24 Heures du Mans

The Ferrari 458 Italia starts to dive for the apex as Allan McNish in the Audi R18 tries to pass on the inside, coming in too fast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Nb0Ienv6k

The thing that fascinates me most? McNish’s Audi R18 LeMans car is a turbodiesel – very unusual as most racing cars run on something similar to jet fuel. It’s a V6 in fact, turbocharged to within an inch of its life.

3 Comments

You are mistaken that “most racing cars run on something similar to jet fuel”. Their fuel is typically a mixture of high octane gasoline and ethanol, often with nitro-methane added. It will not burn properly in a turbine/jet engine.

Diesel engines run quite well on “jet fuel”. There are only the slightest differences between Kerosene, Light Diesel (automotive) and Jet A/A-1/B; and they are essentially interchangeable (skewed towards different operational temperature environments there are slight differences in lubricity, vapor point & additives).

(p.s.) There have been turbine powered racing cars which do burn jet fuel, but they are rare and not representative of the vast majority of racing cars, which have reciprocating piston engines; whether gasoline (spark ignition) or (rarely) diesel (compression ignition).

@jaycubed: reciprocating piston engines

Tommcatt’s next Halloween costume?

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