Next week the desert lake racers have their annual event out on Lake Gairdner here in South Australia. Its this huge desert salt pan that's dry most of the year, and only has water in it for a short while after the occasional rains. The desert lake racers have a section of it measured precisely, and timing equipment, and you can go out there with virtually anything and get a top speed run.
I say virtually anything. Unfortunately. They'll only let you run a road car out to 125 mph or 210 km/h. If it won't do more than that, or you choose not to go faster than that, you can run without any special safety equipment except a helmet, no matter how much faster that is than the car was original designed to go. But if you want to go faster than that you have to have to run in a racing class that requires a racing suit and a roll cage and meet lots of other nit-picking safety rules like having to have 5-bolt wheels and not have any computers controlling vital functions, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum, even where the car is capable of that as it was orginally manufactured and is being run with little or no modifications.
I'd love to go out and have a run, but the Clio's too fast for their rules. It gets put in that racing class that requires lots of expensive safety rules. There doesn't seem a lot of point in going for a top speed run out on the salt and having to back off to stay below 125/210.
In this country virtually any car that anyone who'd be interested in what the desert lake racers do would buy these days would be capable of more than that standard. Most of them would have a V8 Commodore or Falcon or something like that.
But they reckon their safety rules are necessary. That its too dangerous to allow a standard car to run faster than 125 mph. Even in a straight line in the middle of a huge desert salt pan. No matter what speed its manufacturer designed it to do. They'd have apoplexy if someone turned up with a Veyron with its 252 mph (speed-limited to that, it'll do more than that) top speed standard. I reckon their rules are out of another time, America in the 50s to be precise. When no standard car would do 125. And no standard car was designed to be safe, so it had to bolted on to make them safe. I reckon that the way Renault's engineers designed the car is more likely to be safe, and it is proven to be safe by crash testing, than a set of rules written by a bunch of hot rodders, and implemented by grease-under-the-fingernails mechanics and complete amateurs.
What do you reckon?
I say virtually anything. Unfortunately. They'll only let you run a road car out to 125 mph or 210 km/h. If it won't do more than that, or you choose not to go faster than that, you can run without any special safety equipment except a helmet, no matter how much faster that is than the car was original designed to go. But if you want to go faster than that you have to have to run in a racing class that requires a racing suit and a roll cage and meet lots of other nit-picking safety rules like having to have 5-bolt wheels and not have any computers controlling vital functions, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum, even where the car is capable of that as it was orginally manufactured and is being run with little or no modifications.
I'd love to go out and have a run, but the Clio's too fast for their rules. It gets put in that racing class that requires lots of expensive safety rules. There doesn't seem a lot of point in going for a top speed run out on the salt and having to back off to stay below 125/210.
In this country virtually any car that anyone who'd be interested in what the desert lake racers do would buy these days would be capable of more than that standard. Most of them would have a V8 Commodore or Falcon or something like that.
But they reckon their safety rules are necessary. That its too dangerous to allow a standard car to run faster than 125 mph. Even in a straight line in the middle of a huge desert salt pan. No matter what speed its manufacturer designed it to do. They'd have apoplexy if someone turned up with a Veyron with its 252 mph (speed-limited to that, it'll do more than that) top speed standard. I reckon their rules are out of another time, America in the 50s to be precise. When no standard car would do 125. And no standard car was designed to be safe, so it had to bolted on to make them safe. I reckon that the way Renault's engineers designed the car is more likely to be safe, and it is proven to be safe by crash testing, than a set of rules written by a bunch of hot rodders, and implemented by grease-under-the-fingernails mechanics and complete amateurs.
What do you reckon?
