I watched the CCWS race at the Gilles Villeneuve circuit last night; pretty interesting race overall. Firstly, the fact that it was on the F1 track gave me a great opportunity to answer the Champ Car vs Formula 1 questions people were asking a little while ago. 2004 Pole Position Times at Gilles Villeneuve circuit, Montreal, Canada: Formula 1: 1:12's (Ralf Schumacher) CCWS: 1:19's (Sebastein Bourdais) So over a 7 second difference! Also the fastest race lap during the Champ Car race was in the 1:21's, compared with 1:13's for Formula 1 - over a 9 second difference. Another thing, bad luck for Bourdais. He was really pissed immediately after the incident! To whoever saw this race, who did you think was at fault? And lastly, that Bridgestone Passion For Excellence segment was interesting when they compared the F1 and Champ car rear tyres; I had no idea the champ car rears were so big!
I saw the incident on the highlight reel, and thought Bourdais was being overly ambitious with his attempt to go wide , on the outside, into the hairpin. Then again, what comes around, goes around - maybe he got sorted for punting Martin Short in the Rollcentre car @ LeMans, subsequentilly putting Short into the wall at 140+ on account of a broken suspension arm thanks to Bourdais rude punt (Bourdais was 4 laps down to the Rollcentre car!)
un like F1, champ cars dont use traction control or power steering(not 100 %positve on the steering part). im sure this has huge effect on their times.
Both were at fault, but Bourdais was really stupid to not let Almondingleball$ just run off with it and head to the pits.
You're correct about the steering. F1 has power steering, CCWS doesn't. F1 also has way more aero, is lighter and has over 100 extra horsepower.
Don't forget...you take away those stupid 4 groove F1 tires and the gap is 11-12 seconds faster. Mansell once said something in an interview that driving the Newman Hass CART car was like driving an F1 car on half it's cylinders with no brakes. A Champ car is much less responsive. It has pretty bad turbo lag and the brakes are cast iron instead of carbon. I seem to recall that a Champ car is at least 200 pounds heavier. Suspension technology is also behind an F1 car. You can really slide a Champ car (especially without traction control) unlike an F1 car which generates huge downforce. A Champ car is much more forgiving. Scott Dixon said that driving an F1 car seemed like it was much faster, but he also said the F1 tires made the car very nervous at the limit. He said the F1 car was on the limit all the time with no room for mistakes. Very different cars. I think that's why some people are able to switch from one to the other and other's can't. Regards, Jon P. Kofod www.flatoutracing.net
Flatout, I think you're right on with all your comments, except the one about the bad turbo lag. I think that's pretty much a thing of the past. They're running a lot lower boost a a lot lower revs than they were before they went to the spec Cosworth. Driver comments from last year mostly said that there was more torque over a greater RPM range than there was before the change. Also, I don't think that suspension design is that far off of F1, but F1 is for sure far more sophisticated aerodynamically.
