#ICYMI - Motorsports – Physics & Technology, with Will Buxton & Mario Andretti

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly race down the track, hairpin through the corner, and kick it into high gear as we explore the science-filled spectacle of auto racing with F1 journalist Will Buxton, physics professor Richard Bower, adventure journalist Jim Clash, and legendary driver Mario Andretti. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/motorsports-physics-technology-with-will-buxton-and-mario-andretti/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:11Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science. Oh, yes, it is. And today, we change gears. We will even reduce our drag. But please don't tell Chuck.

• 0:20Chuck Nice?

  Please don't.

• 0:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Shh. Please don't do it. And whether you do it in Ferrari red or good old mellow yellow, Newton's laws of physics will be strictly observed.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  And please do it in Ferrari red, because we know that mellow yellow is tacky, baby. And bringing us the physics of motorsports is a computational cosmologist, Professor Richard Bauer from Dunham University in England, a man who is always looking up while keeping all four wheels firmly on the track.

• 0:45Gary O'Reilly?

  And another fellow Brit joins us on today's show, Formula One's number one broadcaster. Yes, Will Buxton.

• 0:53Chuck Nice?

  Forward to that.

• 0:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, but before we get to Will, I have to tell you that this show is about speed, but it wouldn't be complete with our good friend, adventure journalist and all-round speed freak from Forbes magazine, Jim Clash. And as a special bonus, we are going to drop in with Super Mario. But he won't be karting, because he is getting ready for the 2018 Indy 500, so no other than the legend known as Mario Andretti will be with us later in the show.

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:23Gary O'Reilly?

  I don't want to miss it, and I'm sure you don't, too. Let's get to our first guest.

• 1:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Fun journalist, broadcaster with NBC, NBCSN, Will Buxton. Hi, Will. How are you, sir?

• 1:34Speaker 02

  I'm good, guys. How are you?

• 1:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, we're all good.

• 1:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:38Gary O'Reilly?

  We're all good. I mean, you've got, what, way over 10 years of experience of hanging around in pit lanes and talking to drivers and engineers and team owners. What a blast.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  It's not bad for a job, if you can call it a job. Yeah, I get to follow my heroes around the world and watch motor racing for a living. It's been an amazing, nearly, actually, nearly 20 years now.

• 2:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  It's the greatest job in the world. It's the greatest sport in the world. You know, it's man, machine in perfect harmony. And a lot of people think it's just a guy sitting in a car.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Driving in circles for two hours on a Sunday afternoon and there is so much more that goes into it. It's a massive team sport from the folks at the factories designing, building the cars to the guys engineering it at the tracks. Strategy, the driver is the very last point. It's the most relevant point. Um, but as any F1 engineer will tell you, the, the, the best thing or the, the most likely thing to, to ruin a car is the soft bit between the engine and the pedals. Um, so that's where it all.

• 2:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, sounds like you've been upset by a driver or two in the past. For me, Formula One sits at almost if not the pinnacle of technological innovation. Stuff that goes on in a Formula One race car, we invariably see on a street car X amount of years later. But we've gone from a cigar shaped thing with a wheel in each corner to stuff now where there's a curse system, there's a DRS system and you're going to be explaining these in a minute, by the way. So make sure you know your stuff.

• 3:17Gary O'Reilly?

  So everything in between, just give us a quick evolution for over the 50 years of Formula One as to where we were and where we are now.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  So I mean, as you say, the sport obviously has evolved with the motor car. Um, Formula One began with just, you know, guys who own cars who wanted to race them traditionally sort of around old airfields. Which was why Silverstone, the very first Grand Prix ever held in 1950 was held on the access roads around Silverstone airfield. Um, where the, the, the Wellington bombers had taken off during the Second World War and a lot of these early tracks were around airfields. It's just, just hobbyists in cars. Um, and over the decades, it, it became this sport that we know today. And as you say, at the leading edge of technology, they started off front engine cars. Um, the big manufacturers, your sort of, you know, your, your Ferraris and your Alfa Romeos.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  But then these little, and your Maseratis, and then these little English teams started turning up. Um, that like to do things a little bit differently. And you started to get the advent then of aerodynamics into Formula One. Uh, you first got the like, your lotuses and your Hoopers, who were the first teams to go mid rear engine cars. And discovered by moving the engine to the rear. It worked out a lot better from a, uh, a weight distribution perspective. And something we were talking about actually before we, we came on air. Um, the most important thing in motor racing is grip. And so the most important factor on a racing car is how do you get the contact patch on the tyres to work for you the best?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  And it's all ultimately about how those tyres are in contact with the road. So the evolution throughout the nineteen sixties, well, late nineteen sixties, certainly when we first saw wings on a car. What it to do with aerodynamics. So people were taking their lead from aeronautics and essentially. Taking what happens on an aeroplane, but flipping it upside down and rather than lift, you want it. And it being pushed down because the more it's pushed down, the more grip you get from the tyres, thus the velocity you got theoretically. Hmm. So you get the advent of aerodynamics and you get this big push throughout the late nineteen sixties. Uh, into the nineteen seventies of aerodynamics. It then starts to get a bit more complicated and you get ground effect, which is when you're not using aerodynamics to push a car on the.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Ground, but you're using venturi tunnels underneath the car and you're using skirts on the side of the car to essentially stuck the car onto the ground. Right. So we then sort of moved on from that. They got banned because it was too dangerous. The cars were going too fast back to aerodynamics again. Um, and that kind of evolution has brought us to where we are today. John Barnard with the first carbon fibre composite monocoque, uh, in the nineteen eighties over at McLaren. Again, John Barnard when he was at Ferrari, brought in semi-automatic gearbox, all of these things which we now take for granted on road cars. Which, you know, flapper paddle gear shift started in, you know, started in Formula One. So all of these things have developed through um to the place that we're in now, but always with

• 6:16Speaker 02

  that one key, that core mindset of how do we make this car go faster around a racetrack?

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  You know, how do we get these guys going around as quick? And also, in the modern era, it's about doing it in a way where you don't use more fuel than your arrival, the less fuel you use, the lighter your car is.

• 6:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Um, you are only allowed three power units now for an entire season, so they've gotta be reliable. Um, and I think one of the most fascinating, I don't know if I should bring this one out now, this is a really great fact, but in the entire history.

• 6:47Chuck Nice?

  Bring it, bring it.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  It means in the entire, I I love this, right? And it's a real shame, we're in this turbo era now, and it's it's much maligned because the engines aren't as loud as they used to be. But as you and I know, no noise, volume, it's wasted energy.

• 7:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  It is, it's wasted energy. So with the um with the with the systems that they've got car on the car at the moment in terms of the sort of the MGUK, AMGUH, which are the motor generator unit for heat and for kinetic energy, which are um harnessing the energy that the engine is producing and replenishing it, putting it back into an energy store. We've gone from a situation where the internal combustion engine had up until four years ago hit a peak, we're talking about traditional internal combustion engine of thirty percent thermal efficiency. Mercedes last year hit fifty percent plus on the dyno of thermal efficiency. So you think about the entire history of the internal combustion engine from dot to four years ago was thirty percent.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  And in the last four years, the technology in Formula One, and particularly at Mercedes, has taken it that extra twenty percent in four years.

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  So it's unbelievable.

• 7:56Chuck Nice?

  It's unbelievable. And you know, but that and that means that we can look for that same type of technological change in the regular cars that we are driving.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:04Chuck Nice?

  Because it's always there, there, Formula One is always the progenitor of technological change in regular stock cars. Uh, so that's it, that's really exciting and important news.

• 8:16Gary O'Reilly?

  See, the windows are going to be made of glass, or possibly we'll develop that one. The wheels, well, they're as round as they can possibly be right now. So the developments are going to come in these other areas. Now, I asked you about the KERS system, K E R S. Please, because when I first heard this, and it's, how many years has it been with us in Formula One?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  A lot, a lot, I like it over ten now, maybe.

• 8:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, and I, was it as amazing to you when you first heard about this as it was to me? Cause it's, when you brake and you talked about the noise and that's, that's an energy leakage. The energy in braking becomes wasted.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 8:52Gary O'Reilly?

  They found a way to now harness that, so please explain that to us.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Essentially, what you're doing is you're harnessing kinetic energy from braking.

• 9:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  You're harnessing the heat energy from the engine and you're putting it all into an energy store. That then also helps to drive the engine. So in effect, it's giving you a boost.

• 9:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's, it's an energy recovery. It's amazing. By the way, by the way, Honda has already introduced that in its regular car models, uh, in its, uh, hybrid models. So only in the hybrid though, where.

• 9:25Gary O'Reilly?

  That button with nitro on it.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  No, that's the, that's the Fast and the Furious Honda. Uh, but no, where you, your braking actually goes back into the battery. Yeah, it's amazing.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  We've talked about the braking and we've talked about, um, you know, sort of the kinetic energy of the braking. But one of the amazing things is, is the heat exchange. Um, and the fact that, you know, the heat coming out of the engine and a lot of that is the noise as well, that excess heat is converted into electrical energy as well. And that is then sent back. So it's everything coming in from, it's kinetic and it's heat. And that's how they've been able to, you know, by taking the heat and turning it into electrical. That's how they've been able to get the thermal efficiency so good on the, on the power unit. And that's, that's the amazing thing.

• 10:07Gary O'Reilly?

  What's next? It's, it is a wow thing, but what's next? What more can you actually do?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  You're gonna love this, right?

• 10:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  If you've, if you've got fuel flow rates that are limited.

• 10:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Okay, so you can't push any fuel into that engine.

• 10:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Well, how do you get more combustible material into that engine to give you a boost?

• 10:27Gary O'Reilly?

  You get that doctor from Back to the Future and his blender.

• 10:30Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. It's called a flux capacitor.

• 10:32Gary O'Reilly?

  That's it.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, unfortunately, um, as, as Doc Brown found out in the nineteen fifties, plutonium's not that readily available, um, to make flux capacitor work. But you do have oil.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  And so what some of the teams reportedly have been doing uh is they found a way to get the oil um uh just just working as a lubricant into the combustion chamber that's giving them extra bang for their buck in qualifying mode and giving them.

• 11:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Do we do we call that sneaky?

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say that sounds really dangerous.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  That is that is the core of Formula One. It is finding loopholes and exploiting them. Almost all of the great innovations in Formula One history have been teams bending the regulations to within an inch, just absolutely taking them and and doing what they can with them. And it's all about loopholes. And then you can never unlearn what you've learned. So the governing body will ban this device and that device. No, we're not we're not having that, but they'll find a way to do it.

• 11:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Awesome.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  They'll find a way to to either get the engine producing more power than it had before by going around the sides. They will find a way to produce more downforce on the car. Oh, you can only have this many wings within this parameter and do this. A couple of years ago, they said, oh, you can only, you know, the floor has to be certain parameters and certain dimensions. You can just have one floor and a diffuser at back. But there was this loophole around the the hole at the back of the car that they put the starter rod in. And a couple of teams turned up at the start of the season and they had developed that part of the car so much that there was a second diffuser on top of it. So they had a double diffuser. And the team that perfected that ultimately went on and won the championship, banned it.

• 12:24Chuck Nice?

  And then it banned it.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  What did they do a couple of years after? Teams discovered a way to push the exhaust pipes towards the diffuser. So the exhaust gases are just pushing on the diffuser, doubling up the efficiency of the diffuser. Oh, we'll ban that. So then they come out the next year and they developed a coander exhaust that essentially does the same thing. They're always figuring out ways to get around the rules. And it goes back all the way, all the way back to the beginnings of the sport in the nineteen fifty's, find a loophole, work around it, innovate.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  Sounds to me like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick would make great F1 uh car people. Ah.

• 13:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Never more than three steps away from a Tom Brady reference. But hey, Will.

• 13:07Gary O'Reilly?

  We have got to take a break. This has been great. For everybody listening, you can't help but feel the enthusiasm and the passion. If you've not discovered Formula One racing, please make an effort to do so. And you might find yourself as enthused as Will Buxton, Formula One's number one broadcaster. And there will be no argument here about that. Will, thank you so much. We are going to take a break. When we come back, we are going to have a professor of physics who lectures on the physics of Formula One. That professor is none other than Richard Bauer from Durham University. Yes, another Brit, no apologies for that either. See you all shortly.

• 13:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. Yes, he is. And today we're exploring the science of motorsport. Joining us now, yes, brum brum, break down, don't do that again. Break down the physics of Formula One is Professor Richard Bauer, Professor of Cosmology at Durham University in England. Works at the Institute for Computational Cosmology, creates virtual universe with world's largest computers. And has lectured on the physics of motorsport. There's plenty more, but we don't have time. Sir, welcome to the show. How are you?

• 14:21Speaker 03

  I'm very good, thank you.

• 14:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Not only are we happy to go fast, but we need to know why and how. And we think you're the man to answer these questions.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Oh, well, great. Let's see what I can do for you.

• 14:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Not every bend, not every curve, corner is the same. Some are flat, some are banked. Is there a definitive equation? Is it something you're going to have to work it out for yourself? Or is there a definite way of which you are? And what forces are in play? Are there forces you have to overcome? Are there forces that you can utilise in terms of the physics when you are cornering?

• 15:02Speaker 03

  So when you're cornering, you've got forces pushing the car down. If the track is banked, then you're pushed down onto the track just by going around the corner. If the camber is adverse, then that's going against you and it makes everything even harder. So so there are forces pushing you down which help, but there's a centripetal force trying to push you off the track. So that's the force you're fighting against to keep going round the corner, accelerating round the corner, keeping as much speed as you possibly can.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  So everything is about getting as much grip on the tarmac as you possibly can.

• 15:50Chuck Nice?

  So can you take that and relate it to torque and how torque actually applies to the car and racing and uh cornering?

• 16:01Speaker 03

  So so that so torque is all about acceleration of the car. You don't really need torque from the engine to go around a corner fast. You can play some tricks to maybe go a little bit faster, but the torque is really what the torque of the engine is what is pushing you down the track to make you go faster. So more torque, faster you accelerate. There's a lot of confusion of the difference between power and torque.

• 16:33Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 16:34Speaker 03

  Really what you care about is the torque, but people often get fixated about how much power does this engine produce? So torque is important, why is the power important? Well, the reason is because you've got gears in the car. So so you can always change your gearing, which changes the amount of torque an engine can produce. So it turns out that what matters ultimately, if you can change the gearing, is the power. Because that tells you how to optimize the gearing to get the maximum force for a particular racetrack.

• 17:13Chuck Nice?

  So what is the most important thing on a race car?

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Aerodynamics.

• 17:19Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 17:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  See, because otherwise you'd be taking off.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  You'd take off, but also, you know, you can use the aerodynamics to push the car onto the track. If you are making X, as if the car was heavier when you're going around the corner, that means you've got more grip, you can go around the corner faster. And then you can shoot down the straight even faster. So it's even more important than the power of the engine.

• 17:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so how, so professor, I need to make it heavier, but I can't increase the weight of the car.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So get the air to push on it harder.

• 17:56Gary O'Reilly?

  So when did we really begin to see this use of airflow? Downforce. Downforce in Formula One.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Well, everyone's been aware for, you know, since even cars in the thirties and forties had streamlining. So you could go through the air and leave a smoother patch of air behind you, have less resistance. But the difference has become that, that in the seventies, people realized that you could use the force to push the car into the ground and that would help it corner. Um, but this kind of went a little bit too far. So if you have loads of power in the engine, you can generate downforce. Uh, you don't really care about how much you're having to drag you're creating for the car,

• 18:49Speaker 03

  how much power you're using to push the car through the air. Much of that power is going into pushing the car on the ground, but it's okay if you can have an engine that's as powerful as you like. Now it's a matter of being really clever. Part of the, the change has been the regulations. So you can't um have very smooth underbodies on the car. You can't have really big wings at the back of the car to push it into the ground. So now you need your computer simulation.

• 19:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Because you, you wanna try and design the airflow around the car. So that it maximizes the downforce, it minimizes the drag.

• 19:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  And and this is all a very subtle combination of things. Um, and a lot has been gained by doing computer simulations of this. Ultimately, you have to go and test the car in a wind tunnel. But you can gain a lot of understanding. So for instance, one of the most important ways to push the car onto the track is actually the air flowing under the car. So there's a very important effect called the ground effect. That if you have the air rushing in through a small gap at the front of the car, leaving smoothly through a large gap at the front of the car. It effectively generates a vacuum under the car.

• 20:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  That sucks it onto the car. And this is great. Okay. Now, the problem is the rule makers have decided this is bad. It's bad because if the car goes over a bump in a corner, suddenly the downforce changes. So physically, putting something at the side of the car to make sure air doesn't come in from the side is a bad idea for safety. And so it's been banned. So but you can achieve the same thing by creating a vortex of air swirling down the side of the car that makes it very hard for air to enter from the side of the car.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Okay, and this gives you a great vacuum underneath, helps push the car down onto the ground. Um, and it, this isn't sensitive to bumps that are in the track. It's just been generated by the front, uh, splitter at the front of the car, the aerodynamics there, setting up the airflow around the side of the car. So this is, you know, big technology now to be able to do that. So you go and look at a Formula One car's uh, front wing, you'll see that it has a very, very complicated shape to try and generate the turbulent flow down the side of the car.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Of course, if you make the air too turbulent, then you create drag and you slow the car down. So it's all very tricky to be able to do this.

• 21:57Gary O'Reilly?

  So Professor, while we play with the airflow and obviously the aerodynamics and design.

• 22:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Is there much room left? Is there anywhere else guys like yourself who love to model these things and and think through where where can we me because now I'm an engineer. Yeah, where can we go? Yeah, where can we go? Where can we go with this?

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Well, so one of the interesting things is how much you can generate out of the the electrical units that are now built into the car. So you can recover a lot of the energy, store it in a battery, use that to propel a car through an electric motor. So that that is very interesting, but I think the teams have now got the hang of that and apparently are very, very efficient. So they're recovering as you brake 90% of the energy to use from the braking to accelerate the car an extra amount as you go down the track. And so maybe

• 23:01Speaker 03

  it's now quite hard to make further gains in that. And really, what everyone needs to work on is to improve the fuel efficiency of their engine, right? Now, that sounds totally boring, right? That's kind of the thing that you're told that you need a little car to drive to work because it'll be more.

• 23:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, do we need our Formula One racing cars to get 50 miles per gallon?

• 23:26Speaker 03

  If you could, you'd hardly need any any petrol on board. You'd save a lot of weight and you'd be able to go around the corner faster.

• 23:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah, so they're in so in so a sarcastic question, that's exactly it.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  There's a logic to this, right?

• 23:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there is. So speaking of that, why not? What? How about no petrol at all? Wouldn't that save an engine weight? Wouldn't that save? I mean, if you could just go totally electric.

• 23:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Your fuel has to come from somewhere else.

• 23:53Chuck Nice?

  Well, your fuel would have to come from a stored battery. So you would use your.

• 23:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Which is weight, therefore size.

• 24:01Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's what I'm saying. If you could, we have a friend of the show, Bill Nye, who says this all the time. If you can create a better battery, you will rule the world.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Well, certainly, that's true, right?

• 24:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Apparently, the limitation on an electric car is the weight of the battery.

• 24:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Right? So that's why I don't see for the foreseeable future the petrol engine going away. But you can imagine the engine getting smaller, the battery part getting bigger, and making even more use of the energy that you can store in the battery.

• 24:38Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  So that you're allowed to start the race by plugging your car in, filling up your battery. But you have some way of keeping going, even if you've used a lot of the power from your battery.

• 24:53Chuck Nice?

  That's really cool, actually. Yeah, that's very cool, because then, I mean, that would add another element to the race. It's just like, you know, it looks like he's running low on battery.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 25:06Chuck Nice?

  All right. Oh, that's great, man.

• 25:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, it's been an absolute...

• 25:09Chuck Nice?

  Professor, you are fascinating!

• 25:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  Fascinating to talk to you, too.

• 25:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, we are going to take another break. Thank you to Professor Richard Bauer there. What an interesting character.

• 25:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I love him.

• 25:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, coming up after the break, we have adventure journalist Jim Clash, our very good friend. And of course, that interview with the legend that is Mario Andretti. Please don't go away, and we'll see you shortly.

• 25:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Norris. And this is Playing with Science, where today we are talking about motorsports.

• 25:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Told you not to do that again. And auto racing. It's all about the four wheels. And joining us is our good friend, adventure journalist, the one, the only, Jim Clash! Thank you, Chuck. Thank you, Gary.

• 26:02Chuck Nice?

  It's always good to be here. Always great to have you here, man.

• 26:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's just do this properly, shall we? A man who has driven 13... One, three, separate cars above 200 miles an hour, including the Bugatti Veyron at 253.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 26:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Should have took the handbrake off, Jim. Graduated from a number of racing schools, including Skip Barber and Mario Andretti, so we're gonna have to talk about that, and Frank Hawley, Drag Racing School. Okay, let's get this straight.

• 26:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:33Gary O'Reilly?

  What has to be the mindset of a person who's about to drive 200 plus miles per hour? I think we've already discussed this in a previous show, but I make no excuse for revisiting this. You drove the Bugatti Veyron at 253 miles an hour, that's...

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's top speed on that car.

• 26:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. You don't just say, "Oh, you know what? See you Monday, we'll take it for a spin." How long did it take you to prepare and what did you have to go through and understand to be able to drive that car at those speeds?

• 27:11Speaker 04

  Well, first of all, I went through a bevy of racing schools, and we can talk about that if you want.

• 27:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, please.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  I had to set up this with the Bugatti people a couple of years in advance. The track we did it on, the Aera Lysine track in northern Germany, is the biggest track in the world, and it's 12 some miles around.

• 27:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Is that because it's got the longest straights?

• 27:31Speaker 04

  Yes, and we needed a long straight to do this. We needed a five mile or six mile long straight to get it up to 253.

• 27:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  But no, you have to prepare. One of the anecdotes I'll share with you is when we were warming up, I was just getting up to speed 180, 200, for the Bugatti isn't all that much. There was a professional race car driver in the passenger seat. When I went to do the 253 mile an hour run, he didn't get in.

• 27:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  And I said...

• 27:59Chuck Nice?

  Well, that inspires confidence, doesn't it? Jim, we call this your death run, and I'm gonna be watching you from the sides.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Sort of, and that made me realise that this is serious business. The other thing that you have to watch out for, even though you're on a straightaway, you've got animals that can come in front of the car, and if that happens, you're toast. A tire could blow. You're pushing everything to the limit when you're going top speed in a car. In a passenger car like that, if it wrecks, you have no chance.

• 28:27Chuck Nice?

  Let's say, Jim, here you are, you're on the straightaway, alright? You see the actual heat of the road as it waverly ascends from the blacktop.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:38Chuck Nice?

  As you look down and the sun is beaming on you and you start your, you start your run. Here you are now, two hundred and twenty, two twenty-five, two thirty, two forty. And then, just out of nowhere, you can see it, it looks like a small rabbit is coming across the blacktop. What do you do?

• 28:59Speaker 04

  You just keep driving. There's nothing you can do at that point. You can't make the car unstable. You have to just drive right through it, no matter what it is.

• 29:06Chuck Nice?

  Oh, sorry, Thumper.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's, he's done.

• 29:09Chuck Nice?

  Street, we're having rabbit for dinner.

• 29:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Maybe not.

• 29:12Speaker 04

  I don't think, I don't think left of it.

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 29:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Can you imagine, you're driving around at two hundred plus miles an hour and you're thinking, did I leave the light in the bedroom on?

• 29:22Speaker 04

  No.

• 29:23Chuck Nice?

  There's no. What are you?

• 29:24Speaker 04

  You're not, you're so.

• 29:24Gary O'Reilly?

  There's no room for any of that.

• 29:26Speaker 04

  You're focused.

• 29:27Gary O'Reilly?

  How dazzled were you when you got out of that car?

• 29:29Speaker 04

  I was ecstatic because I was terrified the rain was gonna cancel the day. That's what I was thinking about more than anything. Is it gonna rain? If it's raining on an oval, you cannot drive.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  I can't. What happens if, right in your run, like, cloud burst, like, you know what I mean? Thunderstorm, boom, do you, what do you do?

• 29:47Speaker 04

  Slow down.

• 29:50Chuck Nice?

  But I'm saying, you, you stop the run, right? Nobody, nobody.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, look, in a real race, uh, race car, like a Formula One car or an Indy car, if you're on a road circuit, you can change the tires and put treaded tires on.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  But if you're on an oval, you have to cancel the, the run to cancel the race.

• 30:04Chuck Nice?

  Speaking of treaded tires, so now, on a race car, you have slicks because that gives you the most ground contact possible.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 30:11Chuck Nice?

  And then you had, used to have something when they used to street race called cheater slicks. And that was almost like they would draw a tread on the tire so the cops wouldn't, so the cops would say you had street legal tires. You know, they would just.

• 30:23Speaker 04

  I've never heard of this, but I'll take you.

• 30:25Chuck Nice?

  No, seriously, look it up, look it up.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  Welcome to Chuck's imagination.

• 30:28Chuck Nice?

  No, seriously. Look it up, they're called cheater slicks, okay, but, okay. But, on a Bugatti, which is a street legal car, what kind of tires are you talking about? Where you can run 253 miles an hour? What kind of tires are you running on?

• 30:42Speaker 04

  They're specially prepared tires, they are treaded tires.

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  They are treaded.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  Uh, and, and again, they've, they've gone through tremendous testing. The problem with, uh, with tires is they go faster and faster, they expand more and more. And, uh, you've gotta, you know.

• 30:55Gary O'Reilly?

  You're gonna, you're gonna build up to the speed, so therefore you're warming those tires up.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 31:00Gary O'Reilly?

  To ultimate.

• 31:01Speaker 04

  Which is what I was do- yeah, which is what I was doing on the runs when, when the guy got in the car with me. Um, not on the final run, he, he wouldn't get in.

• 31:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, well, fair enough. Uh, I'm, I'm just. Were you conscious of the fact? I need to know, is the pressure in the tire correct? Has this, or did you leave that and put your trust and faith and your backside in the hands of the engineers of Bugatti?

• 31:23Speaker 04

  You, you have to, you know, as a journalist, I know that when I go to do one of these extreme adventures, they've prepared everything the best they can. They do not want anything to go wrong.

• 31:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, of course.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Because then the headline is, what were they thinking? Instead of, you know, journalist drives 253 miles an hour. So I, I have to put my trust in the engineers. Um, but, people ask me, what did it feel like at 253? All I remember is coming out of the corner, and I looked at it, and the damn thing was at 180, and then about three seconds later, it was at 200, and I'm like, boy. I looked down, about 10 seconds later, it was 240. I said, that's it, I'm not looking down at this thing anymore.

• 32:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Can't afford to.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  And, and, uh, but, but it felt like I was in a video game ridiculously sped up.

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  It was so quiet in the car. Now, after I did the run, I watched someone else do it. And when the car came by, it was so loud and so scary, I don't think I would have done it had I seen that before I got in the car.

• 32:18Gary O'Reilly?

  See, one of the things you pay for in a Bugatti is soundproofing.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was very quiet in the car, I couldn't believe it.

• 32:23Gary O'Reilly?

  When a car costs that much, it better be quiet.

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  So let's talk about, you did a drag, drag, uh, car too, right?

• 32:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:29Chuck Nice?

  So now, when you look at that, what's the difference? Because that happens in just, like, no time.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  The pros go from 0 to 330 miles an hour in less than four seconds.

• 32:39Chuck Nice?

  Right. So, now, where, what, how fast did you go in the, in the, in the drag car?

• 32:44Speaker 04

  We, we did, uh, we got up to about 160 in 8 point some seconds, but we went 0 to 60 miles an hour in 1.5 seconds. Which is, which is a kick in the, in the pants.

• 32:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 32:54Gary O'Reilly?

  That's the politest way I've heard it put.

• 32:57Chuck Nice?

  What kind of Gs are you pulling? Like, I don't mean the actual number. I mean, what's it feel like? Do you feel the pressure of everything on your body at that time?

• 33:03Speaker 04

  You do, but you've got to, you've got to drive the car so you don't think about it too much. You just automatically drive. But I can tell you, the real pros, they pull six and a half Gs in the middle of the run, and they do negative five Gs when the parachutes come out.

• 33:16Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 33:16Speaker 04

  So 11G difference in a span of a second and a half.

• 33:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Gary O'Reilly?

  What sort of, what sort of size of engine? What sort of power? What sort of torque? Are you exactly behind here? This is, um, this is like a, like two jet engines.

• 33:30Chuck Nice?

  That is two jet engines.

• 33:31Gary O'Reilly?

  In a row.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  We were down at Charlotte for a race a couple of weeks ago, and they put us on the start, the start line, and there were four cars, 11,000 horsepower each, taking off at the same time. And they call it baptism.

• 33:45Gary O'Reilly?

  11,000 horsepower each?

• 33:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, baptism by nitro. Nitromethane is what they run on. We stood there, and the wind that came off and all the pieces of rubber on our faces, uh, the wind, the sound, it was, it was unbelievable. And these guys-

• 33:57Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't sound pleasant, Jim. I'm sorry, it doesn't sound-

• 33:59Speaker 04

  It really wasn't, but you know what? I got, I got baptized by nitro.

• 34:03Chuck Nice?

  You got baptized by nitro?

• 34:05Gary O'Reilly?

  If we-

• 34:05Chuck Nice?

  Hallelujah.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  Hallelujah.

• 34:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Have you done the, a Formula One race experience at all?

• 34:12Speaker 04

  I haven't done Formula One per se, but I did the same kind of thing in the Skip Barber course, where you do a road course.

• 34:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  And so it's very different from oval driving.

• 34:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes. So we've gone from a track with many bends-

• 34:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:26Gary O'Reilly?

  -to an oval track with two.

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Because my Matt is very clever now. And the drag racing with no bends.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 34:33Gary O'Reilly?

  You're an adventure journalist.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Which one gave you the bigger buzz?

• 34:36Speaker 04

  The biggest buzz I got, believe it or not, was driving an Indy car at an average speed of over 200 miles an hour at Texas Motor Speedway.

• 34:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  I really had to drive the car. You have to apex those corners perfectly. Uh, if you get a little bit offline, you're in the wall at 200 miles an hour. That, of all the things I've done, that was my piece de resistance.

• 34:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Nice. Out of all of the racing schools that you, you attended, what was the- Biggest, most important lesson that you would have walked away with?

• 35:05Speaker 04

  Well, Skip Barber taught me how to race road courses, Formula One kind of things. But the Mario Andretti racing experience taught me how to drive ovals. And I took many, many laps at Texas Motor Speedway, doing a lead-follow with a Mini Indy car. And so I was averaging maybe 150, but when I got in the real Indy car, 200. You know, and 200 in the real Indy car actually felt slower than 150 in the Mini Indy car. Yeah, it's all a matter of perception.

• 35:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Because obviously, we tend to incline ourselves towards the science in everything here. But did they burden you with, well, actually, you see this, this is centrifugal, this is centripetal, and the force down and the force up is the...

• 35:45Speaker 04

  Nope.

• 35:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Exactly.

• 35:49Chuck Nice?

  You're not thinking about any of that.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  But, but there is a lot of physics to it, and I know just, you know, I've heard that if you drive an Indy car upside down at 150 miles an hour, you can drive it upside down. Because of the downforce on the wings.

• 36:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 36:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:03Gary O'Reilly?

  That's amazing.

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:06Chuck Nice?

  Insane, man.

• 36:07Speaker 04

  So, do you guys want to know about this ring?

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I, I saw you. What, who is this?

• 36:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  So...

• 36:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Is it kind of looking like a Super Bowl ring?

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  I was about to say, so for those of you who don't have StarTalkAllAccess.com, if you're not a subscriber, where you can't see the video.

• 36:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Get a picture of it and we'll post that up if that helps.

• 36:22Chuck Nice?

  Jim has a ring on his finger and it looks like a Super Bowl ring. It actually looks like a Super Bowl ring, but it clearly is not. And tell us the story behind that now?

• 36:29Speaker 04

  So, once a year, one of your guests, Mario Andretti, takes passengers around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 200 miles an hour in the open two-wheeler. So, you're clicking off three things. You've got Mario Andretti, the greatest driver of the century. You've got 200 miles an hour, and you've got the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Once you're done, they give you this ring.

• 36:50Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  So, so this ring, I wear it once in a while. People do say, oh, is it a Super Bowl ring? It's got 200 miles an hour.

• 36:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Did you tell them you're Tom Brady?

• 36:59Speaker 04

  You know, that, depending upon who... Who asked the question, you gotta be careful with that one.

• 37:05Chuck Nice?

  Steven Wonder asked, just say yes.

• 37:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Aw, bad man. Right, we are going to take a break.

• 37:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, thank you to Jim Clash. It's been, again, it's been an absolute thrill and I say that advisedly.

• 37:18Chuck Nice?

  Glad to have you here, Jim.

• 37:19Gary O'Reilly?

  But we are going to get Mario Andretti with us on the show after the break. The legend, motorsport legend, icon, Carry On sang, all of those plaudits. He will be with us shortly. Do not want to miss it and do not go away.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  And of course, without any further ado, Mario Andretti, one of the greatest drivers of all time. Mario, how are you?

• 37:48Speaker 05

  Great, great. And hi Chuck and Gary. This is Chuck and Gary Show, right?

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  So, um, uh, allow me to do something, Mr. Andretti. I'm going to try.

• 38:02Speaker 05

  Call me Mario.

• 38:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, Mario. I'm sorry. I, it's very difficult for me not to-

• 38:07Speaker 05

  I'm not that old, you know?

• 38:08Chuck Nice?

  I know you're not that old, but you know, it's just a matter of respect. You are still a legend, you know, to be a living legend is a, is a, is a, is a, is a big mantle to wear.

• 38:17Speaker 05

  You're too kind. You're too kind.

• 38:19Chuck Nice?

  So listen, here's what I'm going to try to do. Uh, speaking of living legends, I'm going to try to, in just, if I can, in just 30 seconds, I'm going to try to name as many of your accomplishments as possible. So, uh, don't be embarrassed, but just, I'm just going to try to as quickly as possible in 30 seconds. And I actually have a stopwatch here. So here we go. All right. And I'm going to start, I'm going to start right now. So, four-time IndyCar National Championship, 65, 66, 69, 84, Formula One World Champion, 78, Daytona winner, 67, Indianapolis winner, 500, uh, three-time Indianapolis Pole winner,

• 38:59Chuck Nice?

  Pikes Hill Peak climber winner, three-time, uh, 12-hour Sebring winner, USAC National Dirt Track Champion. I can't believe that. International Race of Champions Champion. Only driver to be named Driver of the Year in three different decades. Named Driver of the Quarter Century, voted by, uh, past drivers of the, oh God, I'm out of time. Okay. So Mario, I'm, I'm out of time and I still have two pages of stuff to read. Uh, how does, how does that make you feel to know that you have been such a critical and instrumental part of this sport?

• 39:37Speaker 05

  Well, I can tell you Chuck, all I know is that I've been blessed because I always set some very ambitious goals for myself and I pursued with, you know, with as much energy as I ever could and love and passion and again, along the way, you have to realize that where I know that I'm so blessed is that I dodged a lot of bullets, you know. I drove in a period, the decades where we were losing four to five drivers a year.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  And many of them, potential future champions, they never were able to realize their dreams and I was one that somehow was able to wiggle through that and I know that, I know how lucky I've been. So, again, it's all about, you know, ambition and just loving beyond the script sure what you're doing and then being proud, you know, of trying to, you know, to get to the best level that you could possibly get. So, again, I know how lucky I've been and then the best part is I'm still living the dream.

• 40:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes, you are, yes, you are indeed. So, what has been the biggest technological advancement that you've been impressed by in auto racing?

• 41:05Speaker 05

  Well, I would say the computer. I mean, we have seen evolution, which is something you would expect over the decades, you know, in chassis dynamics, engine dynamics and then especially in the late seventies, air dynamics where all of a sudden we're using, making use of the air, not just that...

• 41:31Speaker 05

  Surface flow but also under the car, you know, by creating ground effects and so forth, so. But the computer in the mid eighties is when I personally first experienced that with the team in conjunction with Ford. It was the first time, I think, in IndyCar that a car was instrumented so we could relate, give telemetry back. And we were testing at a private testing ground in Romeo, Michigan. And it's amazing how that opened up a whole new dimension of knowledge about what the

• 42:12Speaker 05

  car is doing, deflections and G-forces where and everything, everything that you need to know. Everything that was, excuse me, it was pretty much estimated before. So that was the biggest step forward, I think, as far as advancing the knowledge of what is going on in a race car.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow, cool. So, you know, is, with all the technology now that's in these cars, is racing the perfect balance of the driver and the car and the mechanical team? Or is there a part that is more critical?

• 42:50Speaker 05

  Well, I think, this is a very interesting question, actually, because of the technology that's available and the technology that we're not using only because we want to maintain, put more on us on the, on the human effort, on the human responsibility, not just the driver, but also the mechanics that, that obviously take care of the car during, before and during the race. So the point I'm making is, we could have any kind of system, you know, in a car to be able to have traction control, to have, you know, the power steering, well, stock

• 43:35Speaker 05

  cars have power steering, but in the car we don't. We're more macho than that. And... And you know, a lot of aids is what I'm saying, you know, to facilitate the driving. But because of what the technical committees, you know, in the sanctioning bodies, they're trying to keep the element is more simple and put the owners back and the responsibility on the drivers. And to to keep the sport intact, to keep it so it has the integrity that obviously we need to have. So from that standpoint, like I said, that's still, the human element is still, you know,

• 44:20Speaker 05

  the most important part. And and it's it's actually, it's a constant struggle, you know, to try to to keep that, you know, and to be, to have a balance between the technology and then also, like I said, the fact that I, just as an example, you know, when sometime you come in during a pit stop and you see a mechanic making an adjustment on the front wing, you know, manually.

• 44:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 44:50Speaker 05

  I get, I get emails from geeks all over the, all over the world, say, oh, you know, then the semi schematic about how you could do this electrically, you know, from the steering wheel. We know that, you know, but they know that that's not allowed, you know.

• 45:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:07Speaker 05

  You could do everything from the steering wheel, you know, today. You can make the car talk, you know, but but like I said, you want to put the owners, even on the mechanics, to be able to do it quickly and without wasting time, you know, just while they're changing tires and so on and so forth. So like I said, the the human element is alive and well in our sport regardless of all the technology that's available.

• 45:34Chuck Nice?

  Awesome. That is awesome. So I know that, I don't know if it's once a year, but you know, our friend of the show, Jim Clash, was able to speak to you a little while ago about the fact that you on Memorial Day, you go out and you take a civilian around the track at 200 miles per hour. What's more scary, racing or having somebody else's life in your hands while you're going around that track at that speed?

• 46:07Speaker 05

  That's a good point. Yeah, I really feel the responsibility. By the way, Jim Clash was there this year again, but this is the third year that we've done this, the day after the Indianapolis 500 on a Monday.

• 46:20Chuck Nice?

  Awesome.

• 46:20Speaker 05

  And, yes, and this time he had, you know, his friend Vanessa O'Brien ride with me. And again, I think as accomplished lady as she is, she obviously has been up at the top of K2, you know, it's amazing, you know, that she was impressed with that ride. But, you know, going back to, you know, your question was, yeah, I feel a tremendous responsibility, but I also feel that there's no better way to showcase our sport because it's such a non-participant sport at that level. And you can go to driving school and all of that,

• 47:04Speaker 05

  but they only allow you to drive to the point of your, you know, ability at the time, which, you know, it would take a while to just really bring out these race cars. So I give, you know, pretty much of a 90% ride. I take obviously the car to the very limit. But when you consider, you know, 200 plus miles an hour nowadays, you know, it was almost, you know, 25 years ago was pole position for Indianapolis, you know, type of thing, you know what I mean? So, and you're taking a passenger. So it's a wonderful program and that keeps my adrenaline going too, you know. So it's a beneficiary all the way around.

• 47:47Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 47:48Speaker 05

  I'm loving it. I'm loving it.

• 47:50Chuck Nice?

  That's great. And the last question, Mario. So if there was one thing that you could take from racing today, when you look at the sport, just one thing, whether it's an advancement in tires, or a technological advancement, or design, what would you like to have seen go back to your time when you're on the track to allow you to race better?

• 48:18Speaker 05

  Well, probably aerodynamic aspect of it. I mean, there's no better feature to make the car go faster than having aerodynamic downforce.

• 48:29Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 48:30Speaker 05

  So as a driver, what do you want to do? You want to go faster through the corners.

• 48:34Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 48:35Speaker 05

  And that's what allows you to do. And I mean, the speeds that we're reaching, you know, Formula One, Indy cars, through the corners is unbelievable. When you're starting, when you're pulling six Gs without a G suit.

• 48:50Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  And still stay on the track, on the tarmac, I tell you what, that's a feat in itself, you know, an engineering feat. So, but the ultimate satisfaction is what the driver experiences. And I've done all that and it's just amazing. Sometimes, after a while, you're blasé, you expect that, but when you start thinking about it, it's how amazing it is that the car can stick, you know, when it has that much downforce. And again, that's what driver loves. That's when adrenaline flows.

• 49:28Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. Oh, this has just been a pleasure. Thanks so much, Mario. Thank you so much for joining us. What a pleasure.

• 49:35Speaker 05

  Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.