Can you drive an F1 car on the ceiling?

DJCruicky

DJCruicky

Registered
I’ve known for a while that an F1 car can produce so much downforce that you could drive it on the ceiling.

Never been tested in real life, I guess that would be just too dangerous to try, but I’m very curious whether it’s possible in rFactor2? How good are rF2 physics? Can it be done?

There are not any tracks to test this theory. So here is my request to any budding track maker. Want to have a go at making one? Want to give it a try? Maybe make one very very long wide tunnel, a perfect tube in shape, no bumps. Does not have to be very graphical or anything. Have top half different colour to the bottom half so you know what way is up and down. Up for the challenge?
Should be interesting to try.

Big test to RF2’s physics and aerodynamics.

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A big thank you to Johannes Rojola for taking it on himself to make this test track. See post 63 . Big thank you and Rep to him.
Download link https://www.mediafire.com/file/qpii36khw96lh12/Stuntworld.rfcmp
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DJC
 
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Phew...when I was a kid, at the 60s, my father used to take me at the barrel.
The barrel was a true wooden barrel, but 6 or 7? meters long and 5? meters high.
There, some young guys took their (basic) motorcycles to the top of the barrel and down again, for quite some time, truly scaring the s**t out of me.

Hey, F1 can do better than this?
 
Well that is centripetal force holding the bikes to the wall instead of downforce. Yeah, that would be scary to watch.
 
The scary thing was the vibration from the wooden barrel (which you could actually FEEL) and the vibration of the excaust of the bikes!!!
 
1959nikos said:
Phew...when I was a kid, at the 60s, my father used to take me at the barrel.
The barrel was a true wooden barrel, but 6 or 7? meters long and 5? meters high.
There, some young guys took their (basic) motorcycles to the top of the barrel and down again, for quite some time, truly scaring the s**t out of me.

Hey, F1 can do better than this?
Click to expand...

nikos i feel for you man.
 
LionDrome.jpg
 
I would try with my road car and put a couple of DIY F1 wings on it, only thing holding me back is that all our tunnels have stupid signs on the roof. :D
 
In reality I think its no more then just a theory because the car wouldn't operate inverted too well unless modified in order to work that way, I think its the same with many planes that need some modifications to actually fly for an extended time inverted. Seeing most military jets and stunt planes can do it though it shouldn't be all that hard to do. You just need a trained monkey in the cockpit and a suitable tunnel to do a real test :D

It would be very interesting to see this done in RF2 because if the aero forces are modeled in a realistic way it should theoretically be possible but we dont know if the sim will fail once inverted as it most likely never was intended to do this. If aero modeling in game is only really adding extra grip to the sim and not pushing the car down to the road then the sim car will not stay on the tunnel roof. I have no idea of how the aero physics are actually applied in game so this would be an interesting test to see if aero is a canned effect or actually simulating the downforce on the car.

Has anyone ever built a loop circuit, this uses a different force but has been proven possible in many things from skateboards to full sized cars like here in 2009 in what looks almost like a clio.



And here a more recent double loop.



For a sim test you could build a very long straight track that at a few kms down will start to bank gradually until the road itself is fully inverted. The more gradual the banking is the more stable the car should remain and at 300kmh with full down-force if the aero is modeled in a realistic way this should be quite easy to perform.

At the speed the car should theoretically be able to drive upside down it should be able to drive on a wall banked at any angle getting towards a full 180 degree inverted mode if it will be able to drive inverted.

If it works it would be a cool thing for someone to make such a fantasy track with this included in the main straight.
 
martymoose said:
In reality I think its no more then just a theory because the car wouldn't operate inverted too well unless modified in order to work that way, I think its the same with many planes that need some modifications to actually fly for an extended time inverted.
Click to expand...

When I think about it, I think you got this point a bit wrong..... An airplane generates lift away from the earth. If you invert it, it would generate lift towards the earth, unless properly modified, or at an certain angle I suppose.

A (f1) car however, generates downforce which pulls it against the 'floor'. If upside down the wings still generate downforce against the 'floor' although in that case that is the ceiling ;)

Only thing I can imagine that MIGHT have to be modified is the interior: I have no idea how the fluids in the car would react when upside down, if they can't get where the're supposed to go, then you obviously might end up with a problem in the end as well. (If this was your point anyway, then disregard this post, but I think you were talking about aerodynamics ;) )
 
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