The Grand Tour

Richard Hammond’s Unfair Advantage in the Holy Trinity Race

In Season 1, Episode 1 of the Grand Tour, Jeremey Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May race “The Holy Trinity” of cars around the Algarve International Circuit in Portugal. The trinity of amazing cars in the show were the McLaren P1, the Porsche 918 Spyder, and the Ferrari LaFerrari. At first glance, these cars seem to be equal examples of the pinnacle of technology from three different world-premiere car manufacturers. However, other than the fact that they are all the top of the line from their respective manufacturers and are all high-performance hybrids, they are nowhere near equals.

So what makes these cars so special? Primarily it is the way these cars use their electric motors to enhance the performance of their petrol engines. While each of the cars applies electric energy to their wheels in somewhat different ways, the primary purpose is to use the electric motors to bridge the gaps between gear changes and improve the torque when the petrol motor is at lower revolutions. Hence the term, high-performance hybrid.

Electric motors can provide their maximum torque at zero rpm, where as a petrol engine typically does not reach maximum torque until it has thousands of revolutions per minute, somewhere near the top of the motors rev limit. The computerized coordination between electric and petrol motors is where the magic happens, making these three cars performance monsters!

Importantly for our discussion, Porsche has taken this high-performance hybrid concept and applied at least two additional generational steps past the LaFerrari and McLaren P1, which has given the Porsche 918 Spyder its unfair advantage.

Imagine a future where instead of boxers slugging it out in the ring, the fighters climb into automated suits of armor which utilize a combination of human muscle and electrically assisted mechanization to fight battles worthy of Anime movies. However in this battle, while the Brits and Italians brought boxers who only use their fists, the Germans brought a mixed martial artist throwing fists and feet with equal ferocity. It’s not a fair fight and Ferrari knows it, which is why Ferrari rarely lets anyone compare the LaFerrari against the Porsche 918.

What are the two unfair advantages the Porsche 918 Spyder has over the McLaren P1 and the Ferrari LaFerrari? The Porsche 918 has all-wheel drive and active four-wheel steering.

Subaru has been touting the advantages of symmetrical all-wheel drive for years… since 1972 to be exact. In fact, Subaru developed the technology. The advantages of all-wheel drive are obvious, applying power to all four wheels doubles the contact area between the road and the tires, meaning you can apply more power to the road without spinning the wheels. The disadvantage is that all wheel drive cars are notoriously tricky to get going off the line, generally resulting in slower 0-60 mph times that two-wheel drive cars.

[button color=”red” size=”big” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”samewindow” url=”https://grandtournation.com/4466/richard-hammonds-unfair-advantage-in-the-holy-trinity-race-ds0669/2/”]Next Page[/button]

But the real advantage of the Porsche 918 Spyder, isn’t in the 4.6L V8 608hp naturally aspirated petrol motor, or in the 125hp electric motor used to power the front wheels, or the second 154hp electric motor used to assist the back wheels, making for a combined 887hp total power… The true secret to the success of the Porsche 918 is its active four-wheel steering. Yes, the same technology that was introduced to the world in the 1987 in the third-generation Honda Prelude.

Now in fairness to both Honda and Porsche, the original 1987 Honda four-wheel steering system was mechanical. While it was quite the commercial success in that nearly 80% of all Prelude buyers opted for the four-wheel steering option, the mechanical aspects of the system simply would not last the test of time. Porsche has stepped up the game by using electric actuators controlled by state-of-the-art computers to provide a true active four-wheel steering system worthy of a top of the line machine. Porsche has made its active four-wheel steering and optional extra as of 2016 for all models of the Porsche 911 and for the Panamera.

So why does four-wheel steering make such a big difference in performance around a track? Well, if you have ever been on a merry-go-round at the park, you will recall that the further to the outside of the circle you sit, the faster you spin around the circle. Merry-go-rounds, while perhaps not the safest park ride ever created, definitely taught children a valuable lesson about rotating objects and centrifugal force, the outside edges of the rotating circle must travel faster than the center.

The same centrifugal forces apply to your car when you are steering it around a corner. The inside wheels need to spin at a slower speed than the outside wheels. This is the purpose of the differential mounted in the axel(s) of the car, to allow for the differences in speed required of each wheel when cornering. The differential is great at what it does, however there is still a problem in that when you corner your car, the front wheels are pointed where they are going, but the back wheels are pointed a different direction. This is where four-wheel steering comes in to make such a huge advantage.

If you have ever driven your car on a smooth concrete surface in a parking lot, you may have heard your tires screeching when going around a corner. While your front wheels can make a screeching noise as they are forced to turn in a small radius, it is typically the back wheels that make the most noise as they have no choice but to lose grip on their edges as they are tightly pivoted across the surface of the concrete. The wailing sound comes from the rubber tire being scrapped across the concrete.

The amount of contact between the tire and the road is only about the size of your hand. As the car is turned at a tighter and tighter radius, the back wheels, which are locked and pointed in a fixed direction, can only be rotated through force. The tighter the turning radius, the more the rubber on the rear wheels must give up its adhesion to the road in order for the vehicle to turn. This means that instead of a patch the size of your hand contacting your wheel to the road, the area could be reduced to the size of a quarter, and only for the one tire that is closest to the center of the circle. If you are trying to also apply power to the road while tightly turning, you can easily overpower the tiny area of adhesion, and spin your tires. While spinning your tires may make for a good show, it does not get you down the road faster, and it certainly does nothing for your handling. This is why front-wheel drive cars tend to have better handling during tight corners at low speeds than rear wheel cars.

[button color=”red” size=”big” alignment=”center” rel=”follow” openin=”samewindow” url=”https://grandtournation.com/4466/richard-hammonds-unfair-advantage-in-the-holy-trinity-race-ds0669/3/”]Next Page[/button]

The lesson is that you want all of your tires to point in the direction you are going for maximum handling and maximum power applied to the road. In the Porsche 918, the back wheels turn with the corners, using series of sensors and computerized magic, to improve both the handling and the amount of power applied to the road during a turn.

The four wheel drive of the Porsche 918 Spyder means that it will suffer in a straight quarter mile drag race as it’s off the line speed will be less than the traditional rear-wheel drive cars like we see in the LaFerrari and the McLaren P1. The official quarter mile times for the cars, as listed by Motor Trend are:

  • Ferrari LaFerrari – Quarter Mile in 9.7 seconds at 148.5 mph
  • McLaren P1 – Quarter Miles in 9.8 seconds at 148.9 mph
  • Porsche 918 Spyder – Quarter Mile in 10.0 seconds at 145.2 mph

As predicted, the four-wheel drive system in the Porsche 918 Spyder causes the car to place third during a straight line drag race. But what happens when you put the car around a track? Motor Trend was able to race the Porsche 918 Spyder against the McLaren P1 around the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca (Ferrari would not allow the LaFerrari to play). As you can see in the times below, the Porsche 918 Spyder set a new production car track record, beating the second fastest ever recorded production car time, set by the McLaren P1.

  • Porsche 918 Spyder at Laguna Seca – 1:29.89
  • McLaren P1 at Laguna Seca – 1:30.71

In the Motor Trend tests, the four-wheel drive power train along with the four-wheel active steering system of the Porsche 918 Spyder simply gave it more adhesion to the road, allowing it to power out of the low-speed corners better than the McLaren P1, no matter what McLaren tried to do to the car to improve its performance.

Make no mistake, the McLaren P1 is an amazing car. It is the fastest production car in total achieved speed to have ever lapped the track at Laguna Seca on road tires, and it beat the lap time of the next closest production car by over 3 seconds. While on road tires, both of these hybrid cars achieved lap times, which were so fast, that they would have qualified for nearly any professional sports car race held at Laguna Seca!

While Ferrari wouldn’t let Motor Trend play with the LaFerrari, apparently the boys have much more pull than anyone else, because in Season 1, Episode 1 of the Grand Tour, they got to have all three cars on the same track! As far as I could find, it is the only time such a side-by-side-by-side comparison of these three amazing vehicles has ever occurred.

Here are the lap times recorded by the boys during the Grand Tour Season 1, Episode 1 at the Algarve International Circuit in Portugal:

  • Richard Hammond’s Porsche 918 Spyder – 1:54.2
  • James May’s Ferrari LaFerrari – 1:54.4
  • Jeremy Clarkson’s McLaren P1 – 1:55.5

As with the Motor Trend tests, the Porsche 918 Spyder got around the track faster than the other two. What is surprising, is how close the Ferrari LaFerrari came to the Porsche 918 Spyder. Honestly, why Ferrari won’t come out and play ball more often against its two rivals, when it performed so well in Portugal, remains a mystery. It is quite possible that the Ferrari LaFerrari is the greatest rear-wheel drive car ever produced, but its refusal play the same game under the same rules as everyone else, is only giving the title of fastest rear-wheel drive car to McLaren.

Getting off the line fast has always been a problem for four-wheel drive cars. Even Tesla’s brand new S P100D can only do a quarter mile in 10.7 seconds (a world record for a four door sedan). Until someone figures out how to make all-wheel drive cars as fast off the line as rear-wheel drive cars, the straight line race will continue to be dominated by the rear-wheel drive car.

Conversely, the days of the rear-wheel drive petrol-only cars dominating the turns through a race track are forever gone. Thanks to the Porsche 918 Spyder, corners are now and forever, the domain of high-performance hybrid vehicles with all-wheel drive and four-wheel steering. You can bet your bottom dollar that Ferrari and McLaren know it, and we will see these technologies coming out of all of the major manufacturers in the next round of hyper cars.

In the Grand Tour Season 1, Episode 1, Hammond’s car had an unfair technological advantage. Clarkson and May’s cars never stood a chance.

Keep driving my friends!

My thanks to Leslie for helping me with this article.

Previous page 1 2 3Next page

Related Articles

Back to top button