Physics of Racing

Instagram: Physicsofracing

UBC Sports Car Club hosted lecture on the physics behind racing and car set-up. I will ultimately evolve this lecture into a multi-part series for online delivery.

Two short videos have been trimmed out of the lecture for copyright reasons. The impact on the content should be very minor. Links to the original videos are provided at the end of this intro.

In the meantime, I've created an IG account - Physicsofracing - to answer any questions people may have on car physics. If you have a question, tag me in your post and I will try to answer, or DM me with a question.

Trimmed videos:
Sebastian Vettel 2017 Singapore pole lap

Ari Ventanen near miss (at 2:03)

[integrantedavidanoturna]

I only absorbed around 20% of what he said but I managed to get 4secs off on racing simulators just by watching this. Awesome video.

[alexsharp]

This is literally the best lecture on racing physics I have ever seen. Thank you Sir.

[MrDrivingFaster]

I don’t know if I have ever seen somebody who knows the physics and knows the racing empirical knowledge so well. Great content

[nilskoesters]

It's midnight on a friday and I am watching a lecture... I think this means this is pretty interesting to watch. Real good job sir. It's real fun listening your lecture :) Thank you

[abicol]

As a physics major and a sim-racer I loved this. How have I not found this till now

[TanmayPanchal]

For someone who has been visiting tracks for years, this lecture has been a very educating. I was instantly able to relate with the practical driving techniques we have been taught. Amazing stuff..!!

[vancedgalaxytab]

This is pure gold for a car enthusiast/engineer like me. Gives me a much better understanding of what I should be doing on track. Thanks for the awesome lecture👊👊

[Luismercado]

Excellent video, make me remember my college days. Im a mechanical engineer and participate on amateur track time events and tune my own cars. No matter if the person go into racing or not, but it helps to avoid car accidents for daily drivers.

[oliverhardin]

This was an incredible experience. I just sim raced with a bunch of new friends to racing and I have no idea how to explain what I feel when driving. I’ve come up with vague concepts for it all but none of it made sense to them. This video was crazy because he was literally explaining everything I never knew had terminology for 😂

[MrToshiba]

For the Vettel onboard video it should be noted, that in F1 onboards they never show you how much percent of the maximum braking force is applied unlike for the accelaration, so they only show when braking is applied (I think because it is so crucial for laptime, the teams don’t want to show this metric to their opponents). This should become obvious if you listen to the rest of the lecture, but it still might cause some confusion, if you are not aware of this fact. In Le Mans broadcasting this year, they also showed how much braking is applied, which kind of suprised me.

[ianconn]

Thank you for this. I can never find anyone in the car world (irl) who thinks about automotive engineering from a math perspective.

Amazingly dense and informative.

[michielvanstaden]

I love this, the MR2 joke blew my mind.

[recca]

I fell asleep while YouTube was playing in the background and woke up into this🤯 thank you YouTube gods 🙏

[dp]

Reporter: So why did you crash today?
Professor: I didn't have enough traction budget

[iisszzll]

this helped me a lot trying to understand weight loads and relative angular moment understeer, honestly I can't thank you enough, this is a pure gold mine! I will be recommending this video for sure

[ProudWhipoc]

This IS....THE ONLY CRITICAL RACE THEORY THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOL.... OR COLLEGE!!!

[jspeed]

One of the best videos on both racing and physics I've ever come across. I've learned so much in this lecture. I mean, wow. Thank you.

[UOTDF]

@Andre Marziali - thank you for this wonderfully informative lecture. I have my first drive in a couple of days time of my 488 Challenge Evo and thanks to your lecture, I am now only 95% crapping my pants! Great stuff 😊

[danielvellacott]

I raced karts at a pretty high level in Australia in one of the most competitive eras from the age of 10 to 18 and have been involved in the sport my whole life 36 years and follow most forms of motorsport like its my form of religion, And I loved every minute of this lecture to the point where i actually hope you will do more of them.
I highly recommend anybody who is either starting out as a driver or an engineer even just a pit crew to watch this video.
You are 100% correct with everything that you explained and totally agree with your comment on how certain areas of car setup is a highly debated topic.
The 2 things i thought were and think are the 2 most important things every driver needs to make it the first thing they learn is how to get a race car around a corner, and it's my golden rule, SLOW IN FAST OUT, optimize your exit, even if you have to sacrafice to achieve it.
the other is in regards to setup, like you might have a understeer, 90% of begineers will only make changes to the front end to try and fix it, and they solve the understeer problem but have created 5 new issues in the cars handling, where if they made 1 tiny change to the rear of the car it could have fixed the issue without creating more problems'

In regards to spring rates and how you run very stiff springs and you wanted to hear reasons why shofter springs work, the softer spring is used to produce a better tyre life over a longer duration, a stiffer spring will produce a better overall lap time over 3-4 laps, where as a softer spring will not be as fast but will produce a better overall averaga lap time over a race distance of 30 laps.

Thanks for doing this video, i enjoyed every minute of it

[dankbuds]

Thank you so very much for this! Having been dropped out of high school, my mathematics limits me from further understanding of how to properly balance and setting up my vehicle for racing and cornering. This where stuff learned in school can be really useful and applied to the real world. I will be bookmarking this video and watching it over and over again. Thank you again Sir Marziali for this wonderful video! 👌👍👍