Toadman

Check it out.

Grimace

Good read.

PatrickB

For the record, on the safety info page under that website, it said the RX-8 would have 17" 4-wheel ventilated disk brakes and dynamic stability control:

Grimace

That still must be a misprint. There is no way you can fit 17" brake rotors in a 18" rim, unless you decide the caliper isn't a necessity...

wakeech

all very well and good, but still no good tech-head info!!
i wanna know about the material advances that lead to weight reduction, higher RPMs, etc., etc. etc... does anyone know if this engine has a variable length inspiration runner/manifold/whatever a la the 787B and the new BMW 7 4.4L V8??

Jerome81

If I remember correctly the car will have 3 stage variable intake runners.

Not bad.

Rich

Nnnnooooo! Please, oh please, give it an off button for track and autocross use! Please!

Good Duck

The brake rotor spec is not a misprint, but it's a spec that we in North America are not use to see. It doesn't mean that the brake rotors have an actual diameter of 17", it just mean that the minimum diameter of the wheel that will clear the brake is 17". This type of brake spec is often seen in Europe. For example go to Subaru UK site and check out the brake spec for the regular Impreza: 15" disc on a 15" wheel.

Grimace

Ahhh, Good Duck, I understand now.

So I surmise the base models with the 16" rims will have different brakes than the full-on model with 18" rims... interesting...

Good Duck

From the various pics I estimated the brake rotor to be about 300mm or 11.8" +- .5"

Hercules

There will definately be an off button. I could not even fathom NOT having one.

Quick_lude

It BETTER have one.. otherwise Mazda will lose many prospective customers..

Grimace

I'm sure it'll have a defeat button. Can't think of many cars with traction control that don't have a defeat (except family sedans).

Narflar

If you follow Indy Racing, you know they were pretty much forced into using stability control. Everyone thought that the tradition of sliding around corners would die. Well they still do it even with stability control. =)

wakeech

now, it's not that i don't like indy, it's just too slow for me to pay too much attention (i watch F1...), and so i don't know all the tech regs off by heart.
are you SURE that they run DSC and not TCS?? it's easy to confuse them, and i know that the commentators have MANY times said "stability control" even during an F1 GP... <<sigh>>
the kind of DSC that you see in Lexuses and Mercedes would hinder the cars ability to have a vector which was off the longitudinal axis the car is oriented to move along... what i'm saying is that DSC in road cars is infallible, unless it's phyically impossible for the brakes to alter the direction of the car's orientation... (i'm guessing everyone knows that the computer modulates each brake independantly to bring the momentum back in line if you start to spin...)
maybe Indy cars do have this, but they know that it'll kill their lap times around slower circuits, especailly since they run fairly hard rubber (compared to other premier karting championships) and run long stints... so, i'd imagine that they turn it way WAY down... but i still don't understand how everyone could spin so much in Denver (i do watch a little...) with the crappiness of the road surface there (i mean for a race track...) if they had any amount of DSC dialed in...??

Narflar

Ahhh...good point. I got it confused. :D

Hercules

DSC is defeatable in BMWs.... so is TC. There are two buttons that say TC and DSC :D

Not that I've ever pushed them or anything ...

boowana

Sorry for going off topic for a bit but, if you think F1 is fast (I know, road ciruit vs tri-oval), be sure to watch the fianl Indy race at Texas Motor Speeday on Sunday the 15th. There are four guys that could win the championship right now.
In the last five IRL races at TMS, the TOTAL TIME between first and second for ALL FIVE RACES is 41/100th of a second. Talk about thrilling racces (not on a road course)!!:D :D :D :D :D

wakeech

if F1 cars were running there (even within thier own rules), by virtue of their 150kg advantage in mass, they'd still be faster!!:p
but, then again, they'd not be able to finish the race!! AHAHA!! :D
(engines designed only to last 350km race or whatever...)

B-Nez

CART had to cancel last year's Houston race, because the drivers were blacking out on the course. Now if that isn't fast, then what is?

wakeech

it's not that i'm saying CART is in reality slower, but F1 is faster, with more technological and spectacular allure, that's all... i wouldn't get up at 4:00 am or whatever every other weekend for CART, that's all...

babylou

wakeech,

Mass has basically no effect on top speed. A Champ car has a about 30 mph higher top speed over an F1 car because the Champ car has lower drag (less downforce alos) and equal power. Of course the draggy F1 car has massive downforce and low weight so it sticks like hell in corners and accelerates and brakes better than a Champ car.

F1 is not a technological tour de force! There are no technologies on an F1 car that are not available on an a Mazda. The only thing advanced in F1 is the materials used to make the car are based purely on performance and not cost. Examples are nickel alloy exhausts, carbon-carbon brakes, titanium out the wazoo and carbon fiber reinforced plastic everywhere else. When I am watching a race I don't care if the ballast used is lead or depleted uranium. I also cannot see the difference between a 70 s lap and a 75 s lap.

boowana

The CART race that was cancelled was not Houston but was to be at Texas Motor Speedway.
Regarding F1, I love every form of motor sports. I too get up at 6:00AM to watch every F1 race. This year, I haven't lost much sleep because I'm usually back to sleep by 6:10Am; that's after the first corner of the first lap has been run. That way, I pretty much know the running order at the end of the race, give or take a car or two. F1 unfortunately has become the most boring racing out there.
Now, back to IRL: If you watched the race yesterday, the tiem between first place (Sam Hornish) and second (Al Unser Jr.) was 24/10,000 of a scond. Great viewing, even on TV.
The final at TMS is coming up this Sunday. The champion will be decided here. If you really want to see a great race, be sure to tune in.:p

wakeech

i didn't mean to **** anybody off!! :D
but babylou, i'm pretty sure mass has a sizeable effect on max speed (which has little affect on most laptimes, well, okay, it does in circle track times) according to that fundamental physics equation KE = (0.5) * m * V^2, meaning that
V = (KE/2*m)^(0.5)
so, mass does have a big affect on maximum velocity, as it is the square root of half the kinetic energy divided by mass. so, i wouldn't say almost none... especially since the difference is 150kg, which is about 330 lbs...

(i'm using metric math 'cause i'm canadian, so KE is in joules, m in kilograms, and V in metres/second)

so if we assume that the F1 car is 600 kg, and the CART car is 750 kg, at a velocity of 15 m/s, then we get an kenetic energy value of 67 500 J for the F1 car and 84 275 J for the CART car, in a frictionless vacuum... so, if they've both got the same amount of power behind 'em (and power is energy added per second... i can't remember what the unit is in metric...) then we can see that the F1 car would, in this simplified example, be far quicker.

oh, and as for drag, ya, if you compare the aero setups that F1 cars have for a track like Monaco or the Hungaroring with cirlce track setups for CART cars, then ya, they'd have a whole lot more drag.
if the F1 guys were allowed to setup their cars in any format they'd choose, i'm sure they'd be able to come up with some comprimise which would allow them to at least equal the drag coefficients of the CART packages...
another thing too is that F1 cars have a far smaller frontal area, and i can't remember the relationship, but some amout of drag force can be calculated by velocity, frontal area, and something else (like rake of the front of the vehicle.... i read it on some british touring enthusiast page a while ago...), meaning that they just have a lot less air pushing against them with their narrower track and lower overall height.

i'm finished, i wanna talk some more about rotaries!! :D

**edited for my own stupidity: it'd been a while (year and a half) since i looked at physics eq'ns, and i forgot the "half" in the primary KE and V relation... thanks ddaiker!! and added in example.