned (amongst land speed racers, anyway) streamliner body builder named Jocko Johnson to design and build at least one (if not more) full bodies for his experimentation.
To this day, dragsters ARE using many aerodynamic tricks in order to continue to go quicker/faster - i.e. wings (front and rear) - the purpose of which is to increase downforce as the cars' speeds increase during their runs - and is, by definition, NOT increasing the aerodynamic advantage of the car but using that laminar airflow to achieve a "competing", if you will, objective, namely, increased traction.... air deflectors ahead of the WIDE rear tires etc... (both itemized items being part of the "trade-off" that occurs in order to achieve the end objective)
.... about your analogy regarding using a saw to cut up bricks or a jackhammer to break them.... both methods will get you smaller pieces of bricks... if, however, the object is to have smaller, re-usable pieces of bricks to be cemented in to corners or for a special "bricking" application, rather than a heap of rubble to be used as "landfill" in a boggy area on your property, the two methods of making smaller pieces of bricks are not going be interchangeable.
