This article gets the concept slightly wrong.The compressed air becomes very cold air when it expands rapidly in the intake.
Colder air is more dense and therefore carries more oxygen. More oxygen allows more fuel, which allows more power.
Here's a better explanation in a single paragraph on the company's website:
> The end result of these expansion processes is that the charge air temperature entering an engine is dramatically lower than can be achieved with conventional MAP increasing technologies (supercharging and/or turbocharging with after-cooling). Hence very high charge densities can be attained at relatively low MAP levels.
The goal is to increase the amount of air going into the engine by making it very cold and dense, not by pressurizing it like a supercharger. Low MAP means low manifold absolute pressure. In other words, it's not boost like a turbo or supercharger.
EDIT: It looks like the website is also unclear. There is some mention of a secondary valve shutting off the intake valve to prevent air leaking out from the air filter.
Their website is strangely unclear. This isn't mentioned in the "Theory of Operation" section but does get mentioned later as an "isolation valve"
It is boost pressure in the sense that the air going into the intake manifold is above ambient pressure. It isn't like nitrous where air still comes in the intake, with compressed air systems there is a valve that's closed to prevent the engine from ingesting ambient air, it runs entirely on the compressed air.
I know what the article says, but the author seems to misunderstand how the system works.
The systems has regulators that step the air pressure down from thousands of PSI in the tank to a much smaller, regulated number at the nozzle that gets sprayed into the intake.
From the source company that sells the system:
> The very low temperature medium pressure air stream is then throttle one more time in the Electronic Pressure Regulator before being discharged into the engine air intake tract. The throttling effect that occurs here is small compared to that which occurs at the Mechanical Pressure regulator but, similar in nature.
The tuner can adjust the pressure that is being discharged into the intake tract, but that's not equivalent to the pressure in the manifold.
The system works by having the air expand rapidly in the intake, causing a rapid cooling effect.
I worked at a speed shop in my youth and at the time I was into Paintball so I had an idea.
We tried something similar to good effect, but we unfortunately had no good knowledge on how to refine it. It's hard to just shoot compressed air into the manifold and not have it blow back out of the intake. Either way we figured out a way to increase the volumetric efficiency as well as gains from running cool dense air. We were very close to pre-spinning the existing turbo/super setups and experimented with that as well. We gave up because Nitrous oxide at the time was much easier to work with and popular, and the tanks we had to experiment with was tiny compared to the large scuba tanks.
We also tried using compressed CO2 bottles to spray towards the intercooler to cool that down considerably, that worked decently as well, but no good data to support.
Take, for instance, Ford’s car from the 2003 FIA World Rally Championship. Through a knowledgeable automotive tuner and journalist named Stav from the UK (Facebook page), we learned that the 2003 Ford Focus RS WRC used an ingenious, mostly-hidden system to store excess pressurized air from the turbocharger in a titanium tank until it could be advantageously crammed into the engine on straight portions of the course, elevating power beyond what would otherwise have been possible.
What blew me away was that the high-end engines[1] turn just a few hundred RPM during a race, which to me seemed ridiculous when you see wall of flames from the headers when they release the car at the line.
Also how they use aluminum for the connecting rods instead of stronger and stiffer metals like titanium, as they can then act as shock absorbers protecting the crankshaft bearings.
Lots of interesting tech to eek out performance and lifetime.
I've been enjoying watching Steve Morris's YouTube channel[2], he shares a lot of such information. He's mainly making drag and drive engines, which has the additional constraint of having to survive thousands of miles of regular roads between races.
I've also enjoyed Brian Lohnes channel[3] for interesting historical accounts from the early days.
Yeah, obviously they don't use a CVT so the RPMs are anything but the same throughout the race.
I don't know the details of Top Fuel and such, but Steve with his SMX[1] wagon[2] keeps his car at 2000 RPM at the lights, so seems reasonable to assume Top Fuel is around there too.
On the top end the Top Fuel cars are limited to just over 8000 RPM[3], with the red line at 8500 RPM.
So an average of 3800 RPM seems reasonable.
As a cross check, given that Top Fuel cars are single-speed[4], I guess one could calculate the same using the diameter of the wheels, keeping in mind that the tire expands a lot compared to its size at rest.
The properties of air that you care about are basically immutable, so why not pre-compute a bunch of compressed air instead of compressing it on the fly, and then having to carry the equipment to do that.
There is an energy cost to supercharging. While you get an overall horsepower boost, it's less than what it would be if the compression cost nothing.
Some facts about top fuel dragsters: the supercharger uses around a thousand horsepower to run, but that's ok because the motor puts out over 10x that. It uses around 15 gallons of fuel for a single quarter mile run, but that also includes the burn-out.
I planned to implement this system in a project car years ago, but never got to it. Do have a parts list, and the overall cost is quite reasonable. My goal focuses on in-vehicle recharging rather than tank-swapping approach.
Amazed it didn't happen earlier. For a long time it's been seen that an economical way to store energy is to store compressed air in a cavern and feed it into a gas-fired turbine in lieu of turbocharging: see https://urbanao.com/post/compressed-air-energy-storage-caes-...
It didn't happen because like everything else that the peanut gallery deems "obvious" the actual pros and cons of implementing it didn't pencil out until recently.
This was tried in the 1950s and 1960s. IDK why it didn't make the cut then. Probably cumulative weight of tanks. It takes A LOT of air to run an engine.
I noticed the tank in the article's photo looks like carbon fiber wrapped aluminum. Those are noticeably lighter than the pure aluminum or steel tanks common in the 60's. (Source: Have carried each on my back as a volunteer firefighter)
> Compressed air is stored at 3,300 psi in carbon fiber tanks that weigh roughly 30 pounds each when full
When are the kids in California going to grab a tank, point the nozzle down, and ride that thing like a rocket from the beach, parachuting into the ocean?
Question -- why not go with liquid oxygen? Does that push the danger-meter too high? On the plus side, you're not dealing with 3000 psi compressed gas.
I'm assuming the costs involved in making engines capable of withstanding cryogenic temperatures probably make that impractical (?)
Liquid hydrogen is very bulky, the tank might be large enough to impact the aerodynamics. Use kerosene instead, and maybe use RFNA instead of oxygen, just to bump the danger level up to Abjectly Stupid.
If you're going to cheat, way cheaper to put nitrous oxide in the tank and claim it's compressed air. 50% boost in oxygen content without having to engineer your engine to not burn when pure O2 hits it.
I think it becomes easier to just use a different fuel that is partially self-oxidizing. E.g. Top Fuel uses nitromethane rather than gasoline. Gasoline's stoichiometric ratio is 14.7:1 air:fuel, nitromethane is 1.7:1. Nitromethane in Top Fuel is already so volatile that the superchargers have to be wrapped in kevlar because the fuel blows up in them sometimes.
This is pretty smart. Why carry the compressor and intercooler with you? Save the mass and complexity, as well as shifting the energy required to compress the air to a device off the car.
Our Hyundai grocery-getter does a 1/4 in 13s, the "N" go-fast version does it in 11s. And those are Hyundais with full-sized, heavy-ass batteries, and abysmal stock tires. Porsche Taycan GT (with a full-sized, heavy-ass battery) turns 1/4 in 9.3s.
Now cut those heavy batteries in half because you're not driving from SF to LA, and I could see that Porsche turning 8s if you could get the power to the ground (IOW, launch control and much better tires than stock).
Drag racing is just about the purest most scientific competition of vehicle tuning you're going to get. The driver doesn't really make or break it as long as they're at least decent.
On the other end of the spectrum you have racing types that are more of a competition among drivers with the vehicle not really making or breaking anything as long as it's typical for the class.
I get racing on a twisty track. They are legitimate tests of human skill and vehicle endurance engineering. Drag racing has none of that. There's little skill beyond reaction time and drag vehicles have almost no relation to normal vehicles.
Think of drag racing like the CO2 cartridge race car competitions you see in lots of high-school science classes. It's an engineering challenge, not a skill-based race.
I disagree. Drag racing involves incredible honed vehicle endurance, just on a much shorter timescale. It’s an engineering problem with the goal of outputting as much power as possible within a short timespan (often only a few seconds) without detrimentally destroying the engine. As far as the drivers are concerned, the reaction time is obviously important, but they have to be extraordinarily consistent. At that, they have to drive the car at 5 g’s- not an easy task.
The engines still get destroyed. It's basically a complete rebuild between runs. Most of the spark plugs burn up, clutch disks get welded together, etc. The goal is basically to just not have the engine outright detonate so they can reuse the block.
You are absolutely correct. Perhaps I should’ve worded “detrimentally destroyed” as “catastrophic failure.” The rebuild process between runs is fascinating to watch. I’ve never seen an engine torn apart so quickly!
You're thinking about this in only a professional way. There are a lot of amateur events where people race with their own cars that they have modified. It's really fun to see something like a vw rabbit beat a modern sports car etc. It's a fun event too but the tire burning shows do get old very quickly.
What is it the kids say? "Tell me you know nothing about drag racing without saying you know nothing about drag racing"? Drag racing has all of that, squeezed into 1/4 of a mile. That's why top fuelers get an engine rebuild after every trip down the track.
It's like saying, "I get ultramarathons, but 400m foot races involved little skill or training." Look, if you don't get it, fine. Probably best to just leave it at that.
I participated in motorcycle track days on race tracks for 15 years. I've dragged knee at 90pmh. _That_ takes skill and balls. Drag racing seems dumb by comparison.
That's a long-winded way to say, "no, I've never tried it". If one has never tried a pursuit, I can understand how it might "seem dumb". What seems dumb to me, though, is doing track days for years on end, and never once trying to see how fast you could launch a bike down a drag strip, and then going on about how dumb drag racing is.
I've owned two Porsches, an Audi R8 V10, half dozen sport bikes. I've done laps at Laguna Seca. I've floored them all to see what they'll do. The V10 sounded amazing.
But I've never felt any interest in drag racing at all, it's a pointless waste of fuel. Press accelerator, press brake, done, little to no skill required. And in something like the R8, would require a $20,000 dealer visit after a weekend of runs.
Racing changed my life and you should definitely go to a meetup, drag race, or track event. The dream of the 80's is still alive in the car world. You'll meet the coolest people. Dummies get filtered and don't make it to the events/track. It's the best and easiest real life scene to get into if you're technical because car guys are absolute nerds.
Are they? At least in Europe they are usually blue collar guys that pick a neighborhood at random to hold a car meet, terrorizing that neighborhood until deep into the night, including street races. And if they aren't accommodated they'll aggressively clash with the police.
They're easy to spot too, pumped up douches with tribal tattoos and gemstone earrings that behave like they're prone to pick a bar fight with you.
I am, which is why I specifically said drag, meetups, and track events. The only group I detest are the ones that takeover roads/highways and race in densely populated zones. I like hooners, 99% stick to parking lots and make a bit of noise. You'll be very hard pressed to find "racers" who embrace endangering regular people.
What do you expect when tracks are closing left and right? That energy has to go somewhere. But yes those guys are also nerds.
The meets I'm talking about are like this [0][1]. There's a lot of the tattoo gemstone guys in [1]'s timestamp. Is this what you mean? I'd love some examples.
As a race buddy of mine often says, one can teach a complete college semester on the math of drag racing. From the engineering of the vehicles to the tuning to the weather calculations. And then there is what we call "bracket racing". Staggered starts based on your own prediction of elapsed time that you cannot run faster than or you will "break out" and the other vehicle wins. A favorite t-shirt in the pits says, "Not everyone can do math at 150MPH".
When I look at a drag stripe, I see a gray, dirty rectangle of asphalt that generates huge amounts of noise and air pollution. Beyond the environmental destruction, it's a hobby that quickly destroys vehicle parts, engines, tires, brakes, etc. All of that destruction, for what? 5 seconds of extreme acceleration? To go one hundredth of a second faster this time?
Literally everything is pointless, even existence, from someone's point of view.
You don't have to understand how something amuses someone to understand that it amuses them. You also don't have to belittle people to ask them why they are amused.
If you think drag racing seems pointless and self destructive, it is in your best interests to not explore the other popular variants of competitive motorsports today.
This article gets the concept slightly wrong.The compressed air becomes very cold air when it expands rapidly in the intake.
Colder air is more dense and therefore carries more oxygen. More oxygen allows more fuel, which allows more power.
Here's a better explanation in a single paragraph on the company's website:
> The end result of these expansion processes is that the charge air temperature entering an engine is dramatically lower than can be achieved with conventional MAP increasing technologies (supercharging and/or turbocharging with after-cooling). Hence very high charge densities can be attained at relatively low MAP levels.
The goal is to increase the amount of air going into the engine by making it very cold and dense, not by pressurizing it like a supercharger. Low MAP means low manifold absolute pressure. In other words, it's not boost like a turbo or supercharger.
EDIT: It looks like the website is also unclear. There is some mention of a secondary valve shutting off the intake valve to prevent air leaking out from the air filter.
Their website is strangely unclear. This isn't mentioned in the "Theory of Operation" section but does get mentioned later as an "isolation valve"
See here: https://casupercharging.com/tech/#system-overview
It is boost pressure in the sense that the air going into the intake manifold is above ambient pressure. It isn't like nitrous where air still comes in the intake, with compressed air systems there is a valve that's closed to prevent the engine from ingesting ambient air, it runs entirely on the compressed air.
Some cars have a system to spray water into the intake manifold to cool the air and increase power, this seems like the next step up from that.
It says they're boosting to 10psi, in addition to the colder intake charge
I know what the article says, but the author seems to misunderstand how the system works.
The systems has regulators that step the air pressure down from thousands of PSI in the tank to a much smaller, regulated number at the nozzle that gets sprayed into the intake.
From the source company that sells the system:
> The very low temperature medium pressure air stream is then throttle one more time in the Electronic Pressure Regulator before being discharged into the engine air intake tract. The throttling effect that occurs here is small compared to that which occurs at the Mechanical Pressure regulator but, similar in nature.
The tuner can adjust the pressure that is being discharged into the intake tract, but that's not equivalent to the pressure in the manifold.
The system works by having the air expand rapidly in the intake, causing a rapid cooling effect.
The company describes it better on their own site: https://casupercharging.com/tech/#system-overview
EDIT: There is some mention of an "isolation valve" but not within the "Theory of Operation" section of the company's own description: https://casupercharging.com/tech/#system-overview
So there might be some scenario where the system shuts off the intake valve, too, but it's weirdly unclear from their own system description.
The air can't go out the filter because a valve prevents air from going back through the filter.
I worked at a speed shop in my youth and at the time I was into Paintball so I had an idea.
We tried something similar to good effect, but we unfortunately had no good knowledge on how to refine it. It's hard to just shoot compressed air into the manifold and not have it blow back out of the intake. Either way we figured out a way to increase the volumetric efficiency as well as gains from running cool dense air. We were very close to pre-spinning the existing turbo/super setups and experimented with that as well. We gave up because Nitrous oxide at the time was much easier to work with and popular, and the tanks we had to experiment with was tiny compared to the large scuba tanks.
We also tried using compressed CO2 bottles to spray towards the intercooler to cool that down considerably, that worked decently as well, but no good data to support.
Volvo came up with a way of spooling the turbo by injecting compressed air into the exhaust manifold
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/volvos-turbo-lag...
Reminds me of this piece of motorsports history: https://fordauthority.com/2017/12/how-ford-cheated-the-rules...
Take, for instance, Ford’s car from the 2003 FIA World Rally Championship. Through a knowledgeable automotive tuner and journalist named Stav from the UK (Facebook page), we learned that the 2003 Ford Focus RS WRC used an ingenious, mostly-hidden system to store excess pressurized air from the turbocharger in a titanium tank until it could be advantageously crammed into the engine on straight portions of the course, elevating power beyond what would otherwise have been possible.
What blew me away was that the high-end engines[1] turn just a few hundred RPM during a race, which to me seemed ridiculous when you see wall of flames from the headers when they release the car at the line.
Also how they use aluminum for the connecting rods instead of stronger and stiffer metals like titanium, as they can then act as shock absorbers protecting the crankshaft bearings.
Lots of interesting tech to eek out performance and lifetime.
I've been enjoying watching Steve Morris's YouTube channel[2], he shares a lot of such information. He's mainly making drag and drive engines, which has the additional constraint of having to survive thousands of miles of regular roads between races.
I've also enjoyed Brian Lohnes channel[3] for interesting historical accounts from the early days.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Fuel#Performance
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/@stevemorrisracing/videos
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/@brianlohnes3079/videos
From your first link, they turn at around 3800 RPM, but the race only lasts a few seconds so they only complete a few hundred revolutions:
"This calculation assumes an average racing engine speed of roughly 3,800 revolutions per minute over a period of 3.8 seconds."
Yeah, obviously they don't use a CVT so the RPMs are anything but the same throughout the race.
I don't know the details of Top Fuel and such, but Steve with his SMX[1] wagon[2] keeps his car at 2000 RPM at the lights, so seems reasonable to assume Top Fuel is around there too.
On the top end the Top Fuel cars are limited to just over 8000 RPM[3], with the red line at 8500 RPM.
So an average of 3800 RPM seems reasonable.
As a cross check, given that Top Fuel cars are single-speed[4], I guess one could calculate the same using the diameter of the wheels, keeping in mind that the tire expands a lot compared to its size at rest.
[1]: https://www.enginebuildermag.com/2024/12/4000-hp-twin-turbo-...
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnrZdrp77Cs
[3]: https://www.enginebuildermag.com/2023/03/top-fuel-and-funny-...
The properties of air that you care about are basically immutable, so why not pre-compute a bunch of compressed air instead of compressing it on the fly, and then having to carry the equipment to do that.
There is an energy cost to supercharging. While you get an overall horsepower boost, it's less than what it would be if the compression cost nothing.
Some facts about top fuel dragsters: the supercharger uses around a thousand horsepower to run, but that's ok because the motor puts out over 10x that. It uses around 15 gallons of fuel for a single quarter mile run, but that also includes the burn-out.
I planned to implement this system in a project car years ago, but never got to it. Do have a parts list, and the overall cost is quite reasonable. My goal focuses on in-vehicle recharging rather than tank-swapping approach.
https://gist.github.com/s0kil/9bd6815ea2ab4e65a786c6382a5bfa...
Amazed it didn't happen earlier. For a long time it's been seen that an economical way to store energy is to store compressed air in a cavern and feed it into a gas-fired turbine in lieu of turbocharging: see https://urbanao.com/post/compressed-air-energy-storage-caes-...
It didn't happen because like everything else that the peanut gallery deems "obvious" the actual pros and cons of implementing it didn't pencil out until recently.
This was tried in the 1950s and 1960s. IDK why it didn't make the cut then. Probably cumulative weight of tanks. It takes A LOT of air to run an engine.
I noticed the tank in the article's photo looks like carbon fiber wrapped aluminum. Those are noticeably lighter than the pure aluminum or steel tanks common in the 60's. (Source: Have carried each on my back as a volunteer firefighter)
> Compressed air is stored at 3,300 psi in carbon fiber tanks that weigh roughly 30 pounds each when full
When are the kids in California going to grab a tank, point the nozzle down, and ride that thing like a rocket from the beach, parachuting into the ocean?
We could call them "beach jumpers".
Question -- why not go with liquid oxygen? Does that push the danger-meter too high? On the plus side, you're not dealing with 3000 psi compressed gas.
I'm assuming the costs involved in making engines capable of withstanding cryogenic temperatures probably make that impractical (?)
And instead of gasoline carry liquid hydrogen. Dragsters are practically horizontal rockets anyway. Might as well stop pretending!
Liquid hydrogen is very bulky, the tank might be large enough to impact the aerodynamics. Use kerosene instead, and maybe use RFNA instead of oxygen, just to bump the danger level up to Abjectly Stupid.
If you're going to cheat, way cheaper to put nitrous oxide in the tank and claim it's compressed air. 50% boost in oxygen content without having to engineer your engine to not burn when pure O2 hits it.
Nitrous oxide is the safer equivalent, relatively speaking. Pure O2 would make things burn that normally don't burn, and increase engine detonation.
You can't have liquid oxygen at room temperature. It's physically impossible. It would have to be stored at extremely cold temperatures at all times.
Look up "critical point" and a phase chart to understand why. It's an interesting physics topic that isn't obvious if you've never seen it before.
I think it becomes easier to just use a different fuel that is partially self-oxidizing. E.g. Top Fuel uses nitromethane rather than gasoline. Gasoline's stoichiometric ratio is 14.7:1 air:fuel, nitromethane is 1.7:1. Nitromethane in Top Fuel is already so volatile that the superchargers have to be wrapped in kevlar because the fuel blows up in them sometimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Fuel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitromethane
3000psi gas is the easy way. You just need a couple valves instead of a bunch of insulated stuff that has to not freeze up at -200C.
Think: would a drag race last long enough that you need to cram that much more oxygen into a small tank?
This is pretty smart. Why carry the compressor and intercooler with you? Save the mass and complexity, as well as shifting the energy required to compress the air to a device off the car.
Aren't there stock electric cars now that do quarter mile under 10 seconds?
When battery weight gets cut in half next decade and capacity doubles, the only reason why they will race ICE engines is for the noise
Our Hyundai grocery-getter does a 1/4 in 13s, the "N" go-fast version does it in 11s. And those are Hyundais with full-sized, heavy-ass batteries, and abysmal stock tires. Porsche Taycan GT (with a full-sized, heavy-ass battery) turns 1/4 in 9.3s.
Now cut those heavy batteries in half because you're not driving from SF to LA, and I could see that Porsche turning 8s if you could get the power to the ground (IOW, launch control and much better tires than stock).
Drag racing seems pointless and self-destructive. I genuinely don't understand why people find it interesting or worthy of their time.
Drag racing is just about the purest most scientific competition of vehicle tuning you're going to get. The driver doesn't really make or break it as long as they're at least decent.
On the other end of the spectrum you have racing types that are more of a competition among drivers with the vehicle not really making or breaking anything as long as it's typical for the class.
I get racing on a twisty track. They are legitimate tests of human skill and vehicle endurance engineering. Drag racing has none of that. There's little skill beyond reaction time and drag vehicles have almost no relation to normal vehicles.
Think of drag racing like the CO2 cartridge race car competitions you see in lots of high-school science classes. It's an engineering challenge, not a skill-based race.
I disagree. Drag racing involves incredible honed vehicle endurance, just on a much shorter timescale. It’s an engineering problem with the goal of outputting as much power as possible within a short timespan (often only a few seconds) without detrimentally destroying the engine. As far as the drivers are concerned, the reaction time is obviously important, but they have to be extraordinarily consistent. At that, they have to drive the car at 5 g’s- not an easy task.
The engines still get destroyed. It's basically a complete rebuild between runs. Most of the spark plugs burn up, clutch disks get welded together, etc. The goal is basically to just not have the engine outright detonate so they can reuse the block.
You are absolutely correct. Perhaps I should’ve worded “detrimentally destroyed” as “catastrophic failure.” The rebuild process between runs is fascinating to watch. I’ve never seen an engine torn apart so quickly!
You're thinking about this in only a professional way. There are a lot of amateur events where people race with their own cars that they have modified. It's really fun to see something like a vw rabbit beat a modern sports car etc. It's a fun event too but the tire burning shows do get old very quickly.
Try it! Costs far less than you think and more than half the class sat wide eyed, refusing a second run.
Drag racing has none of that.
What is it the kids say? "Tell me you know nothing about drag racing without saying you know nothing about drag racing"? Drag racing has all of that, squeezed into 1/4 of a mile. That's why top fuelers get an engine rebuild after every trip down the track.
It's like saying, "I get ultramarathons, but 400m foot races involved little skill or training." Look, if you don't get it, fine. Probably best to just leave it at that.
Have you ever tried it?
I participated in motorcycle track days on race tracks for 15 years. I've dragged knee at 90pmh. _That_ takes skill and balls. Drag racing seems dumb by comparison.
That's a long-winded way to say, "no, I've never tried it". If one has never tried a pursuit, I can understand how it might "seem dumb". What seems dumb to me, though, is doing track days for years on end, and never once trying to see how fast you could launch a bike down a drag strip, and then going on about how dumb drag racing is.
I've owned two Porsches, an Audi R8 V10, half dozen sport bikes. I've done laps at Laguna Seca. I've floored them all to see what they'll do. The V10 sounded amazing.
But I've never felt any interest in drag racing at all, it's a pointless waste of fuel. Press accelerator, press brake, done, little to no skill required. And in something like the R8, would require a $20,000 dealer visit after a weekend of runs.
If you actually achieved a high level of proficiency you'd be able to respect what goes on at an equally high level in a different niche.
Racing changed my life and you should definitely go to a meetup, drag race, or track event. The dream of the 80's is still alive in the car world. You'll meet the coolest people. Dummies get filtered and don't make it to the events/track. It's the best and easiest real life scene to get into if you're technical because car guys are absolute nerds.
> because car guys are absolute nerds.
Are they? At least in Europe they are usually blue collar guys that pick a neighborhood at random to hold a car meet, terrorizing that neighborhood until deep into the night, including street races. And if they aren't accommodated they'll aggressively clash with the police.
They're easy to spot too, pumped up douches with tribal tattoos and gemstone earrings that behave like they're prone to pick a bar fight with you.
Europe doesn't have the same accessibility for motorsport so people doing stuff on the street is what you get. IDK, write your legislator.
Or hoons as the Aussies call them. I think OP was talking about a different caliber of racer.
I am, which is why I specifically said drag, meetups, and track events. The only group I detest are the ones that takeover roads/highways and race in densely populated zones. I like hooners, 99% stick to parking lots and make a bit of noise. You'll be very hard pressed to find "racers" who embrace endangering regular people.
What do you expect when tracks are closing left and right? That energy has to go somewhere. But yes those guys are also nerds.
The meets I'm talking about are like this [0][1]. There's a lot of the tattoo gemstone guys in [1]'s timestamp. Is this what you mean? I'd love some examples.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bAq_qD9i2s
[1] https://youtu.be/q4lvEYLJaOY?t=340
>And if they aren't accommodated they'll aggressively clash with the police.
If you're a car guy you're basically begging to be hunted constantly. In my opinion this is all downstream of the death of folkracing.
As a race buddy of mine often says, one can teach a complete college semester on the math of drag racing. From the engineering of the vehicles to the tuning to the weather calculations. And then there is what we call "bracket racing". Staggered starts based on your own prediction of elapsed time that you cannot run faster than or you will "break out" and the other vehicle wins. A favorite t-shirt in the pits says, "Not everyone can do math at 150MPH".
You could say the same about just about everything except breathing, eating, and drinking nothing but water.
People like to go fast and they like the challenge. And newer race cars have a good bit of technology in them.
Most hobbies are pointless. I need you to explain how you got to "self-destructive" though.
When I look at a drag stripe, I see a gray, dirty rectangle of asphalt that generates huge amounts of noise and air pollution. Beyond the environmental destruction, it's a hobby that quickly destroys vehicle parts, engines, tires, brakes, etc. All of that destruction, for what? 5 seconds of extreme acceleration? To go one hundredth of a second faster this time?
I have been told that a lot consumer automobile advances began life on the race track.
Literally everything is pointless, even existence, from someone's point of view.
You don't have to understand how something amuses someone to understand that it amuses them. You also don't have to belittle people to ask them why they are amused.
If you think drag racing seems pointless and self destructive, it is in your best interests to not explore the other popular variants of competitive motorsports today.