StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Motorsports – Physics & Technology, with Will Buxton & Mario Andretti

Episode Date: June 7, 2018

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly race down the track, hairpin through the corner, and kick it into high gear as we explore the science-filled spectacle of auto racing with F1 journalist Will Buxton, physics professor Richard Bower, adventure journalist Jim Clash, and legendary driver Mario Andretti.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/motorsports-physics-technology-with-will-buxton-and-mario-andretti/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly and I'm Chuck Nice and this is Playing With Science. Oh yes it is and today we change gears. We will even reduce our drag but please don't tell Chuck. Please don't. Shh, please don't do it. And whether you do it in Ferrari red or good old mellow yellow, Newton's laws of physics will be strictly observed. And please do it in Ferrari red, because we know that mellow yellow is tacky, baby.

And bringing us the physics of motorsports is a computational cosmologist, Professor Richard Bauer from Dunham University in England, a man who is always looking up while keeping all four wheels firmly on the track. And another fellow Brit joins us on today's show, Formula One's number one broadcaster. Yes, Will Buxton! Look forward to that. Yes, but before we get to Will, I have to tell you that this show is about speed, but it wouldn't be complete without our good friend, adventure journalist and all-round

speed freak from Forbes magazine, Jim Clash. And as a special bonus, we are going to drop in with Super Mario, but he won't be karting because he is getting ready for the 2018 Indy 500, so no other than the legend known as Mario Andretti will be with us later in the show. I don't want to miss it, and I'm sure you don't too. Let's get to our first guest. F1 journalist, broadcaster with NBC, NBCSN, Will Buxton. Hi Will, how

are you sir? I'm good guys, how are you? We're all good. We're all good. I mean you've got what, way over 10 years of experience of hanging around in pit lanes and talking to drivers and engineers and team owners what a blast it's it's not bad for a job um if you can call it a job um yeah i get to get to follow my heroes around the world and uh watch motor racing for a living it's been an amazing nearly actually nearly 20 years now. It's the greatest job in the world.

It's the greatest sport in the world. You know, it's man, machine, and perfect harmony. A lot of people think it's just a guy sitting in a car driving in circles for two hours on a Sunday afternoon. And there is so much more that goes into it. It's a massive team sport from the folks at the factories designing, building the cars, to the guys engineering it at the tracks, strategy. The driver is the very last point. It's the most relevant point. But as any F1 engineer will tell you, the best thing or the most likely thing to ruin a car

is the soft bit between the engine and the pedals. So that's where it all comes from. Sounds like you've been upset by a driver or two in the past. For me, Formula One sits at almost, if not the pinnacle of technological innovation. Stuff that goes on in a Formula One race car, we invariably see on a street car X amount of years later. But we've gone from a cigar-shaped thing with a wheel in each corner to stuff now where there's a curse system, there's a DRS system, and you're going to be explaining these in a minute, by the way. So make sure you know your stuff.

So everything in between, just give us a quick evolution over the 50 years of Formula One as to where we were and where we are now. So, I mean, as you say, the sport obviously has evolved with the motor car. Formula One began with just guys who owned cars who wanted to race them traditionally sort of around old airfields, which was why Silverstone, the very first Grand Prix ever held in 1950, was held on the access roads around Silverstone Airfield, which is where the Wellington bombers had taken off during the Second World War.

And a lot of these early tracks were around airfields. It was just hobbyists in cars. And over the decades, it became this sport that we know today. And as you say, at the leading edge of technology, they started off front engine cars. The big manufacturers, your sort of, you know, your ferraris and your alfa romeos but then these little and your maseratis and then these little english teams started turning up um that like to do things a little bit differently and uh you started to get the advent then of aerodynamics into formula one uh you first got the like your

Lotuses and your Poopers who were the first teams to go mid rear engine cars and discovered by moving the engine to the rear it worked out a lot better from a weight distribution perspective and something we were talking about actually before we came on air, the most important thing in motor racing is grip and so the most important factor in a racing car is how do you get the contact patch on the tires to work for you the best and it's all ultimately about how those tires are in contact with the road so the evolution throughout the 1960s late 1960s certainly when we first saw wings on a car what to do with aerodynamics so people

were taking their lead from aeronautics and essentially taking what happens on an airplane but flipping it upside down and rather than lift you want it being pushed out because the more it's pushed down the more grip you get for the tires thus the faster you go theoretically so you get the advent of aerodynamics and you get this big push throughout the late 1960s into the 1970s of aerodynamics it then starts to get a bit more complicated and you get ground effect which is when you're not using aerodynamics to push a car on the ground but you're using venturi tunnels underneath the car and you're using skirts on the side of the car to essentially stuck the car onto the ground right so we then sort of moved on from that. They

got banned because it was too dangerous, the cars were going too fast, back to aerodynamics again. And that kind of evolution has brought us to where we are today. John Barnard with the first carbon fiber composite monocoque in the 1980s over at McLaren. Again, John Barnard when he was at Ferrari brought in the semi-automatic gearbox. all of these things which we now take for granted on road cars, which, you know, flappy paddle gear shift started in Formula One. So all of these things have developed through to the place that we're in now, but always with that one key, that core mindset of how do we make this car go faster around a racetrack? How do we

get these guys going around as quick and also in the modern era it's about doing it in a way where you don't use more fuel than your rival the less fuel you use the lighter your car is right you are only allowed three power units now for an entire season so they've got to be reliable um and i think one of the most fascinating i don't know if i should bring this one out now this is a really great fact but in the entire history bring it bring it in the entire i love this right and it's a real shame we're in this turbo era now and it's much maligned because the engines aren't as loud as they used to be but as you and i know noise volume it's wasted energy yeah it is it's wasted energy so with the um with the with the systems that they've got car on the car at the moment in terms of the so the mgu k a mgu h which are the

motor generator unit for heat and for kinetic energy which are harnessing the energy that the engine is producing and replenishing it putting it back into an energy store we've gone from a situation where the internal combustion engine had up until four years ago hit a peak we're talking about traditional internal combustion engine of 30 percent thermal efficiency mercedes last year hit 50 plus on the dyno of thermal efficiency so you think about the entire history of the internal combustion engine from dot to four years ago was 30%. And in the last four years, the technology in Formula One,

and particularly at Mercedes, has taken it that extra 20% in four years. That's amazing. So it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And you know, that means that we can look for that same type of technological change in the regular cars that we are driving.

Because it's always, Formula One is always the progenitor of technological change in regular stock cars. So that's really exciting and important news. See, the windows are going to be made of glass, or possibly we'll develop that one. The wheels, well, they're as round as they can possibly be right now. So the developments are going to come in these other areas now i asked you about the curse system k-e-r-s please because when i first heard this and it's how many years has it been with us in formula one a lot i like over 10 now maybe right and i was it as amazing to you when you first heard about this as it was to me because it's when you break and you talked about the noise and that's a that's an energy leakage the energy in braking becomes wasted but they found a way to

now harness that so please explain that to us essentially what you're doing is you're harnessing kinetic energy from braking you're harnessing the heat energy from the engine, and you're putting it all into an energy store that then also helps to drive the engine. So, in effect, it's giving you a boost. Yeah, it's an energy recovery. It's amazing. By the way, Honda has already introduced that in its regular car models, in its hybrid models. So, only in the hybrid, though, where... That button with nitro on it. No, that's the fast and the furious Honda.

But no, where your braking actually goes back into the battery. Yeah. It's amazing. We've talked about the braking, and we've talked about the kinetic energy under braking, but one of the amazing things is the heat exchange and the fact that the heat coming out of the engine and a lot of that is the noise as well,

that excess heat is converted into electrical energy as well and that is then sent back. So it's everything coming in from, it's kinetic and it's heat and that's how they've been able to, by taking the heat and turning it into electrical, that's how they've been able to get the thermal efficiency so good on the power unit.

And that's the amazing thing. What's next? It is a wow thing. But what's next? What more can you actually do? You're going to love this, right? Yes. If you've got fuel flow rates that are limited, so you can't push any fuel into that engine, well, how do you get more combustible material into that engine to give you a boost? You get that doctor from Back to the Future and his blender. Exactly.

It's called a flux capacitor. That's it. Yeah. Unfortunately, as Doc Brown found out in the 1950s, plutonium is not that readily available to make flux capacitor work. But you do have oil. And so what some of the teams reportedly have been doing is they found a way to get the oil, just working as a lubricant, into the combustion chamber that's giving them extra bang for their buck in qualifying mode. Do we call that sneaky?

I was going to say, that sounds really dangerous. That is the core of Formula One. It is finding loopholes and exploiting them. Almost all of the great innovations in Formula One history have been teams bending the regulations to within an inch just absolutely taking them and and doing what they can with them and it's all about loopholes and then you can never unlearn what you've learned so the governing body will ban this device and that device no we're not we're not having that but they'll find a way to do it they'll find a way to to either get the engine producing more power than it had before by going around the sides they will find a way to do it they'll find a way to to either get the engine producing more power than it had

before by going around the sides they will find a way to produce more downforce on the car oh you can only have this many wings within this parameter and do this and a couple of years ago they said oh you can only you know the floor has to be certain parameters and certain dimensions you can just have one floor and a diffuser at back but there was this loophole around the the hole at the back of the car that they put the starter rod in and a couple of teams turned up at the start of the season and they had developed that part of the car so much that there was a second diffusion on top of it so they had a double diffuser and the team that perfected that ultimately went on them on the championship banned it and then they banned it what did did they do a couple of years after?

Teams discovered a way to push the exhaust pipes towards the diffuser. So the exhaust gases are just pushing on the diffuser, doubling up the efficiency of the diffuser. Oh, we'll ban that. So then they come out the next year and they developed a Coanda exhaust that essentially does the same thing. They're always figuring out ways to get around the rules. And it goes back all the way, all the way back to the beginnings of the sport in the 1950s.

Find a loophole, work around it, innovate. Sounds to me like Tom Brady and Bill Belichick would make great F1 car people. Never more than three steps away from a Tom Brady reference. But hey, Will. We have got to take a break.

This has been great. For everybody listening, you can't help but feel the enthusiasm and the passion. If you've not discovered Formula One racing, please make an effort to do so. And you might find yourself as enthused as Will Buxton, Formula One's number one broadcaster, and there will be no argument here about that. Will, thank you so much. We are going to take a break. When we come back, we are going to have a professor of physics

who lectures on the physics of Formula One. That professor is none other than Richard Bauer from Durham University. Yes, another Brit. No apologies for that either. See you all shortly. Welcome back to Playing With Science. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice.

Yes, he is. And today we're exploring the science of motorsports. Joining us now, yes, brum, brum, breakdown. Don't do that again. Breakdown of physics of Formula One is Professor Richard Bauerauer professor of cosmology at durham university in england works at the institute for computational cosmology creates virtual universe with world's largest computers and has lectured on the physics of motorsport there's plenty more but we don't have time sir welcome to the show how are you i'm very good thank you not only are we happy to go fast,

but we need to know why and how, and we think you're the man to answer these questions. Oh, well, great. Let's see what I can do for you. Not every bend, not every curve corner is the same. Some are flat, some are banked. Is there there a definitive equation is it something you're going to have to work it out for yourself or is there a a definite way of which you are and what what forces are in play are there forces you have to overcome are there forces that you can utilize in terms of the physics when you are cornering so so when you're cornering, you've got forces pushing the car down. If the track is banked, then you're pushed down onto the track just by going around the corner. If the camber is adverse, then that's going against you and it makes everything even harder. So there are forces pushing you down, which help,

but there's a centripetal force trying to push you off the track. So that's the force you're fighting against, to keep going around the corner, accelerating around the corner, keeping as much speed as you possibly can. keeping as much speed as you possibly can. So everything is about getting as much grip on the tarmac as you possibly can. So can you take that and relate it to torque and how torque actually applies to the car and racing and cornering? So torque is all about acceleration of the car. You don't really need torque from

the engine to go around a corner fast. You can play some tricks to maybe go a little bit faster, but the torque is really what the torque of the engine is what is pushing you down the track to make you go faster. So more torque, faster you accelerate. There's a lot of confusion of the difference between power and torque. Yes. Really what you care about is the torque. But people often get fixated about how much power does this engine produce. So if torque is important, why is the power important? Well, the reason is because you've got gears in the car. So you can always change

your gearing, which changes the amount of torque an engine can produce. So it turns out that what matters ultimately, if you can change the gearing, is the power. Because that tells you how to optimize the gearing to get the maximum force for a particular racetrack. So what is the most important thing on a race car? Aerodynamics. Really? Yeah. See, because otherwise you'd be taking off.

Really? Yeah. See, because otherwise you'd be taking off. You'd take off, but also, you know, you can use the aerodynamics to push the car onto the track. If you are making as if the car was heavier when you're going around the corner, that means you've got more grip. You can go around the corner faster and then you can shoot down the straight even faster. So it's even more important than the power of the engine okay so how so professor i need to make it heavier but i can't increase the weight of the car yeah exactly so get the air to push on it harder so when did we

really begin to see this use of airflow downforce downforce in formula one well everyone's been aware for you know since even cars in the 30s and 40s had streamlining so you could go through the air and leave a smoother patch of air behind you have less resistance but the difference has become that in the 70s people realized that you could use the force to push the car into the ground and that would help it corner but this kind of went a little bit too fast so if you have loads of power in the engine you can generate downforce you don't really care about how much you're having to drag you're creating for the car, how much power you're using to push the car through the air. Much of that power is going into pushing the car on the ground, but it's okay if you can have an engine that's as

powerful as you like. Now it's a matter of being really clever part of the the change has been the regulations so you can't um have very smooth underbodies on the car you can't have really big wings at the back of the car to push it into the ground so now you need your computer simulation because you want to try and design the airflow around the car so that it maximizes the downforce. It minimizes the drag. And this is all a very subtle combination of things. And a lot has been gained by doing computer simulations of this. Ultimately, you have to go and test the car in a wind tunnel, but you can gain a lot of understanding.

So, for instance, one of the most important ways to push the car onto the track is actually the air flowing under the car. So there's a very important effect called the ground effect that if you have the air rushing in through a small gap at the front of the car leaving smoothly through a large gap at the front of the car it sucks it onto the car and this is great okay now the problem is the rule makers have decided this is bad it's bad because if the car goes over a bump in a corner suddenly the downforce changes so physically putting something at the side of the car to make sure air doesn't come in from the side is a bad idea for safety.

And so it's been banned. But you can achieve the same thing by creating a vortex of air swirling down the side of the car that makes it very hard for air to enter from the side of the car. for air to enter from the side of the car. Okay, and this gives you a great vacuum underneath, helps push the car down onto the ground. And this isn't sensitive to bumps that are in the track. It's just being generated by the front splitter at the front of the car, the aerodynamics there, setting up the airflow around the side of the car. So this is, you know, big technology now to be able to do that. So you go and look at a

Formula One car's front wing, you'll see that it has a very, very complicated shape to try and generate the turbulent flow down the side of the car. Of course, if you make the air too turbulent, then you create drag and you slow the car down. So it's all very tricky to be able to do this. So, Professor, while we play with the airflow and obviously the aerodynamics and design, is there much room left? Is there anywhere else, guys like yourself, who love to model these things and think through? Where can we, me, because now I'm an engineer.

Yeah, where can we go? Where can we go with this? Well, so one of the interesting things is how much you can generate out of the electrical units that are now built into the car. So you can recover a lot of the energy, store it in a battery, use that to propel the car through an electric motor. So that is very interesting. But I think the teams have now got the hang of that and apparently are very, very efficient. So they're recovering as you brake 90% of the energy to use from the braking to accelerate the car an extra amount as you go down the track. And so maybe it's now quite hard to make further gains in that.

And really what everyone needs to work on is to improve the fuel efficiency of their engine. Right now, that sounds totally boring. Right. That's kind of the thing that you're told that you need a little car to drive to work. Professor, do we need our Formula one racing cars to get 50 miles per gallon if you could you'd hardly need any uh any petrol on board you'd save a lot of weight and you'd be able to go around the corner faster oh so they're in so there you go so speaking of that that's exactly it yeah there is so speaking of, why not? How about no petrol at all? Wouldn't that save an engine weight? Wouldn't that save, I mean, if you could just go totally

electric. Your fuel has to come from somewhere else. Well, your fuel would have to come from a stored battery. So you would use your... Which is weight, therefore size. Well, that's what I'm saying. If you could, we have a friend of the show bill nye who says this all the time if you can create a better battery you will rule the world well certainly that's true right yeah currently the limitation on an electric car is the weight of the battery right right so that's why i don't see for the foreseeable future the petrol engine going away. But you can imagine the engine getting smaller, the battery part getting bigger and making even more use of the energy that you can store in the battery so that you are allowed to start the race by plugging your car in, filling up your battery. But you have some way of keeping going, even if you've used a lot of the power from your battery. That's really cool, actually.

Yeah. Yeah, that's very cool. Because then, I mean, that would add another element to the race. It's just like, you know, it looks like he's running low on battery. Exactly. All right. Oh, that's great, man. like, you know, looks like he's running low on battery. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Oh, that's great, man.

Professor, it's been an absolute pleasure. Professor, you are fascinating. Yes, absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time. Fascinating to talk to you, too. Oh, we are going to take another break. Thank you to Professor Richard Bauer there. What an interesting character.

Yeah, I love him. Okay, coming up after the break, we have adventure journalist Jim Clash, our very good friend. And, of course, that interview with the legend that is Mario Andretti. Please don't go away, and we'll see you shortly. Welcome back.

I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Lowe. And this is Playing With Science, where today we are talking about motorsports. I told you not to do that again. And auto racing. It's all about the four wheels. And joining us is our good friend, adventure journalist, the one, the only, Jim Clash.

Thank you, Chuck. Thank you, Gary. It's always good to be here. Always great to have you here, man. Let's just do this properly, shall we? A man who has driven 13, 1.3 separate cars above 200 miles an hour, including the Bugatti Veyron at 253. Oh, my God. Should have took the handbrake off, Jim.

Graduated from a number of racing schools, including Skip Barber and Mario Andretti, so we're going to have to talk about that, and Frank Hawley, drag racing school. OK, let's get this straight. What has to be the mindset of a person who's about to drive 200-plus miles per hour? I think we've already discussed this in a previous show, but I make

no excuse for revisiting this. You drove the Bugatti Veyron at 253 miles an hour. That's top speed on that car. Yeah. You don't just say, oh, you know what? See you Monday. We'll take it for a spin. How long did it take you to prepare and what did you have to go through and understand to be able to drive that car at those speeds? Well, first of all, I went through a bevy of racing schools and we can talk about that if you want. I had to set up this with the Bugatti people a couple of years in advance. The track we did it on, the Ere Lissine track in northern Germany, is the biggest track in the world, and it's 12-some miles around. Is that because it's got the longest straights?

Yes, and we needed a long straight to do this. We needed a five-mile or six-mile long straight to get it up to 253. But no, you have to prepare. One of the anecdotes I'll share with you is when we were warming up, I was just getting up to speed 180, 200. For the Bugatti, it isn't all that much. There was a professional race car driver in the passenger seat. When I went to do the 253-mile-an-hour run, he didn't get in. Well, that inspires confidence, doesn't it?

Jim, we call this your death run, and I'm going to be watching you from the sides. Sort of. And that made me realize that this is serious business. The other thing that you have to watch out for, even though you're on a straightaway, you've got animals that can come in front of the car. And if that happens, you're toast. A tire could blow. You're pushing everything to the limit when you're going top speed in a car.

In a passenger car like that, if it wrecks, you have no chance. Now, let's say, Jim, here you are. A tire could blow. You're pushing everything to the limit when you're going top speed in a car. In a passenger car like that, if it wrecks, you have no chance. Now, let's say, Jim, here you are. You're on the straightaway. All right? You see the actual heat of the road as it waverly ascends from the blacktop. Yeah. As you look down and the sun is beaming on you and you start your run. sun is beaming on you and you start your run. Here you are now, 220, 225, 230, 240. And then just out of nowhere, you can see it. It looks like a small rabbit is coming across the blacktop.

What do you do? You just keep driving. There's nothing you can do at that point. You can't make the car unstable. You have to just drive right through it, no matter what it is. Sorry, Thumper. Yeah, he's toast. We're having rabbit for dinner. Maybe not. I don't think there's anything left of it. Can you imagine, you're driving around at 200

plus miles an hour, and you're thinking, did I leave the light in the bedroom on? No. What are you? You're not. There's no room for any of that. You're focused. How puzzled were you when you got out of that car? I was ecstatic because I was terrified the rain was going to cancel the day. That's what I was thinking about more than anything.

Is it going to rain? If it's raining on an oval, you cannot drive. I can't. What happens if right in your run, like cloudburst, like, you know what I mean? Thunderstorm. Boom. What do you do? Slow down.

But I'm saying you stop the run, right? Yeah, I mean, look, in a real race car, like a Formula One car or an Indy car, if you're on a road circuit, you can change the tires and put treaded tires on. But if you're on an oval, you have to cancel the run to cancel the race. Speaking of treaded tires, so now on a race car, you have to cancel the run to cancel the race. Speaking of treaded tires, so now on a race car, you have slicks because that gives you the most ground contact possible.

Exactly, exactly. And then you used to have something when they used to street race called cheater slicks. And that was almost like they would draw a tread on the tires so the cops wouldn't, so the cops would say

you had street legal tires. You know, they would just. I've never heard of this, but I'll take it. No, seriously. Look it up. Welcome to Chuck's imagination. No, seriously.

Look it up. They're called cheater slicks. But on a Bugatti, which is a street legal car, what kind of tires are you talking about where you can run 253 miles an hour? What kind of tires are you running on? They're specially prepared tires. They are treaded tires. They are treaded. And, again, they've gone through tremendous testing.

The problem with tires is they go faster and faster. They expand more and more. And you've got to, you know. You're going to build up to the speed. So, therefore, you're warming those tires up. Right. To ultimate. Which is what I was doing.

Yeah, which is what I was doing on the runs when the guy got in the car with me. Not on the final run. He wouldn't get in. Yeah, well, fair enough. Wow. Were you conscious of the fact, I need to know, is the pressure in the tire correct? Or did you leave that and put your trust and faith and your backside in the hands of the engineers of Bugatti? You have to.

You know, as a journalist, I know that when I go to do one of these extreme adventures, they've prepared everything the best they can. They do not want anything to go wrong. Yeah, of course. Because then the headline is, what were they thinking? Instead of, you know, journalist drives 253 miles an hour. So I have to put my trust in the engineers. But people ask me, what did it feel like at 253? All I remember is coming out of the corner, and I looked, and the damn thing was at 180.

And then about three seconds later, it was at 200. And I'm like, boy. I looked down about 10 seconds later. It was 240. I said, that's it. I'm not looking down at this thing anymore. Unfortunately. But it felt like I was in a video game ridiculously sped up. Nice.

It was so quiet in the car. Now, after I did the run, I watched someone else do it. And when the car came by, it was so loud and so scary. I don't think I would have done it had I seen that before I got in the car. One of the things you pay for in a Bugatti is soundproofing. Yeah, it was very quiet in the car. I couldn't believe it. When a car costs that much, it better be quiet. So let's talk about, you did a drag car too, right? Yeah, yeah. So now when you look at that, what's the difference?

Because that happens in just like no time. The pros go from zero to 330 miles an hour in less than four seconds. Right. So now how fast did you go in the drag car? So now, how fast did you go in the drag car? Well, we got up to about 160 in 8 point some seconds, but we went 0 to 60 miles an hour in 1.5 seconds, which is a kick in the pants.

That's the politest way I've heard it put. What kind of genes are you pulling? I don't mean the actual number. I mean, what's it feel like? Do you feel the pressure of everything on your body at that time? You do, but you've got to drive the car, so you don't think about it too much. You just automatically drive. But I can tell you the real pros, they pull 6.5 Gs in the middle of the run,

and they do negative 5 Gs when the parachutes come out. That's amazing. So 11 G difference in a span of a second and a half. Yeah. What sort of size engine, what sort of power, what sort of torque are you sat behind here? This is like two jet engines. That is two jet engines. In a row. We were down at Charlotte for a race a couple weeks ago, and they put us on the start line,

and there were four cars, 11,000 horsepower each, taking off at the same time. And they call it baptism. 11,000 horsepower each? Baptism by nitro. Nitro methane is what they run on. We stood there and the wind that came off and all the pieces of rubber

on our faces, the sound, it was unbelievable. It doesn't sound pleasant, Tim. I'm sorry. It really wasn't. But you know what? I got baptized by nitro.

You got baptized by nitro. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Have you done a Formula One race experience at all? I haven't done Formula One per se, but I did the same kind of thing in the Skip Barber course, where you do a road course. So it's very different from oval driving. Yes. So we've gone from a track with many bends to an oval track with two. My Matt is very clever now. And the drag racing with no bends.

Exactly. You're an adventure journalist. Which one gave you the bigger buzz? The biggest buzz I got, believe it or not, was driving an Indy car at an average speed of over 200 miles an hour at Texas Motor Speedway. I really had to drive the car. You have to apex those corners perfectly. If you get a little bit offline, you're in the wall at 200 miles an hour. Of all the things I've done, that was my piece de resistance. Nice.

Out of all of the racing schools that you attended, what was the biggest, most important lesson that you would have walked away with? Well, Skip Barber taught me how to race road courses, Formula One kind of things. But the Mario Andretti racing experience taught me how to drive ovals. And I took many, many laps at Texas Motor Speedway doing a lead follow with a mini Indy car. And so I was averaging maybe 150. But when I got in the real Indy car, 200, you know, and 200 in the real Indy car actually felt slower than 150 in the mini Indy car. Yeah, it's all a matter of perception. Because obviously we tend to incline ourselves towards the science in everything here.

But did they burden you with, well, actually, you see this. This is centrifugal. This is centripetal. And the force down and the force up is this. Nope. Now, that's exactly. You're not thinking about any of that. But there is a lot of physics to it.

And I know just, you know, I've heard that if you drive an Indy car upside down at 150 miles an hour, you can drive it upside down because of the downforce on the wings. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Insane, man. So do you guys want to know about this ring? Yeah, I saw you.

Who is this? Yeah. Is it kind of looking like a Super Bowl ring? I was about to say, so for those of you who don't have StarTalkAllAccess.com, if you're not a subscriber where you can't see the video. We'll get a picture of it and we'll post that up. Jim has a ring on his finger and it looks like a Super Bowl ring. It actually looks like a Super Bowl ring, but it clearly is not.

And tell us the story behind that now. So once a year, one of your guests, Mary Andretti, takes passengers around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 200 miles an hour in the open two-wheeler. So you're clicking off three things. You've got Mary Andretti, the greatest driver of the century. You've got 200 miles an hour, and you've got the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Once you're done, they give you this ring. Wow.

So this ring, I wear it once in a while. People do say, oh, is it a Super Bowl ring? It's got 200 miles an hour. You said you're Tom Brady. You know, depending upon who asked the question, you've got to be careful with that one. If you want to ask, just say yes. Oh, bad man. Right, we are going to take a break.

Yes, thank you to Jim Clash. Again, it's been an absolute thrill, and I say that advisedly. It's good to have you here, Jim. But we are going to get Mario Andretti with us on the show after the break. The legend, motorsport legend, icon, carry on saying all of those plaudits. He will be with us shortly. Do not want to miss it and do not go away. And of course, without any further ado, Mario Andretti, one of the greatest drivers of all time. Mario, how are you? Great, great. And hi, Chuck and Gary. This is the Chuck and Gary show, right?

So allow me to do something, Mr. Andretti. I'm going to try. Call me Mario. Oh, okay, Mario. I'm sorry. It's very difficult for me not to. I'm not that old, you know. I know you're not that old, but, you know, it's just a matter of respect. You are still a legend. You know, to be a living legend is a big mantle to wear.

You're too kind. You're too kind. So, listen, here's what I'm going to try to do. Speaking of living legends, I'm going to try to, in just, if I can, in just 30 seconds, I'm going to try to name as many of your accomplishments as possible. So don't be embarrassed. But I'm just going to try to as quickly as possible in 30 seconds. And I actually have a stopwatch here.

So here we go. All right. And I'm going to start. I'm going to start right now. So four-time IndyCar National Championship, 65, 66, 69, 84, Formula One World Champion, 78, Daytona winner, 67, Indianapolis winner, 500, three-time Indianapolis pole winner, Pikes Hill Peak climber winner, three-time 12-hour Sebring winner usac national dirt track champion i can't believe that international race of champions champion only driver to be named driver of the year in three different decades named driver of the quarter century voted by uh past drivers of the oh god i'm out of time okay so mario i'm i'm out of, and I still have two pages of stuff to read.

How does that make you feel to know that you have been such a critical and instrumental part of this sport? Well, I can tell you, Chuck, all I know is that I've been blessed because I always set some very ambitious goals for myself and I pursue it with as much energy as I ever could and love and passion. And again, along the way, you have to realize that where I know that I'm so blessed is that I dodged a lot of bullets. You know, I drove in a period of decades where we were losing four to five drivers a year. Yes.

And many of them potential future champions. They never were able to realize their dreams. And I was one that somehow was able to wiggle through that. And I know that. I know how lucky I've been. So, again, it's all about, you know, ambition and just loving beyond the description what you're doing. And then being proud, you know, of trying to, you know, to get to the best level that you could possibly get.

So, again, I know how lucky I've been. And then the best part is I'm still living the dream. Yes, you are. Yes, you are indeed. So what has been the biggest technological advancement that you've been impressed by in auto racing well i would say the computer i mean that is uh the we have seen evolution which is uh something you would expect over the decades yeah you know and uh chassis dynamics engine dynamics and then especially in the late 70s aer, where all of a sudden we're

using, making use of the air, not just at surface flow, but also under the car, you know, by creating ground effects and so forth. But the computer in the mid 80s is when I personally first experienced that with the team in conjunction with Ford. It was the first time, I think, in IndyCar that a car was instrumented so we could give telemetry back, and we were testing at a private testing ground in Romeo, Michigan. and we were testing at a private testing ground in Romeo, Michigan. And it's amazing how that opened up a whole new dimension of knowledge about what the car is doing, deflections and G-forces,

and everything, everything that you need to know. Everything that was pretty much estimated before. So that was the biggest step forward, I think, as far as advancing the knowledge of what is going on in a race car. Wow. Cool. So, you know, is with all the technology now that's in these cars is is racing the perfect balance of the driver and the car and the mechanical team, or is there a part that is more critical? And the technology that we're not using only because we want to maintain, put more onus on the human effort, on the human responsibility, not just the driver, but also the mechanics that obviously take care of the car before and during the race. So the point I'm making is we could have any kind of system, you know, in a car to be able to have traction control, to have, you know, the power steering. Well, stock cars have power steering, but in the car we don't. We're more macho than that.

And, you know, a lot of aids is what i'm saying you know to facilitate uh the driving but because of what the technical committees you know in the sanctioning bodies they're trying to keep the element is more to keep it so it has the integrity that obviously we need to have. So from that standpoint, like I said, it's still the human element is still, you know, the most important part. And it's actually, it's a constant struggle, you know, to try to keep that, you know, and to have a balance between the technology

and then also, like I said, the fact that, just as an example, you know, when sometimes you come in during a pit stop and you see a mechanic making an adjustment on the front wing, you know, manually. Yes. I get emails from geeks all over the world saying, oh, you know, then the semi-schematic about how you could do this electrically, you know, from the steering wheel.

We know that. But they know that that's not allowed. Right. You could do everything from the steering wheel. We know that, you know, but they know that that's not allowed. Right. You could do everything from the steering wheel, you know, today. You can make the car talk, you know, but like I said, you want to put the onus even on the mechanics to be able to do it quickly and without wasting time, you know, just while they're changing tires and so on and so forth. So like I said, the human element is alive and well in our sport, regardless of all the

technology that's available. Awesome. That is awesome. So I know that, I don't know if it's once a year, but you know, our friend of the show, Jim Clash, was able to speak to you a little while ago about the fact that you on Memorial Day, you go out and you take a civilian around the track at 200 miles per hour. What's more scary, racing or having somebody else's life in your hands while you're going around that track at that speed? That's a good point. Yeah, I really feel the responsibility. By the way, Jim Clash was there this year again, but this is the third year that we've done this,

the day after the Indianapolis 500 on a Monday. Awesome. Yes. Monday. And, uh, yes. Uh, and, uh, and this time he had, uh, you know, his friend, uh, Vanessa O'Brien, uh, ride with me. Um, and, um, and again, I think, uh, as accomplished a lady as she is, uh, she, uh, obviously has been up at the top of K2, you know, it's, uh, it's amazing, you know, that, uh, she was impressed with, with that ride, but, uh, you know, going back to, uh, you know it's uh it's amazing you know that she was impressed with with that ride but uh you know going back to uh you know your question was uh yeah i feel a tremendous responsibility but uh i also feel that uh there's no better way to showcase our sport because it's such a non-

participant sport at that level and um and you can go to driving school and all that but they only allow you to to drive to the point of your uh you know ability at the time which uh you know it would take a while to just really bring out these race cars so um i give um you know pretty much of a 90 percent ride i take obviously the car to the very limit but uh when you consider you know 200 plus miles an hour and nowadays uh you know it was almost uh you know 25 years ago was a pole position for indianapolis you know type of thing you know what i mean so and you're taking a passenger so it's uh it's a wonderful program and uh and that keeps my adrenaline going too you know so it's a benefic program and, uh, and that keeps my adrenaline going too, you know, so it's a beneficiary all the way around. That's awesome. I'm loving it. I'm loving it. That's great.

And the last question, uh, Mario. So if there was one thing that you could take from racing today, when you look at the sport, just one thing, whether it's, um, the, uh's an advancement in tires or a technological advancement or a design, what would you like to have seen go back to your time when you're on the track to allow you to race better? Well, probably aerodynamic aspect of it. I mean, there's no better feature to make the car go faster than having aerodynamic downforce. So as a driver, what do you want to do? You want to go faster through the corners. Yes. And that's what allows you to do. And I mean, the speeds that we're reaching,

you know, Formula One, Indy cars through the corners. It's unbelievable. When you're pulling six Gs without a G suit and still stay on the track, on the tarmac, I tell you what, that's a feat in itself, you know, an engineering feat. But the ultimate satisfaction is what the driver experiences. And I've done all that. And it's just amazing. Sometimes after a while, you're blase, you expect that. But when you start thinking about it, it's how amazing it is that the car can stick, you know, when it has that much downforce. And again, that's what a driver loves. That's when adrenaline flows. Absolutely.

This has just been a pleasure. Thanks so much, Mario. Thank you so much for joining us. What a pleasure. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.