Yahoo Autos The Mysticism of Downforce
Broccoli. For years, my mom had to cover broccoli with warm Cheez Whiz–a cheese sauce which doesn't actually contain any cheese–so I'd consider eating the vegetable kids worldwide have declared 'gross' based solely on its appearance.
No matter how many times I was told that broccoli was delicious, I refused to believe it. Nobody could convince me that it wouldn't taste like a dying tree. Until one day, for some reason, I had a piece without my usual slathering of cheese-less cheese sauce.
It was delicious. Now broccoli is one of my favorite things and, perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm grossed out by Cheez Whiz. If I had just tried it earlier in life, it'd have been at the top of my list for a much longer time.
Just like downforce.
Downforce is just kind of scary.
Downforce, instead of looking like it'd taste weird (FYI: You can't eat downforce), is just kind of scary. Instead of relying on tires you can touch and see working, you need to rely on wings to manipulate the air you can't see into grip. It's voodoo.
I've been racing cars for years, but I've never driven something that I'd really consider an aero car. I've always been a little put off by downforce because mechanical grip correlates with your preconceived notion of how fast or slow you need to go to make a corner. Downforce makes you trust another variable: the air. If a car let's go when it's relying on aero grip, that means you're going very fast, and the crash could be monumental. But my trepidation around downforce wasn't going to be solved by a cheese-substitute. I'd need to be brave and drive one.
One like this Wolf GB08SM Turbo. It might look like a Radical, but it's faster. Quite a bit faster. Built in Italy, it weighs just less than 1,200 pounds, has 350 horsepower from a turbocharged 1.6 liter Peugeot engine with anti-lag, all carbon-fiber construction, a six-speed paddle-shifted Sadev sequential gearbox, slick tires, and generates 2,600 pounds of downforce at 125 mph. That's right, more than double its weight. It looks like a sort of miniature LMP car, and it's actually as quick as a number of pro-race cars.
"We're under 2:10 at COTA," Sean McGray, the Chief Engineer at Spring Mountain Motorsports, Wolf's US importer, tells me. And that time is for the Honda K24-powered version of the car, which is more than 100 horsepower down on the Turbo I'm driving. That would mean that this car is rather quick.
Spring Mountain Motor Resort and Country Club, the venue for our test, is part race track, part resort, and part private club. It's sort of a fantasy camp for adults, tucked on the edge of Pahrump, Nevada, a small town about an hour outside of Vegas. The club's members aren't necessarily pro-drivers, but they are adrenaline junkies. The Wolf, in all its different engine configurations, is owned by many of them. It has to work for drivers of varying skills, which makes it a good introduction to downforce.
Before I get in the car, McGray goes over the various throttle maps for boost level and anti-lag. "It's easy to drive, but you need to respect it," he tells me. Basically, don't go full throttle with the wheel turned and don't hit the rumble strips, particularly with anti-lag engaged (I have been asked not to turn it on), and it'll be fine.
So I strap in, go through the starting procedure, engage first, let out the fairly forgiving clutch, and cautiously hit the track. Why cautiously? First, I have literally no idea how the Wolf is to drive. Second, I don't really know Spring Mountain's North/South combo track all that well. And, third, the car I'm driving belongs to John Morris, the owner of Spring Mountain. He has a house located next to one of the corners on the track. It probably wouldn't make a great impression if I binned it there on my outlap.
At low speeds, the Wolf feels like any car you've ever driven. There is substantial mechanical grip. Without anti-lag on, the engine delivers gobs of power once you hit the boost. It's actually beneficial to stab the throttle too early since it takes a second to spool up. I start to increase the speed each lap, and it's not long before I reach the speed that's considered the 'danger zone' of aerodynamics, meaning there isn't much more mechanical grip left but the car isn't going quickly enough to produce appreciable downforce.
There are two solutions: slow down, or suck it up and go faster. I choose the latter.
There are two solutions: slow down, or suck it up and go faster. I choose the latter. It's a good choice.
There are a number of high-speed sweepers on this layout of Spring Mountain, and I start realizing that corners I was using third for could easily be taken in fourth. Areas that needed a stab of the brake would be fine with a breathe off the throttle. The downforce makes the light steering noticeably heavier as it pushes the tires into the track. Corners become a workout. Like the broccoli, after a half dozen laps, I wonder what the hell I've been missing out on all these years.
But the downforce also tricks you. As I get more and more comfortable and go faster, I notice a change in handling in slow corners: understeer. My entry speeds have increased so much in every quick sweeper that I start over-driving the front end. I'm entering slower corners at the speed where there is essentially no grip being produced. In a situation where you can't go fast enough to produce aero grip, your only choice is to slow down so the tires once again take over. Finding that balance has to be the hardest part. Knowing when to rely on aero and when it can't help takes time.
After I come in to the pits so the crew can do a few checks, I go back out for another handful of laps. This time, feeling rather cocky, I turn on the anti-lag. I was told that the original settings they had for anti-lag had one driver leave tire marks nearly halfway down the mile-long straight. I can see why. Even in the low boost setting, the power comes on so immediately it's jarring and actually makes it harder to be smooth under acceleration.
Four corners later, I turn it off. It's enough learning about aero grip that I don't need another variable thrown in the equation. A few laps later, I pull the car back in to the pits, wondering why every road car doesn't have tunnels and wings to make huge downforce. If I can handle it, anybody can.
Don't think the Wolf is a good first track car, it's a bit too extreme for that. But if you're ready to make a step up to something more serious that didn't start off as something streetable, the Wolf is like a mini LMP car that at $209,000 ($174,900 for the K24-powered version), is a fraction of the price. And I'm willing to bet a lot easier to drive.
While I'm not professing to be some sort of downforce master after spending about an hour in a car with it, the learning curve isn't as high as I'd feared. Now I only want to drive downforce cars. What seems scary initially becomes your favorite thing within minutes of your first taste.
Like a certain vegetable.
Thanks to Spring Mountain Motorsports for the opportunity to drive the Wolf.
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