• SlurpingPus
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    4 hours ago

    some extra acceleration can be achieved by lowering the gear

    The only thing that can be achieved by downshifting if you’re already at top speed for a particular gear, is making the gearbox shit itself loudly and most likely cease normal operation. Or maybe making the engine stall, which would be the better outcome here.

    To downshift safely you need to lower the speed, since the same speed corresponds to higher RPMs at lower gears. The same speed that you’re trying to build in the first place. Definitely no one is doing this ridiculous nonsense in racing.

    • 13Tb0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 hours ago

      Mate I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but if you want to make overconfident statements like that I suggest you read the web page I linked above to refreshen your knowledge about Newton’s Second Law, torque and angular momentum. There is nothing ridiculous or nonsensical about Newton’s 2nd law and it applies here :)

      • SlurpingPus
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        3 hours ago

        If you want to speak about engines and gears, better get past Newton’s laws and learn how engines and gears work. See you when you reach high school, or more likely not, because you’ll realize what a crock of bullshit you were writing here.

        • 13Tb0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 hours ago

          Wow, doubling down now and acting like a jerk on top of that? No thanks.

          This conversation is over, I’m disengaging

          • SlurpingPus
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            3 hours ago

            Why disengage? Instead, prove that you’re right: borrow a car with a manual gearbox from a relative of yours, redline it in the third gear, downshift to second, and then get back here as to how that went. Just don’t look up what such a maneuver is colloquially called.

            • 13Tb0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              2 hours ago

              Why? Because you’re starting to act like a jerk and I don’t need any of that?

              But fine, I am willing to explain if you’re willing to tone down a bit. To start off: I drove a manual car for a decade until this march. So I kinda know how they work – maybe don’t try to make so many assumptions about who you’re talking to.

              And who said anything about redlining? The point is that the drafting car is not redlined. Nor is the one in front, they just can’t accelerate any faster because of wind resistance. Your scenario would only occur when both cars are driving at their maximum achievable speeds. That only happens on very few race tracks like this one.

              Maybe you can stop getting stuck in the loop where the only possibility is that you’re right and I’m wrong, but instead explore the possibility that you may learn something.

              • SlurpingPus
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                2 hours ago

                Your scenario would only occur when both cars are driving at their maximum achievable speeds. That only happens on very few race tracks like this one.

                No, it would occur when the cars are geared properly for the track that they’re driving at. Which is what racing teams do, because they aren’t too stupid as to leave speed on the table. And shifting is basically the same between cars on the same track, since they achieve about the same speed at the same points of the track, if the engines are close in performance. It’s not like you’re gonna be drafting behind someone going for an overtake, while still having gobs of rpms to spare.

                • 13Tb0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  2 hours ago

                  They’re not leaving any “speed on the table”, a race track has turns. So like I said, maximum achievable speeds are rarely achieved and only on a few race tracks. Of course the cars are geared for the specific track they’re racing on, but that doesn’t mean they are always at their maximum power.

                  Drafting is exactly what allows a car to achieve higher speeds with at lower RPM, because it allows the pursuer to short shift and get into a higher gear than the person in front of them. So yes, they would have RPM to spare since they’re in a higher gear and can shift down for more power.

                  • SlurpingPus
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                    43 minutes ago

                    You know you can just get any decent racing simulator game and test your theories? Wherein ‘Forza Horizon’ and ‘NFS’ aren’t decent sims.

                    You aren’t getting significant advantage from drafting unless you’re at a high speed, i.e. at those same long straights for which gearing is tuned. If the car isn’t close to redlining the last gear when it reaches the speed where drafting allows for overtaking, that means it lost speed that it could’ve been gaining during the acceleration by having closer gearing.

                    Maybe your hypothesis works in bus racing, I’m not familiar with that.