The Art Of Race Car Driving
"At the first bend, I had the clear sensation that Tazio had taken it badly and that we would end up in the ditch; I felt myself stiffen as I waited for the crunch. Instead, we found ourselves on the next straight with the car in a perfect position. I looked at him, his rugged face was calm, just as it always was, and certainly not the face of someone who had just escaped a hair-raising spin. I had the same sensation at the second bend. By the fourth or fifth bend I began to understand; in the meantime, I had noticed that throug 959d310j h the entire bend Tazio did not lift his foot from the accelerator, and that, in fact, it was flat on the floor. As bend followed bend, I discovered his secret. Nuvolari entered the bend somewhat earlier than my driver's instinct would have told me to. But he went into the bend in an unusual way: with one movement he aimed the nose of the car at the inside edge, just where the curve itself started. His foot was flat down, and he had obviously changed down to the right gear before going through this fearsome rigmarole. In this way he put the car into a four-wheel drift, making the most of the thrust of the centrifugal force and keeping it on the road with the traction of the driving wheels. Throughout the bend the car shaved the inside edge, and when the bend turned into the straight the car was in the normal position for accelerating down it, with no need for any corrections."
Enzo Ferrari
The Circuit
The Nordschleife, today the only circuit used, contains only 4 km of straight in its 22.18 km, and that straight is interrupted by humpbacked bridges. Apart from the broad Startplatz between the pits and the huge grandstand, is is of normal road width; cars blast down to the wide sweep of the Sudkehre and back behind the pits to the slightly banked Tribunenkehre or Nordkehre where they sweep left and vanish from the grandstand view.
Plunging downhill through the Hatzenbach and Quiddelbacher Höhe in the forested Hocheichen valley, up past the Flugplatz and the Schwedenkreuz, the road writhes its way down to the Fuchsröhre, then up again to Adenauerforst. A series of fast curves then brings cars in a downhill rush to Adenau Gate, then they climb past the cliff-like walls of Bergwerk, plunge through a valley, then steeply uphill to the Karussel. This is the most famous corner on the Ring, turning almost a full-circle, with a concrete-banked ditch on the inside. (Carraciola's mechanic Wilhelm Sebastian is credited with discovering the time-saving method of using the ditch as a banking in 1928-29.)
After the Karussel a long, winding climb follows to the Höhe Acht, then dives down twisting and turning to Brünnchen, through the fast Pfanzgarten bend and on to the Schwalbenschwanz double turn. Up, then, to the Dottinger Höhe and a left-hand sweep onto the home straight with its humpbacked bridges, a last 120 m.p.h. curve under the Autoniusbruche and so back to the start and another tortuous 14.17-mile lap.
From the German Grand Prix by Cyril Posthumus
The Car
"Formula 1 should be the pinnacle of motor racing. It should have the minimum of parameters controlling performance. There are only four parameters which control a racing car; one is the power from the engine; the second is the aerodynamical download it can produce; the third is the amount of grip which can be obtained by the tyres and the fourth is the weight."
Colin Chapman
The evolution of the Grand Prix car since the birth of automobile racing in the last decades of the 19th century has been nothing short of startling yet the Jetsons not withstanding their basic dynamics have remained fairly constant. The main advances having taken place in the areas of aerodynamics, tires, electronics and the use of exotic materials but steering and gear changes and braking still require human intervention to a greater or lesser degree. When most of the driver aids were banned FIA's majordomo, Max Mosley feared of the day when drivers would no longer be required. That computers would control all aspects of the car as it raced around the circuit. Happily that day is not yet here.
The Driver
"The chief qualities of a racing driver are concentration, determination and anticipation ...
A 1929 Austin without brakes develops all three - anticipation rather more than the first two, perhaps."
Graham Hill
The Race
Long avenues of trees, top-heavy with foliage and gaunt in their very nakedness of trunk; a long, never-ending white ribbon, stretching away to the horizon; the holding of a bullet directed to that spot on the sky-line where earth and heaven met; fleeting glimpses of towns and dense masses of people - mad people, insane and reckless, holding themselves in front of the bullet to be ploughed and cut and maimed to extinction, evading the inevitable at the last moment in frantic haste; overpowering relief, as each mass was passed and each chance of catastrophe escaped; and beyond all, the horrible feeling of being hunted. Hundreds of cars behind, of all sizes and powers, and all of them at my heels, travelling over the same road, perhaps faster than I, and all striving to overtake me, pour dust on me, and leave me behind as they sped on to the distant goal of Bordeaux.
Even at the start, the remembrance of the gigantic line of vehicles at Versailles, all awaiting to receive the signal to dash after me, weighed me down and as we sped on and on and they came not, the strain became worse and worse. I have sympathy now with the hunted animal, for once in my life I was hunted; and of all the impressions of that wild rush to Bordeaux that awful feeling of being hunted was the vivid and lasting, and having experienced it, I do not wonder that Number One has seldom won a race.
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