Randall Munroe, best known for his webcomic xkcd, received a question for his "What if?" series. The question from Hunter Freyer was "What if you ignored all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible, What strategy would win?"
The crucial caveat is that the driver has to survive. In that case, the answer is pretty easy. We can use a number of acceleration methods. The possible speed of each is limited by what the human body can withstand, and Munroe explains why. But what's the fun in that? Let's speed up- theoretically. There are ways to go faster than any auto race has ever seen, completing 200 laps in an hour, but they involve great danger and possibly obliteration for the driver. Once Munroe drops the idea of a surviving driver, we can go exponentially faster, and he is glad to explain how we would do that. (via Damn Interesting)
I don't think anyone outside Amarica believes that Nascar has any rules anyway. It just looks lika a free for all that keeps turning left on a glorified Scalextric track.
ReplyDeleteStand on the gas, turn left, and hope you don't get cause or get caught up in one of the inevitable wrecks.
ReplyDeleteNowadays, NASCAR is more demolition derby than racing. Start with 40-odd cars, and generally you're down to fewer than 20 by the time the race ends.
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