JXB Audi: Is this the ultimate autocross aero setup?

“What if we go bigger?”

Sure, why not? Lots of amazing ideas start out that way–including this one.

Jay Bullington is the owner of this particularly aggressive Audi S4, which normally competes in the SCCA’s Street Modified autocross class.

Having earned a berth in UMI’s King of the Mountain autocross competition, which puts more than $25,000 of prize money on the line in …

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I would think making the last couple elements of the front wing out of Lexan would be worthwhile...

I was wondering, since there's no way you can see cones past that thing, is the intent to yeet them into the stratosphere before the shaggers even notice you hit one?

In reply to Duke :

"hey wasn't there a slalom here?"
 

That's awesome, and I hope it does well.

I've long thought that for autox, there is no such thing as too much wing!

It's a training aid designed to force you to keep your eyes up. You should already know where the cone is by the time the car gets there, and this car makes sure you either learn that skill or take out every cone on the course.

Lets see a bigger radiator fan taking air from under the car. "but I need a 100hp engine to cool my car". Also needs the lighted rods on the front corners like a big rig has

busmech said:

Lets see a bigger radiator fan taking air from under the car. "but I need a 100hp engine to cool my car". Also needs the lighted rods on the front corners like a big rig has

I've been thinking, when you put this much power into driving wings through the atmosphere, and that power has to go through the ground, how much forward traction could you gain by putting the same amount of power into running a sucker fan instead?

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Which is more efficient, an airplane or a helicopter?

But it is an excellent question. 

^Good point. Putting the same amount of power into the sucker fan wouldn't result in as much downforce. It would also be interesting to produce the same amount of downforce with a sucker fan (however much power that takes) and compare forward traction, acceleration and top speed.

In reply to Duke :

I can confirm from driving the car, there is no issue seeing over the front wing or driving through slaloms.... the things that people seem to doubt most (we had doubts too)  =)

Robbie (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Which is more efficient, an airplane or a helicopter?

But it is an excellent question. 

An airplane is more efficient but wings require airspeed to create lift.  Your delta P on a wing is limited by the wings velocity.  

Helicopters turn HP into noise and as a consequence generate lift.   A sucker car can make theoretically up to ~14psi of delta P on the floorpan at 0 speed assuming enough HP is thrown at it.  

If you have limited HP or weight there are potentially cross over points where the HP required to drive a sucker mechanism or the weight penalty of said sucker mechanism would be detrimental, but if everything was unlimited big active wings combined with a sucker floor would be the ultimate. 

In reply to Mugenlude :

Have you ran any back to back wings on/wings off testing?  I understand that you probably can't do it before the big event but it would be interesting after.  

When we were testing out FSAE car the wings where worth 2-4% on a cornering intensive course, however there was substantial driving technique change required to extract that.  Shortest distance gave way to highest possible cornering velocity on all but the tightest corners.  

Jupiter Gravity!

Mugenlude said:

In reply to Duke :

I can confirm from driving the car, there is no issue seeing over the front wing or driving through slaloms.... the things that people seem to doubt most (we had doubts too)  =)

Cool!

In reply to nocones :

We tested with the new front aero and normal SM rear wing setup (2-element Ciro) - it resulted in me spinning the car for the first time ever turning in the first brake zone.

GameboyRMH said:

busmech said:

Lets see a bigger radiator fan taking air from under the car. "but I need a 100hp engine to cool my car". Also needs the lighted rods on the front corners like a big rig has

I've been thinking, when you put this much power into driving wings through the atmosphere, and that power has to go through the ground, how much forward traction could you gain by putting the same amount of power into running a sucker fan instead?

The cooling is all on the rear with a huge fan. It's blown over the rear spoiler!

Impressive setup.  Was CFD analysis done to design this? 

Front wing looks extremely steep, does it not stall?  And looks like it might feed tons of dirty air to the rear wing.  If the car if front limited then this might be OK.

Certainly tons of drag with this setup, so I assume they have gobs of power. (can't see the full article yet)

This is the ideal racecar body. You may not like it, but this is what peak autocross looks like.

BenB said:

This.

Javelin said:

GameboyRMH said:

busmech said:

Lets see a bigger radiator fan taking air from under the car. "but I need a 100hp engine to cool my car". Also needs the lighted rods on the front corners like a big rig has

I've been thinking, when you put this much power into driving wings through the atmosphere, and that power has to go through the ground, how much forward traction could you gain by putting the same amount of power into running a sucker fan instead?

The cooling is all on the rear with a huge fan. It's blown over the rear spoiler!

The rear cooling is just the heat exchanger for the air to water cooler for the turbos.

I see I'm not the only person that has questions about heat control. 

R    U    effen     kidding  ME  what are y'all on CRACK????  enough already