Lotus is building soapbox racers

[Equinox]

Lotus To Dominate Soapbox Racing

Yes, you read that right. The same company that builds the oft-touted Elise and Exige road- and track-going four-wheeled weapons is going after an entirely new kind of challenge; soapbox racing. Generally considered a field dominated by children in homemade gravity-fueled contraptions, Lotus’ streamlined 119c soapbox car is unlike any other we’ve seen.
Constructed from carbon fibre and designed in a wind tunnel, the 119c is vastly more advanced than the car you and your dad built out of spare lumber. Already a record holder, the diminutive monocoque takes Lotus’ longtime motto of "performance through light weight" to a completely new level. Successor to the original "Roadster" Lotus soapbox car, the enclosed 119c uses such technology as movable tungsten ballast and small 20-inch wheels mounted on ultra-low friction bearings to gain a competitive edge over it’s competitors from the likes of Lola, Ford, and various academic institutions.

Having already proved itself at the 2004 Goodwood Festival of Speed’s soapbox derby, the 119c has established itself as the "car" to beat. At that race, 24-year old Paul Adams absolutely demolished the competition, besting the previous track record (set by none other than fellow supercar builder McLaren) by over a second and besting all comers in that particular event by nearly eight full seconds.
But that race is no more; Goodwood’s Festival of Speed has apparently become too mainstream to play host to such an event, choosing rather to appease the crowds’ need for speed by exhibiting even more powered cars. Thus, the little gravity racer from Hethel has had to look elsewhere for competition, and is set to make its second competitive appearance at the Brooklands Museum Soapbox Derby.
A new event, the Brooklands derby ran its first race last year, and as such Lotus has also looked at entering the Extreme Gravity Racing series in the U.S., but hasn’t laid out any plans to actually enter that series yet. Once again Paul Adams will be piloting the craft after a two-year break from the track. That hasn’t seemed to have shaken his confidence, saying "I am really excited to be able to race at such a historic circuit and be reunited again with past competitors, which will certainly make for some good and fun racing. We will be shaking down the car on the Hethel Test Track, so that I can familiarize myself once again with the controls, oil the nuts and bolts and blow off the cobwebs!"

The Brooklands course will involve having the cars run from the top of the circuit’s test hill, through the exciting banked section before finishing on the aptly named Finish Straight. Currently, the course record is held by Lola, which descended the embankment in 71.8 seconds. Competitors are expected to reach a top speed of 56 kilometers per hour (35 miles per hour).



http://news.en.autos.sympatico.msn.c...umentid=660518

[Stalfoe]

Where have I read the exact same thing......

[Equinox]

ummm... i have no idea!

[Bob]

thats not makig any sense to me
-heavier things go down hill faster because the force of air resistance on them is the same, but they have lower deceleration because they have more mass
-larger wheels mean less rpm, therefore the bearings travel less distance, the force of friction is the same, but the distance is less, and so the energy lost is also less

so why make it out of cf?

[taz_rocks_miami]

Isn't it one of the rules of soap box racing that the car should be home made?

[BlueSubaruSTi]

thats not makig any sense to me
-heavier things go down hill faster because the force of air resistance on them is the same, but they have lower deceleration because they have more mass
-larger wheels mean less rpm, therefore the bearings travel less distance, the force of friction is the same, but the distance is less, and so the energy lost is also less

so why make it out of cf?

I have no idea either.

[2ndclasscitizen]

I thought a soapbox racer was just a billy cart for racing down a hill with gravity

[:Exige:]

Lotus have been making soap-box racers for many years. They used to race them at Goodwood Festival of Speed before the Soapbox Challenege was replaced by rally cars. That article is wrong in the sense that they seem to believe soap box racing still happens at Goodwood ... which it doesn't.

They're not producing this car for other people. They're using the same soapbox they've been using for the past few years. They have been racing at Brooklands ever since Goodwood stopped doing soapbox racing; the whole thing about saying Goodwood is mainstream is complete and utter bullsh*t made up by MSN. There is NO NEWS HERE. MSN obviously had nothing better to make old, old news seem new.

Lamest newsmongering EVER.

Also making it out of carbon fibre makes the structure more rigid and allows them to more precisely calibrate the ballast. But anyway, with carbon fibre it is heavy and aerodynamic enough, and there is little need for any ballast anyway.

larger wheels mean less rpm, therefore the bearings travel less distance, the force of friction is the same, but the distance is less, and so the energy lost is also less

Soapbox racers don't have gearboxes and thus a bigger wheel is needed because if you have a small wheel, the wheel will rotate at a high-rpm which is quite dangerous, considering the wheel is 'freewheeling' And as for the bearings; low friction bearings are ones that use certain materials and lubrication. But you rightly said, with the bigger wheels the bearings take less of a pounding and there is little friction there.

[Coventrysucks]

thats not makig any sense to me
-heavier things go down hill faster because the force of air resistance on them is the same, but they have lower deceleration because they have more mass

Heavier objects exert a greater force on the ground, therefore experience more Rolling resistance

R=KrG

Where Kr is the coefficient of friction, and G is the weight of the vehicle.

At speeds less than 60mph, resistance caused by drag will be very little, and what little there is is eliminated by the streamlined shape, so the next thing to eliminate is the rolling resistance, and since you can't change the road surface, the only thing you can change is the weight, which needs to be as little as possible.

[BjD]

I was part of the team that designed the new Vauxhall soapbox, which made its debut at this years Brooklands race (even though its not finished yet!). I was there for the second time at Brooklands, always a fantastic event, even if I always get sunburnt. Always some nice cars to look at besides the soapboxes too.

Don't know when that article was written, but Lotus now have the lap record (can't really call it a lap though... ) at Brooklands of 67.7. The 119c is a very nice piece of kit, the car is literally built around the driver to give a very low frontal area, doesn't look very comfortable though.

Its not all CF either, there is a spaceframe of sorts in there (made of alu IIRC) to give the regulation roll hoops.

Soapboxing is all about mass, you want as much as possible, its the only source of power. Making it out of nice light materials like Lotus have means you can add ballast where needed to balance the car.

[NSXType-R]

Yes, Lotus made soapbox racers. Popular Science had an article on it once. They raced soapboxes at Laguna Seca on that famous corkscrew. Nissan had a soapbox too, if I'm correct.

[:Exige:]

Bentley made a quite nice looking soap-box racer.

[BjD]

Bentley made a quite nice looking soap-box racer.

Indeed they did, in fact I'm pretty sure it was faster than Lotus down the GoodWood hill during a practise session.