Max safe long straight performance in a road race?

[pwpanas]

Originally Posted by Humba

Hi, im thinking of a hypothetical race.

The race would be driven in a street course. It would have normal corners etc, but also one very long straight.. say one mile long. Now, I would want to do one qualifying lap, and after that a 30-40 lap race. The only requirement for the car would be only to achieve maximum speed in this very long straight. No cornering or 1/4 mile performance would be needed, even tough we would be driving against time in qualifying and against each others in the race.

What kind of horsepower is it possible to run in qualifying without destroying the engine? What about race? What kind of top speeds would it be possible to achieve in the long straight with this safe amount of power when the car is optimized only for long straight performance? We would have 100 000 - 200 000 dollar budget (yeah right..)

In my experience, for the $100K price tag you could make an Mkiv TT that could really excel in this kind of race, easily and repeatedly and reliably hitting 700rwhp+ and 175mph+ in the "long straight" (I'm considering some room for braking at the end - let's say at least 1/8th of a mile or so). For a $200K budget in theory 200mph may be possible in the "long straight", and 800-850rwhp would be your power level.

Oh, and with an Mkiv TT you'd automatically get very decent cornering performance too - no way around that.

Interesting discussion - let's keep it going!