This was published 5 months ago
Opinion
The sound of silence is the future of motor racing
Peter FitzSimons
Columnist and authorWhat happens to the world of motor-racing when far-and-away the fastest cars don’t have traditional motors any more?
What happens in the age of electric cars, when it means that – by definition – every car that still has a carburettor and pistons is no more than a jumped-up vintage car?
Oh, stop it.
I have already written the story of my own epiphany, about six years ago, when in my own just delivered electric car I found myself coming off the lights after the Spit Bridge heading behind a bloke in a Maserati, endlessly going vroom-VROOM like he was in pole position at Le Mans.
“You poor bastard,” I thought, realising how much everything had changed in my previous perception of cars like that. “If it came to it, I could blow your doors off with the acceleration of this thing, and do it silently.”
And I really could have. Me, Johnny Dickhead, with no racing experience, no motoring acumen, could have left his Maserati puffing billy for dead, simply for having an electric car.
The electric Ford Supervan 4.2 set a new track record at Bathrust this week.Credit: Getty
Stop it, I said!
I asked my brother the engineer to explain to me, how it can be so, using no big words like “marmalade jam” or “corrugated iron”. The guts of it is that an electric motor has maximum pulling power – which translates to maximum acceleration – when the motor first starts to turn at minimal revolutions, whereas an internal combustion engine using petrol has to build up to very high revolutions to get to maximum pulling power. Thus while traditionally powered vehicles are building up to high revs, the electric-powered vehicle steals a march on them and leaves them eating dust.
(And that stunning acceleration is dangerous, by the way. All electric cars should come with a warning: “Inside every sober-suited man with a new electric car is an 18-year-old hoon trying to get out. Control him. Settle down, dickhead.”)
At this point, I repeat, we must pause to allow the shrieks from motoring enthusiasts to also settle down. It might be hard. For what happens to “rev-heads” when the very concept of “revs” – revolutions – is as antiquated as the whole idea of an engine in the first place.
The Ford Supervan 4.2 in action at Bathurst.Credit: Getty
And many will fail to accept that an electric car can be faster in the first place.
But how funny they should say that.
For just this week, something called the Ford SuperVan 4.2 – which to my eyes looks a souped-up version of what they deliver couches with – set the official lap record at Mount Panorama with a lap time over the six kilometres of, wait for it, 1 minute, 56.3247 seconds.
By way of comparison, the fastest V8 Supercars lap last weekend – using petrol engines, of course – was 2min, 5.322s, set by Broc Feeney. Get it? The bloke delivering the couches has a vehicle that can beat a V8 Supercar, whatever that is, by nearly 10 seconds on one lap. If they were to race, over just 15 laps or so, the couch deliverer would lap the Supercar!
And course the same thing is happening across the racing world, with something called “Gen3 Formula E” recently gaining in such popularity that some are openly predicting the inevitable that it will take over from Formula 1.
I know nothing of racing, but how could it not?
Right now, the Formula 1 cars are still faster with a record top speed of 231.4mph, while the fastest Formula E cars are about 200 mph. And there is also the issue of the Formula E cars needing to be recharged after a certain distance. But so quickly are E cars developing that Formula E Envision racing managing director Sylvain Filippi recently predicted in Forbes magazine that, as the headline read, “Formula 1 Could Be All-Electric By 2035, Says Formula E Team Boss.”
His point was that when Generation 1 electric car racing began in 2014, it was simply to “demonstrate that electric racing was viable”. That done, Gen 2 had double the energy stored in the battery, and was much more efficient.
“We had pretty much doubled the amount of energy stored in the battery,” Filippi said. “The car was faster and had much longer range because now we could do the whole race with one car.”
And now they are up to “Gen3 Formula E car”, which takes it all to a whole new level.
Yes, I am a bit vague on exactly how, because it reads to me like racing gibberish, which does not interest me. But the fact that electric technology is taking over from engine technology is as obvious as the fact that the former must inevitably triumph.
“Synthetic fuels will take [Formula 1] to 2030,” Filippi told Forbes. “But for us that is a long way in the future. By then it will be on the borderline for Formula E’s performance matching Formula 1. But by 2035 you can start to envisage an electric car that will be easily as fast as a Formula 1 car. Then it’s about lap times.”
The gap between Formula E vehicles and their Formula 1 counterparts is closing.Credit: Getty
Thanks, Boss. That’ll do.
Of course, the Formula 1 mob don’t agree and CEO Stefano Domenicali has insisted in the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore that his sport “will never go electric”.
What else could he say, under the circumstances?
For me, motor racing will go the way of the gramophone. There will inevitably still be purists who say that the only true way to listen to music is with a record player, and good luck to them. But the mob will move on with the technology.
Quite what happens to Bathurst, Le Mans, the Indie 500 and all the rest, I have no clue as to specifics.
But ultimately they will be electric too. Ask the bloke in the couch van, who just set the record at Mount Panorama.
You heard it here first.
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