Ford V. Ferrari

In reply to Javelin :

It certainly felt that way watching Ford v Ferrari 

I enjoyed the movie because it was entertaining, but it was a Speed Racer take on history and racing with scenes like the drivers staring at each other while racing and Miles going from 5th to 1st in the 23rd hour at Daytona.

Yeah - if you are side by side at 200 mph the last thing you have time for is turning and taking your eyes off the road to glower at your opponent out the side window.

And those glowing disc brakes - hey guys, with somewhere between 60 and 70% of the braking on the front wheels, the front and rear don't glow at the same brightness/colour temperature.  But I guess they only had one colour of LED to stick inside the wheels to replicate glowing brakes.  lots of critical details but nonetheless it was a good time with some interesting cars. That customer of Miles with the tarted up MGA though - the poor car looked like it had been run through J.C. Whitney with a giant electromagnet attached, pulling in every crapola tasteless period accessory it passed.  Maybe the point was to say that the owner was a tasteless git - if so it succeeded.

Enjoyed it as a Hollywood experience with a buddy tonight.  The theatre was full of cars guys with their wives having a nice night out.

I'm glad I saw it, because I now know that the next time I watch Tim race, he just needs to upshift two or three more times on the straights to pull away from the driver he's been staring at. Maybe I'll get an old-school chalkboard and write UPSHIFT or PRESS THE GAS 4 MORE INCHES and stand on pit row with it. He'd win every time! (Unless of course he's too busy staring at the speedometer in his race car to see it.)

Margie

To be fair if you just treat is as a movie, it's quite entertaining. Just don't go there thinking you're going to be seeing anything real. Look past the modern steering wheel on the fake 356, deep into Matt Damon's Ray Bans, and focus on Christian Bales's ability to almost literally transform himself into a bulldog, and you'll have a great time.

Margie

The problem is

1)all it would have taken to make it amazing would have been a couple knowledgeable consultants. 

And 

2)people learn things from these movies, and what we’re teaching them is bull E36 M3. I teach automotive technology to 18-24 kids and they are completely misinformed about our hobby and the physics thereof by f+f style movies. It’s not good for car culture. 

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

Before everybody gets all ouchie, I do appreciate that Hollywood actually made this movie.  I also understand that much of what is being panned here is necessary for "non-racing" folk to appreciate that there were personal rivalries, the cars were going fast and risks were being taken.  A shaking speedometer pushing 200 mph is easier to understand visually than the fact that the back end of the car just stepped out 2 inches on the upshift . . . and you're already in triple digits.  A worried glance at the speedo is more understandable and visually appealing (at least for most of us) than tightly clenched glutes to convey that the driver isn't sure he's going to be able to pull this move off.  The "200 mph stare-down" is just dumb, I have no excuse for that one.  As I look at it, had I written/directed the movie, I'd probably have had to wave the proverbial white flag and included some of those sight gags just to make the movie understandable.  I guess in a perfect world, they might have including some elements to raise the public's interest about ACTUAL race driving.  For example, while "pressing the gas pedal four more inches" is understandable, I think the "non-racing" public would have been blown away to see the footwork involved in a clean braking heel-toe downshift.  I distinctly remember watching a NASCAR road course race long before I did any competitive driving (my "racing buddies" would say I've never done any "competitive" driving, BTW) where they had a "footwell cam" and wondering what the heck the driver was doing with his feet.  (I think it was Boris Said they were showing, but I'm not 100% sure).  The "historical inaccuracies" have already been covered extensively.  In the end, I think they made a really good movie that the average person would actually watch.  

If you think this movie portrays racing and cars inaccurately because of Hollywood, then don't listen to soldiers discuss war movies...

Everything on the big screen is dramatized.

Javelin said:

If you think this movie portrays racing and cars inaccurately because of Hollywood, then don't listen to soldiers discuss war movies...

Everything on the big screen is dramatized.

Pretty much this. Hollywood has never factually represented anything, what makes anyone think they'd start now?

During the 200 mph stare down they should have put Miles thinking "what am a I going to get Mollie for her birthday " for regular people to relate....

Marjorie Suddard said:

I'm glad I saw it, because I now know that the next time I watch Tim race, he just needs to upshift two or three more times on the straights to pull away from the driver he's been staring at. Maybe I'll get an old-school chalkboard and write UPSHIFT or PRESS THE GAS 4 MORE INCHES and stand on pit row with it. He'd win every time! (Unless of course he's too busy staring at the speedometer in his race car to see it.)

Margie

Of all the horseE36 M3 in Days of Thunder, the part where Cole Trickle grows a set and decides to upshift and go faster at Daytona pisses me off the most..

In reply to Carbon :

Disagree. There was literally thousands of details to be sweated and they hit most of them. But in the end, they have to sell tickets, and that means dumbing down wonky things that only car guys care about. 

Streetwiseguy said:

Marjorie Suddard said:

I'm glad I saw it, because I now know that the next time I watch Tim race, he just needs to upshift two or three more times on the straights to pull away from the driver he's been staring at. Maybe I'll get an old-school chalkboard and write UPSHIFT or PRESS THE GAS 4 MORE INCHES and stand on pit row with it. He'd win every time! (Unless of course he's too busy staring at the speedometer in his race car to see it.)

Margie

Of all the horseE36 M3 in Days of Thunder, the part where Cole Trickle grows a set and decides to upshift and go faster at Daytona pisses me off the most..

I may be mis-remembering, but didn't NASCAR's of the era run ridiculously close together 3rd/4th gears on superspeedways to accelerate better on the shorter straight but eke out a few more MPH on the longer one? Talladega specifically IIRC...

In reply to Javelin :

My grandfather finding out there were "war" video games: "Where's the bit where you dig a hole and hide in it for five days and if you poke your head out, someone shoots at it?"

A friend owned one of the street version GT 40s, which certainly came equipped with a speedometer, but AFAIK the race cars never did, so the footage of the quivering speedometer needle are also bogus and designed to allow the great unwashed to better relate to the movie..

Picture of the dash of one of the 1966 Le Mans 427 GT 40s:

See https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/ford-gt40-from-le-mans-rm-sothebys-monterey-sale-2808086/

Netflix now has two documentaries by Adam Carolla that cover the Ford V Ferrari and Shelby story. One is "The 24 Hour War" and the other is "Shelby American" and they do a lot to correct and fill in the gaps of the movie

You guys thinking consultants could've made this better....  they hired plenty of them but didn't value their input.  Same goes for war movies.  Movies are not about accuracy of even telling a story.  It's about Hollywood A listers getting more money.  You can either accept that and enjoy it, or you cannot.  Hollywood's version of any story, even fictional ones, usually isn't a great representation of the original.  It's a movie, not a documentary.

Javelin said:

Streetwiseguy said:

Marjorie Suddard said:

I'm glad I saw it, because I now know that the next time I watch Tim race, he just needs to upshift two or three more times on the straights to pull away from the driver he's been staring at. Maybe I'll get an old-school chalkboard and write UPSHIFT or PRESS THE GAS 4 MORE INCHES and stand on pit row with it. He'd win every time! (Unless of course he's too busy staring at the speedometer in his race car to see it.)

Margie

Of all the horseE36 M3 in Days of Thunder, the part where Cole Trickle grows a set and decides to upshift and go faster at Daytona pisses me off the most..

I may be mis-remembering, but didn't NASCAR's of the era run ridiculously close together 3rd/4th gears on superspeedways to accelerate better on the shorter straight but eke out a few more MPH on the longer one? Talladega specifically IIRC...

No.  Pocono they do, some guys at Phoenix.  The way they've run Daytona and Talledega since about 1980 is with a brick on the gas pedal.

wspohn said:And those glowing disc brakes - hey guys, with somewhere between 60 and 70% of the braking on the front wheels, the front and rear don't glow at the same brightness/colour temperature. 

... Really?  Glowing brakes?

I was under the impression that the largest problem they had with making disk brakes work in a racing environment until the mid-70s was getting pad compounds that still had good friction properties when over 800F.  That is well before incandescent temperatures.  So, technically, they probably shouldn't have been glowing at all.

Off to do some reading!  Looking up stuff like this is even more fun than watching a movie IMO.

Just saw it this afternoon.  I thought it was fun.  My two teenage girls thought it was fun.  My wife was all excited and declared her next car would be a Mustang.  So it was fun!

It's just a movie.  Who cares if they do the 200 mph stare-down?

Knurled. said:

... Really?  Glowing brakes?

 

I was under the impression that the largest problem they had with making disk brakes work in a racing environment until the mid-70s was getting pad compounds that still had good friction properties when over 800F.  That is well before incandescent temperatures.  So, technically, they probably shouldn't have been glowing at all.

 

Off to do some reading!  Looking up stuff like this is even more fun than watching a movie IMO.

Sounds like you're on it,  but I've seen exhaust manifolds glow pretty brightly and I doubt they were that much hotter than 800 degrees on the outside surface.

My biggest issue with the glowing brakes was that they were still glowing at the end of the Mulsanne straight.

The brakes were in those days multi- function. Sometimes they slowed the cars down, the rest of the time they were cornermarker indicator lamps. This pic is from Sebring and you'll notice the car is parked.  Were they glowing at the end of the Mulsanne? You bet.

There's another documentary on Netflix, this one called "Carroll Shelby." It's apparently made by the same people who made the other documentary "24 Hour War", because a LOT of it used the same footage. Still interested, the new parts at least.