what is more important to drag racing horsepower or torque
There are a lot of things to consider in motor racing, and two common concepts yous volition come across are horsepower and torque. The first of which is usually given as a specification of the car, just torque less and then. And then, which is more of import for racing, horsepower or torque?
Torque is more than of import than horsepower for racing, equally torque is disquisitional for acceleration. Races are won by accelerating and decelerating most efficiently, non simply by having the highest superlative speed. Drivers should pay attention to torque and horsepower curves to understand when to shift gears.
Torque and horsepower are in fact directly related to each other. We will explain how they are related, how they can be measured, and what these measurements tin can tell you about the car you lot are driving.
What Is Horsepower?
What Is Piece of work?
Before nosotros consider why each of these concepts are of import for racing, nosotros need to define a few basic physical concepts starting time. The get-go of these is called work. Work is basically the result of a forcefulness interim over a distance. If you lot push something, say a wheelbarrow, across your garden, you are doing work. The work you have washed is equal to the force you practical multiplied past the distance.
Work = Strength x Distance
Work is often measured in foot-pounds, or ft-lbs, but is sometimes measured in joules (J) or Newton-meters (Nm). How quickly this piece of work is done is what nosotros call horsepower in a car. This was first measured past a Scottish inventor called James Watt (the namesake of the mutual Watt measurement of power), when he was observing horses pull weight upwards a cliff using rope and a pulley.
First Measurement Of Horsepower
He found that the horses (actually ponies, which he and then deemed for past doing some basic calculations) could pull 330lbs of weight 100ft in ane minute. This he designated to exist 1 horsepower. This can likewise be written equally 33,000lbs over a distance of 1 foot in ane minute, which is the way that horsepower is oftentimes equated at present. It could likewise exist 1lb 33,000ft in one minute, but this is far less practical.
Thus, horsepower was defined to be how speedily a sure corporeality of work could be washed. As piece of work was a measure of forcefulness multiplied by distance, this was effectively how far the equus caballus moved the weight. By timing this and finding the distance it could move in one minute, James Watt standardised horsepower, and this has been used as a measurement for the power of motor vehicles always since.
Cars volition take a quoted value for horsepower (HP) or brake horsepower (BHP). BHP is the power of the engine without accounting for any possible power losses. These are not that important for this article, simply the subtle deviation is that HP accounts for these losses and may be viewed every bit a more than accurate representation of the car'south real power. Thus, the HP value will be slightly lower than the BHP.
An Example
The horsepower of the machine is essentially a measurement of how fast the engine can move the car forwards. A Bugatti Veyron may accept 1000HP, and it can accomplish a elevation speed of 250mph (400kmph). Withal, it weighs around ii tons. An F1 automobile might also have 1000HP but have a lower top speed of around 230mph (370kmph). However, it weighs less than half of the Veyron.
While the Veyron might take 7 seconds to reach 200kmph, F1 cars have been recorded to practice it in equally lilliputian as 4.5s. Thus, horsepower doesn't always mean a massive top speed (although 230mph is notwithstanding hugely fast), but instead information technology measures how speedily the engine can accelerate the weight of the auto. Although the Bugatti has the same HP, it weighs a lot more and this is reflected in the acceleration time.
Other Things To Consider
Horsepower cannot be taken as a uncomplicated value for the acceleration however, as there are far more factors in play. Obviously, in that location is the weight of the machine to consider, only besides the effects of downforce and aerodynamics. These are peculiarly of import in F1 cars, and information technology shows that horsepower is not everything when it comes to speed. Only we will look at that in more than detail in the last section.
What Is Torque?
A Simple Definition
Torque is a measure out of the force required to motion an object around its axis. This results in something called athwart dispatch, which is essentially what makes something rotate. In the case of a machine, it is the creepo shaft in the engine, which is turning, and the force acting on it is coming from the piston above it moving upwardly and down. The piston pushes down on it with a specific force.
The greater the amount of torque, i.east. the faster the crank shaft tin can spin, the greater the power of the crank shaft to perform work. This tin be idea of more broadly, with all of the pistons considered, as the capacity of the engine to do piece of work. Horsepower is linked to the torque of the engine, via a simple equation that shows horsepower as the rate of applying torque – or completing piece of work.
HP = (Torque 10 RPM of the engine)/5252
The Constant
This last number (5252) is known as a constant, and it is used to let the units of RPM and torque to work and cancel in a certain way when combined. This makes the value of horsepower obtained a much easier number to work with, and equally long as you use the same constant for every calculation, you are not changing the math in a different way for any one adding, giving you consistency in your results.
Although this might seem confusing, substantially what this shows is that horsepower is a measure of the corporeality of piece of work that can exist done at sure engine RPMs with certain values of torque. So at present that we know what each of these values are, which ane is more important for racing – torque or horsepower?
Is Torque Or Horsepower More than Important for Racing?
Cars will have quoted peak torque and horsepower ratings, and these are the accented maximums that the motorcar can achieve, and only at certain RPMs.
The Importance Of RPM
The RPM is how fast the engine is spinning the crankshaft, and it accounts for the classic revving sound that is associated with race cars – and indeed non-race cars too. This dependence on RPM is why information technology is a key component of the horsepower equation. The torque doesn't depend on the RPM, equally it is a measure of the force interim on the crankshaft itself, only horsepower does depend on it.
This is why you will advance the machine very quickly at lower RPMs, simply equally you achieve the higher RPMs, and especially the redline of the car, yous need to shift up a gear in order to maintain acceleration. This is because the machine has a lot of torque at these lower gear ratios, and then as the RPM increases it begins to run out of torque, and thus you brainstorm to struggle to accelerate.
Shifting Gears
When you shift up a gear, the ratio changes and the revs are brought back downward, allowing you to make use of the torque in one case again. This cycle repeats as yous change gears. You will have an optimum torque value at a sure RPM, and this will exist different for each car. You will too accept an optimum "power band", that is the rev range where the car generates the most power.
This is why you lot will often run across race car drivers push button the cars much closer to the redline of the tachometer than y'all would in your machine, as y'all are much less concerned most the power of the car when driving below the speed limit. What they are doing is getting the accented maximum corporeality of power out of the car, but is this more important than torque?
Acceleration
On a racetrack, acceleration is often more important than superlative speed. This is because the rail volition accept corners and turns that will crave the driver to slow down and and then speed up again. Rarely on an F1 rails will a car drive at its top speed, and even on most NASCAR tracks the driver needs to elevator off the gas at some point, before putting his human foot down once again.
Torque Is More Important Than Horsepower
And so, it is articulate that acceleration is vital. As horsepower is a measure of how fast the torque can be practical, it is correlated to acceleration. This often makes horsepower a much more than commonly quoted statistic for race machine drivers. However, if the car cannot put that torque to use very apace then it won't help the driver very much.
Drivers should instead understand the torque curve and horsepower curve of their engine (relative to RPM), in lodge to understand the optimal points to shift gears.
Torque Curves and Horsepower Curves
Torque curves and horsepower curves are essentially graphs of the two variables plotted confronting the RPM of the engine. An example of a torque/horsepower curve can be seen beneath, with dummy data used to show the full general shape that tin can be expected from these curves. The bodily numbers and signal where the two series cross over each other will vary depending on the car.
Instance Of A Torque/Horsepower Curve
Optimal Shift
The optimal RPM range for shifting gears volition be somewhere between the peaks of torque and ability. The specific optimal rev range volition once again vary for each car, with the ideal RPM existence that at which, if changing upwardly a gear, y'all will be able to evangelize more torque to the wheels at the college gear than in the lower gear.
Think, torque is related to acceleration, and the more torque delivered to the wheels the faster they can accelerate. For example, imagine you are in 3rd gear at 7000 revs, and going by the graph above experiencing around 100 lbft of torque. You are at present looking to shift up but are unsure if now is the right fourth dimension.
Less Torque
If you were to shift up to fourth gear, and your revs dropped to 2000, and so y'all would exist dropping downwardly to around eighty lbft of torque, much less than 100 lbft. Thus, shifting down would reduce the corporeality of torque at the wheels, and thus upshot in less dispatch.
More Torque
If, on the other hand, you shifted up and the revs only dropped to 4000, then you would be going to around 120 lbft of torque instead. This is greater than the 100 lbft you were experiencing in the lower gear at higher revs, and thus this would exist an ideal shifting betoken. Note that these numbers are completely made upward, merely the idea even so stands true.
Now, in order to get these optimum shifting ranges, a lot of data is needed. Going past feel will get yous where you lot need to be almost of the time, just if y'all want to make information technology an exact science then you lot need more data, including real torque/RPM curves, the gear ratios of your auto, tyre sizes and the terminal bulldoze ratio.
A Lot Of Data
All of this information is quite hard to deal with if you are not experienced, and that is why qualified racing engineers work with top motorsport teams to assist train the drivers to get the virtually out of their car. A lot of it is done past computers, but the engineers are the ones that program the computers and translate this into useful data for the driver.
Final Thoughts
Horsepower and torque are two physical concepts that are oftentimes dislocated with each other, and torque is unremarkably much less well-understood. They are both vital to the performance of the motorcar, even so horsepower is the more unremarkably quoted mensurate. Drivers should analyse both the torque and horsepower curves to fully understand the acceleration of the auto, and the optimal moments to shift gears.
Source: https://flowracers.com/blog/horsepower-vs-torque-for-racing/#:~:text=Torque%20is%20more%20important%20than,understand%20when%20to%20shift%20gears.
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