December 16, 2008 • 15 mins
Every year, car companies pour millions of dollars into racing technology. This isn't just for entertainment -- check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn how innovations in racing technology have influenced the technology in everyday cars.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Go behind the wheel and under the hood on everything automotive,
high speed stuff from how stuff works dot com. Welcome
to the podcast. I'm Ben Bowling here with our one
and only Auto Channel editor Scott. Benjamin Scott, what's going
on today? Well, just kind of hanging out and ready
to talk about cars with you. What's going on? I
(00:21):
am glad you were ready to talk about cars, my friend,
so am I I've actually got some specific questions here.
We've got an article on the website, the top ten
everyday car technologies. They came from Racing. Are you familiar
with us one, Scott, Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with it. Yeah,
it's a good article. Now. I I thought so too,
and I wanted to kind of go in depth with
(00:42):
you about this. One of the first questions that I
asked when I when I read this was how much
money is spent on racing? Would you say, maybe that's
a probably an impossible question to answer, but it would
be in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars easy
if if it doesn't touch a billion dollars, I mean,
it really does get up their highs. Even every manufacturer
(01:05):
just blows piles of money on racing. Yeah, yeah, that's
what I was That's what I was thinking because with
the for these inventions to have to come from racing,
there has to be a lot of money spent in
some ways. It could almost be like research and development. Right, Oh,
it's definitely research and development. It's like it's it's like
accelerated research and development. It's it's uh, it's an intense
(01:25):
environment really, I mean, you know all about racing. I
mean it's it's very very hard on cars. So, um,
you know, if they want to test something, develop something
better be right the first time, you know, some of
somebody's life it's taken in that case, you know, right
quite literally. Now, with with that mind, then I like
what you said about accelerated research and design. Here all
(01:47):
puns aside, I just got that now. But would would
these kind of innovations, uh that would they have eventually
been invented without the benefit of racing. I'm gonna have
to give you an I don't know on that one,
but it's just too tough to say, but chances are
they would have. It just would have been much slower. Um.
(02:07):
You kind of look at the development time of racing
and it it's so quick. It's because they're not forced to,
but in a way, they are forced to create something
that that meets the need, the immediate need that they
have on the track. Uh. So you know, they need
a way to slow this car down from a hundred
and fifty zero. Uh, you know, much quicker than it was. Yeah, exactly,
much quicker than it was ever before. How they're going
(02:28):
to do it? You know, that's that's when they came
up with this breaks. Um. They you know, need a
way to cram more air into an engine. They find
a way to do it that way, um, through racing.
So um, it's it's like I said, it's just an
accelerated um pathway. I guess it's you know, they it's
forcing them to create something or forcing them to develop
(02:49):
a new technology like that, Like that old quote, how
does it go? Necessity is the mother of invention? I
guess something like that. Racing perfects the breed or something
like that. I guess the steaks are a little bit
higher in an F one than they are Corolla slightly. Okay,
that's right, slightly, But you know, you'd be surprised how
much of that you know, technology, maybe not directly from
(03:11):
F one to that Corolla, but you'd be surprised how
much of that technology from race racing in the past
has actually made its way into let's say, Corolla. You
know what. Yeah, I'll be honest with you, I was.
I was surprised, and uh more than a few times
checking this out, and I wanted to ask a couple
of questions about some of the specifics here, um, you know,
(03:33):
without without going through everything on the article, because pretty
in depth. The one to know. Uh, car suspension is
one of the things that they mentioned, and and I
know that they already had, manufacturers already had some sort
of suspension system, right of course. Yeah, even uh, even
horse and buggies head uh, some type of suspension. It
(03:53):
was like, you know, like a leather strap or something
like that, but they had something whereas bent metal you know,
made into kind of a rough spring. But um, yeah,
it was it was there, you know, from that point forward,
So there was something there. It was very rough, and
you know that it wasn't really fine tuned until racing
came about, and then people started saying, well, there's got
to be a way for me to get around this
(04:13):
track a little better, a little faster, a little a
little easier. It had nothing to do with comfort. Uh,
comfort has no place really in racing. So I mean
you can imagine, you know, there's not much suspension travel
and uh you know it's let's say an F one
car or you know even I guess stock cars. What
they're all about really is they're all about tuning. They're
all about, um, you know, specifically getting that vehicle to
(04:38):
do what they wanted to do if and if that's
turn left, they wanted to turn left. Really well, uh
you know, they may not care about turning right on track.
They only turn left, so, um, they're they're concerned more
with straight line and left turns. And uh you know
in F one and IndyCar where you know, the suspensions
are really open. You know you see these the arms
kind of they go out to the different to the wheels,
(04:59):
the those those that's part of suspension you're looking at
right there. And they've even developed those pieces to be aerodynamic,
so you know that they're constantly just fine tuning all
of this that you know, it's it's a perfect suspension
really for that vehicle. Okay, so what is the difference then,
I guess the one of sophistication and one of customization. Yeah,
(05:21):
I guess that's a probably a good way to look
at it. I mean, but they're very very they're all
very custom. Um every every race car is an extremely
custom suspension set up. I mean that's they pay somebody
to do just that, to set up the suspension for
the vehicle. UM. Yeah, So it's it's definitely custom. That
sounds like a definitely yeah. Yeah. And you know, some
(05:42):
of the some of the advancements that were made on
the track, they figured out a way that you know,
they could, um, I guess make that marketable or make that,
you know, something that you could put into a um,
a street car and somebody would say, hey, yeah, I
like that because you know, that gives me the ability
to adjust this the way I want to and give
me the ride that I want. Now, street cars have
a little bit more you know, comfort concern. You don't
(06:02):
want to I don't want a rough riding car like that,
and some people, you know, they don't mind that. But
some people want to turn right. Yeah, that's right. Some
people occasionally want to turn right, crazy as it sounds, right.
Another another one that I saw there that that struck
me kind of in the same way was I read
about engine air intake, you know, and I wanted to
(06:23):
know what made this different in racing because I understood
that the auto manufacturers or even just standard uh internal
combustion engine makers already knew the engines needed air. We
absolutely ben what what manufacturers found or what you know,
engine makers found. Of course, they knew that, you know,
engines needed air. They needed a lot of air to run.
(06:43):
And um, in racing, of course, under the hood it
gets very very hot, very very quickly. And um, up
until that point, you know that most of the air
intake was coming through there. It was coming you know,
through the front of the car, maybe through a grill
something like that. You know, it's pretty relatively warm air
underneath the hood, and um, that was her in their
horse power. So they found out that, you know, if
they somehow get cool air to be kind of forced
(07:05):
into that engine, you know, in some way. And that's
why you see some of these scoops on top of
the car, on top of the things that that kind
of go up over the h's right, and sometimes they're
down low and sometimes they're on the sides, and you
know they're they're they're kind of in different places if
you have a mid engine car, rear engine car, Uh,
the intake maybe on the roof of the car, you know,
where it allows it to come you know, over the
top and down into the engine, or maybe even the sides,
(07:27):
like you know, maybe near the wheels, um, the rear wheels.
So they found out quickly that you know, the cooler
the air, the better the horse power was, the faster
the car would run. You know, It's just it was
just better for the engine. Okay, all right, well what's
so that's something what's interesting about that is those scoops
that that you're talking about here could be seen on
a lot of, as we said, mass produced cars. Now, yeah,
(07:49):
that's right, Okay, yeah, a lot of them. Though you
gotta be kind of cautious about that. Some of them
are just decorative, some are purely cosmetic, most of them
really are most of Yeah, there's there are very few
that are a functional. Um the functional Yeah, the functional
ones work really well, and you know they're designed to
do that, but a lot of them are just you know,
for just for looks. Really well, still, I guess that's
(08:11):
still counts as and at least the illusion of an
innovation from racing. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, speaking
of things that you can see just on the body
of the car, I think what got me? And I'm
pretty sure that you'll know what I'm talking about specifically
here what got me? There are a couple of things
I look on cars and I just think these should
have always been there. But there there What else is
(08:34):
there that you could just look at a car and
it actually came from race? Well, actually you can just
probably look at the shape of the car and find
that you know that probably in some way comes from racing. Um,
if you look at the cars, you know, I don't know,
I guess you can go all the way back to
you know, the turn of the century, that the night,
you know, the or the twentieth century. Uh, you know,
(08:54):
the cars were very flat on the front. They were
at very boxy. Really they look like well like like
horse carriages, you know, with engines. And there's a good
reason for that, because that's exactly right. Yeah, but um,
you know, as time went on, you know, and as
racing kind of kind of found out, you know, they
made these streamline racers and you know, you notice that
(09:14):
streamline shapes tend to do better on let's just say
fair dynamics, mile, egit cetera. You see that in a
lot of cars now, and you just you don't even
think about it. It's just kind of like, uh, you
know the shape you take for granted, it's not real boxy, um,
it's not real flat. Everything has kind of got a
you know, a point to it or maybe a rounded
edge to it. And there's a reason for all that.
(09:36):
I think that makes sense. I was. I was also
really surprised in uh, in the article that mentions the
advent of mirrors. Rear view mirrors, Yeah, that's right, Yeah mirrors.
Those came from racing. Yeah they did. Uh, rearview mirror did.
And I guess it's not official. It's kind of unofficial
because you know, it's just a you know, someone said
this or you know, it was documented at the time
(09:57):
that this happened. But uh, the very first Indianapolis uh,
in fact, the winner of the race, Ray Harun, he
used a review mirror for possibly the first time it
was ever attached to a vehicle or everybody ever saw
a review mirror attached to a vehicle, and the reason
was because he couldn't find a writing mechanic to ride
with him during the race, so he you know, he
(10:18):
had it was kind of a work around in his case.
He said, well, I've got to have some way to
look behind me during the race because normally that was
the job of the riding mechanic. So he attached this
mirror to his dash. Now, hang on a second, and
it was the riding mechanic. I'm sorry to the riding
mechanic just sat with the driver. Yeah that's right. Yeah,
that his job was to turn around back in the day, Yeah,
that's right. The all the righting mechanic would would watch
(10:40):
traffic for the driver as well. And you know, Chris
fixed the odd flat that happened on the tracking off
the side or something. So he did more than just acts.
He was truly a mechanic. He really was a mechanic.
But he was also, um, I guess an acting spotter. Wow, okay,
that's so. It just seemed like such a forehead smack
moment to me. You know, to be someone making or
(11:02):
mass producing cars and then say, oh, some way they
can look behind that I've never really thought of before that.
And you know, he didn't get credit for inventing it
or anything. You know, that and that happened later, and
I think it was three or four years later that
someone actually got credit for putting them on street use
of vehicles. Because as a race car we're talking, right,
and you know, I probably just did it right in
(11:23):
the pits the day of the race or something like
that kind of im but he did, he admitted later.
The driver did admit later that he had seen it
used on a horse and carriage, um, some years prior
to that. So somebody else's idea, this is the first
time I was on or ever really seen on a
on a racing vehicle, and you know, three or four
years later it finally took off on production vehicles. Well,
(11:44):
what do you think is the most important technology that's
come from racing, without a doubt? Safety? Safety. Yeah, that's right,
and you know our our article will back that up.
It's safety, and I really stand behind it. I think
that's that's uh, something that's on the top of everybody's
mind when they're in racing. Um. You know, some cars
are going two hundred and forty two twenty, you know,
(12:06):
two hundred miles or whatever it is. Um, you want
to be safe. You want your person, you know, the
person that's occupying that car to be safe. And you know,
so they're they're completely surrounded by roll roll bars and
roll cages and uh, they've got safety devices, you know,
the straps that hold their head so that it's called
the Hans device holds their head kind of backs that
doesn't snap forward. Um, it's just a variety of of
(12:28):
safety devices. Are you know what now you mentioned I
remember seeing that as as the number one entry. And
if some of our listeners might recall from an earlier podcast,
we mentioned that blink can cost you what was that
more than thirty five ft? That was something like that.
I think it was thirty seven ft I think it was.
(12:48):
It's pretty fast. Yeah, that's pretty fast. So but but
really safety is the is the big deal. And honestly,
the technology that comes from the track does make it
into the cars. You don't see it as covered by
the dash and you know, the maybe the carpet in
the car you have, you know, maybe come for your
padded seats, but you know it's all there. They've just
you know, kind of covered it up so that you
(13:09):
know it's not so if you look at the interior
of a race car, it looks very raw, it looks
very open, it's not very finished. Of course, when you
buy a car, you want it to be very very clean,
very nicely. You know, the interior is a big deal
of a lot of people and you're gonna spend a
lot of time in there. But it is safe. It's
it's just covered up. That's all, okay. So other things
like I guess crumple zones. Would that be a good example, Oh,
(13:31):
crumple zones? Have crumple zones came from racing as well. Um,
you know they I don't know if they're directly from
that or not, but you know that plays a big
part in racing because you know what else are you
gonna have to protect you set yourself from. You know,
this wall that's coming at you in a hundred eighty
miles an hour. You need some space between you and
that wall. You've got your car and you don't want
to be totally rigid. You want it to crumple. Uh.
(13:53):
So you know you'll find that a lot of the
cars will just have you ever seen the Rex on TV?
Where you know, the car just seems to blow apart
there just nothing less okay, And you think there's no
way that that guy or or girl is gonna lift
you that wreck? Okay, that that is probably that's a
good example of a crumple zone or um. You know,
this this force, this energy being drawn away from the
(14:16):
person inside. Really the car is accepting all of that,
all of that energy there, it's it's blowing itself apart
in order to save the occupant. Um. Crumple zones are
you know, like this this area. Let's say it's like
um in between the you know, the front winch. The
easiest way to say it would be if you see
a car that's been in a front end wreck. The
front end might collapse totally right all the way up
(14:37):
to where the windshield is, but nothing beyond that. Yeah,
that gives that that kind of absorbs a lot of
that energy, so that, you know, the driver doesn't accept
the full brunt, you know, the full force of that wreck. Okay,
because it sounds like these innovations mainly are are designed
for survival rather than comfort or amenity. That's right. You
can't you you just cannot be going, you know, two
(14:58):
hundred miles an hour. Come to a dead stop and
expect to live. You have to slow down. You have
to slow that down. There's just no other way to
do it, you have to well, Scott, thank you so
much for coming by and filling us in on this.
I had no idea that so many things in you know,
even even though a hatchback like mine actually are descended
(15:21):
from these uh these racing technology. Oh yeah, they're really
intertwined every year. Okay, I guess we should also let
our listeners know that if they want to find out
anything else about race, cars, are racing, or cars in general,
they can check out our auto channel on how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(15:42):
other topics is how stuff works dot com. Let us
know what you think, send an email to podcast at
how stuff works dot com
Go behind the wheel and under the hood on everything automotive,
high speed stuff from how stuff works dot com. Welcome
to the podcast. I'm Ben Bowling here with our one
and only Auto Channel editor Scott. Benjamin Scott, what's going
on today? Well, just kind of hanging out and ready
to talk about cars with you. What's going on? I
(00:21):
am glad you were ready to talk about cars, my friend,
so am I I've actually got some specific questions here.
We've got an article on the website, the top ten
everyday car technologies. They came from Racing. Are you familiar
with us one, Scott, Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with it. Yeah,
it's a good article. Now. I I thought so too,
and I wanted to kind of go in depth with
(00:42):
you about this. One of the first questions that I
asked when I when I read this was how much
money is spent on racing? Would you say, maybe that's
a probably an impossible question to answer, but it would
be in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars easy
if if it doesn't touch a billion dollars, I mean,
it really does get up their highs. Even every manufacturer
(01:05):
just blows piles of money on racing. Yeah, yeah, that's
what I was That's what I was thinking because with
the for these inventions to have to come from racing,
there has to be a lot of money spent in
some ways. It could almost be like research and development. Right, Oh,
it's definitely research and development. It's like it's it's like
accelerated research and development. It's it's uh, it's an intense
(01:25):
environment really, I mean, you know all about racing. I
mean it's it's very very hard on cars. So, um,
you know, if they want to test something, develop something
better be right the first time, you know, some of
somebody's life it's taken in that case, you know, right
quite literally. Now, with with that mind, then I like
what you said about accelerated research and design. Here all
(01:47):
puns aside, I just got that now. But would would
these kind of innovations, uh that would they have eventually
been invented without the benefit of racing. I'm gonna have
to give you an I don't know on that one,
but it's just too tough to say, but chances are
they would have. It just would have been much slower. Um.
(02:07):
You kind of look at the development time of racing
and it it's so quick. It's because they're not forced to,
but in a way, they are forced to create something
that that meets the need, the immediate need that they
have on the track. Uh. So you know, they need
a way to slow this car down from a hundred
and fifty zero. Uh, you know, much quicker than it was. Yeah, exactly,
much quicker than it was ever before. How they're going
(02:28):
to do it? You know, that's that's when they came
up with this breaks. Um. They you know, need a
way to cram more air into an engine. They find
a way to do it that way, um, through racing.
So um, it's it's like I said, it's just an
accelerated um pathway. I guess it's you know, they it's
forcing them to create something or forcing them to develop
(02:49):
a new technology like that, Like that old quote, how
does it go? Necessity is the mother of invention? I
guess something like that. Racing perfects the breed or something
like that. I guess the steaks are a little bit
higher in an F one than they are Corolla slightly. Okay,
that's right, slightly, But you know, you'd be surprised how
much of that you know, technology, maybe not directly from
(03:11):
F one to that Corolla, but you'd be surprised how
much of that technology from race racing in the past
has actually made its way into let's say, Corolla. You
know what. Yeah, I'll be honest with you, I was.
I was surprised, and uh more than a few times
checking this out, and I wanted to ask a couple
of questions about some of the specifics here, um, you know,
(03:33):
without without going through everything on the article, because pretty
in depth. The one to know. Uh, car suspension is
one of the things that they mentioned, and and I
know that they already had, manufacturers already had some sort
of suspension system, right of course. Yeah, even uh, even
horse and buggies head uh, some type of suspension. It
(03:53):
was like, you know, like a leather strap or something
like that, but they had something whereas bent metal you know,
made into kind of a rough spring. But um, yeah,
it was it was there, you know, from that point forward,
So there was something there. It was very rough, and
you know that it wasn't really fine tuned until racing
came about, and then people started saying, well, there's got
to be a way for me to get around this
(04:13):
track a little better, a little faster, a little a
little easier. It had nothing to do with comfort. Uh,
comfort has no place really in racing. So I mean
you can imagine, you know, there's not much suspension travel
and uh you know it's let's say an F one
car or you know even I guess stock cars. What
they're all about really is they're all about tuning. They're
all about, um, you know, specifically getting that vehicle to
(04:38):
do what they wanted to do if and if that's
turn left, they wanted to turn left. Really well, uh
you know, they may not care about turning right on track.
They only turn left, so, um, they're they're concerned more
with straight line and left turns. And uh you know
in F one and IndyCar where you know, the suspensions
are really open. You know you see these the arms
kind of they go out to the different to the wheels,
(04:59):
the those those that's part of suspension you're looking at
right there. And they've even developed those pieces to be aerodynamic,
so you know that they're constantly just fine tuning all
of this that you know, it's it's a perfect suspension
really for that vehicle. Okay, so what is the difference then,
I guess the one of sophistication and one of customization. Yeah,
(05:21):
I guess that's a probably a good way to look
at it. I mean, but they're very very they're all
very custom. Um every every race car is an extremely
custom suspension set up. I mean that's they pay somebody
to do just that, to set up the suspension for
the vehicle. UM. Yeah, So it's it's definitely custom. That
sounds like a definitely yeah. Yeah. And you know, some
(05:42):
of the some of the advancements that were made on
the track, they figured out a way that you know,
they could, um, I guess make that marketable or make that,
you know, something that you could put into a um,
a street car and somebody would say, hey, yeah, I
like that because you know, that gives me the ability
to adjust this the way I want to and give
me the ride that I want. Now, street cars have
a little bit more you know, comfort concern. You don't
(06:02):
want to I don't want a rough riding car like that,
and some people, you know, they don't mind that. But
some people want to turn right. Yeah, that's right. Some
people occasionally want to turn right, crazy as it sounds, right.
Another another one that I saw there that that struck
me kind of in the same way was I read
about engine air intake, you know, and I wanted to
(06:23):
know what made this different in racing because I understood
that the auto manufacturers or even just standard uh internal
combustion engine makers already knew the engines needed air. We
absolutely ben what what manufacturers found or what you know,
engine makers found. Of course, they knew that, you know,
engines needed air. They needed a lot of air to run.
(06:43):
And um, in racing, of course, under the hood it
gets very very hot, very very quickly. And um, up
until that point, you know that most of the air
intake was coming through there. It was coming you know,
through the front of the car, maybe through a grill
something like that. You know, it's pretty relatively warm air
underneath the hood, and um, that was her in their
horse power. So they found out that, you know, if
they somehow get cool air to be kind of forced
(07:05):
into that engine, you know, in some way. And that's
why you see some of these scoops on top of
the car, on top of the things that that kind
of go up over the h's right, and sometimes they're
down low and sometimes they're on the sides, and you
know they're they're they're kind of in different places if
you have a mid engine car, rear engine car, Uh,
the intake maybe on the roof of the car, you know,
where it allows it to come you know, over the
top and down into the engine, or maybe even the sides,
(07:27):
like you know, maybe near the wheels, um, the rear wheels.
So they found out quickly that you know, the cooler
the air, the better the horse power was, the faster
the car would run. You know, It's just it was
just better for the engine. Okay, all right, well what's
so that's something what's interesting about that is those scoops
that that you're talking about here could be seen on
a lot of, as we said, mass produced cars. Now, yeah,
(07:49):
that's right, Okay, yeah, a lot of them. Though you
gotta be kind of cautious about that. Some of them
are just decorative, some are purely cosmetic, most of them
really are most of Yeah, there's there are very few
that are a functional. Um the functional Yeah, the functional
ones work really well, and you know they're designed to
do that, but a lot of them are just you know,
for just for looks. Really well, still, I guess that's
(08:11):
still counts as and at least the illusion of an
innovation from racing. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, speaking
of things that you can see just on the body
of the car, I think what got me? And I'm
pretty sure that you'll know what I'm talking about specifically
here what got me? There are a couple of things
I look on cars and I just think these should
have always been there. But there there What else is
(08:34):
there that you could just look at a car and
it actually came from race? Well, actually you can just
probably look at the shape of the car and find
that you know that probably in some way comes from racing. Um,
if you look at the cars, you know, I don't know,
I guess you can go all the way back to
you know, the turn of the century, that the night,
you know, the or the twentieth century. Uh, you know,
(08:54):
the cars were very flat on the front. They were
at very boxy. Really they look like well like like
horse carriages, you know, with engines. And there's a good
reason for that, because that's exactly right. Yeah, but um,
you know, as time went on, you know, and as
racing kind of kind of found out, you know, they
made these streamline racers and you know, you notice that
(09:14):
streamline shapes tend to do better on let's just say
fair dynamics, mile, egit cetera. You see that in a
lot of cars now, and you just you don't even
think about it. It's just kind of like, uh, you
know the shape you take for granted, it's not real boxy, um,
it's not real flat. Everything has kind of got a
you know, a point to it or maybe a rounded
edge to it. And there's a reason for all that.
(09:36):
I think that makes sense. I was. I was also
really surprised in uh, in the article that mentions the
advent of mirrors. Rear view mirrors, Yeah, that's right, Yeah mirrors.
Those came from racing. Yeah they did. Uh, rearview mirror did.
And I guess it's not official. It's kind of unofficial
because you know, it's just a you know, someone said
this or you know, it was documented at the time
(09:57):
that this happened. But uh, the very first Indianapolis uh,
in fact, the winner of the race, Ray Harun, he
used a review mirror for possibly the first time it
was ever attached to a vehicle or everybody ever saw
a review mirror attached to a vehicle, and the reason
was because he couldn't find a writing mechanic to ride
with him during the race, so he you know, he
(10:18):
had it was kind of a work around in his case.
He said, well, I've got to have some way to
look behind me during the race because normally that was
the job of the riding mechanic. So he attached this
mirror to his dash. Now, hang on a second, and
it was the riding mechanic. I'm sorry to the riding
mechanic just sat with the driver. Yeah that's right. Yeah,
that his job was to turn around back in the day, Yeah,
that's right. The all the righting mechanic would would watch
(10:40):
traffic for the driver as well. And you know, Chris
fixed the odd flat that happened on the tracking off
the side or something. So he did more than just acts.
He was truly a mechanic. He really was a mechanic.
But he was also, um, I guess an acting spotter. Wow, okay,
that's so. It just seemed like such a forehead smack
moment to me. You know, to be someone making or
(11:02):
mass producing cars and then say, oh, some way they
can look behind that I've never really thought of before that.
And you know, he didn't get credit for inventing it
or anything. You know, that and that happened later, and
I think it was three or four years later that
someone actually got credit for putting them on street use
of vehicles. Because as a race car we're talking, right,
and you know, I probably just did it right in
(11:23):
the pits the day of the race or something like
that kind of im but he did, he admitted later.
The driver did admit later that he had seen it
used on a horse and carriage, um, some years prior
to that. So somebody else's idea, this is the first
time I was on or ever really seen on a
on a racing vehicle, and you know, three or four
years later it finally took off on production vehicles. Well,
(11:44):
what do you think is the most important technology that's
come from racing, without a doubt? Safety? Safety. Yeah, that's right,
and you know our our article will back that up.
It's safety, and I really stand behind it. I think
that's that's uh, something that's on the top of everybody's
mind when they're in racing. Um. You know, some cars
are going two hundred and forty two twenty, you know,
(12:06):
two hundred miles or whatever it is. Um, you want
to be safe. You want your person, you know, the
person that's occupying that car to be safe. And you know,
so they're they're completely surrounded by roll roll bars and
roll cages and uh, they've got safety devices, you know,
the straps that hold their head so that it's called
the Hans device holds their head kind of backs that
doesn't snap forward. Um, it's just a variety of of
(12:28):
safety devices. Are you know what now you mentioned I
remember seeing that as as the number one entry. And
if some of our listeners might recall from an earlier podcast,
we mentioned that blink can cost you what was that
more than thirty five ft? That was something like that.
I think it was thirty seven ft I think it was.
(12:48):
It's pretty fast. Yeah, that's pretty fast. So but but
really safety is the is the big deal. And honestly,
the technology that comes from the track does make it
into the cars. You don't see it as covered by
the dash and you know, the maybe the carpet in
the car you have, you know, maybe come for your
padded seats, but you know it's all there. They've just
you know, kind of covered it up so that you
(13:09):
know it's not so if you look at the interior
of a race car, it looks very raw, it looks
very open, it's not very finished. Of course, when you
buy a car, you want it to be very very clean,
very nicely. You know, the interior is a big deal
of a lot of people and you're gonna spend a
lot of time in there. But it is safe. It's
it's just covered up. That's all, okay. So other things
like I guess crumple zones. Would that be a good example, Oh,
(13:31):
crumple zones? Have crumple zones came from racing as well. Um,
you know they I don't know if they're directly from
that or not, but you know that plays a big
part in racing because you know what else are you
gonna have to protect you set yourself from. You know,
this wall that's coming at you in a hundred eighty
miles an hour. You need some space between you and
that wall. You've got your car and you don't want
to be totally rigid. You want it to crumple. Uh.
(13:53):
So you know you'll find that a lot of the
cars will just have you ever seen the Rex on TV?
Where you know, the car just seems to blow apart
there just nothing less okay, And you think there's no
way that that guy or or girl is gonna lift
you that wreck? Okay, that that is probably that's a
good example of a crumple zone or um. You know,
this this force, this energy being drawn away from the
(14:16):
person inside. Really the car is accepting all of that,
all of that energy there, it's it's blowing itself apart
in order to save the occupant. Um. Crumple zones are
you know, like this this area. Let's say it's like
um in between the you know, the front winch. The
easiest way to say it would be if you see
a car that's been in a front end wreck. The
front end might collapse totally right all the way up
(14:37):
to where the windshield is, but nothing beyond that. Yeah,
that gives that that kind of absorbs a lot of
that energy, so that, you know, the driver doesn't accept
the full brunt, you know, the full force of that wreck. Okay,
because it sounds like these innovations mainly are are designed
for survival rather than comfort or amenity. That's right. You
can't you you just cannot be going, you know, two
(14:58):
hundred miles an hour. Come to a dead stop and
expect to live. You have to slow down. You have
to slow that down. There's just no other way to
do it, you have to well, Scott, thank you so
much for coming by and filling us in on this.
I had no idea that so many things in you know,
even even though a hatchback like mine actually are descended
(15:21):
from these uh these racing technology. Oh yeah, they're really
intertwined every year. Okay, I guess we should also let
our listeners know that if they want to find out
anything else about race, cars, are racing, or cars in general,
they can check out our auto channel on how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(15:42):
other topics is how stuff works dot com. Let us
know what you think, send an email to podcast at
how stuff works dot com
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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