A&Q about 350Z
Q:
this is a rather circular argument.
ASSUMING the tranny is set up intelligently (which means, you offer a gear range that allows the motor to stay within the meat of its power curve) ...when you have 12 gears to play with, and the vehicle in question is only geared to 100mph or so, that gives you a lot of flexability.
I have seen one F1 dyno sheet, although I think it was from years ago and is probably not comparable to current engines, but it was surprisingly broad on the power band. The torque was nearly dead flat from 10K RPM's up to 19K RPM's or whatever redline it had. Thats 50% of its RPM range (not accounting for its rather high idle) which btw, is almost exactly the same for a semi engine.
A:
Iv never paid any attention to peak numbers, its always area under the graph that Iv considered far more important, along with how its delivered to the wheels, and how well suited it is to the chassis the engine and drive line are in.
The classic example is the first generation of STi 22B WRX Imprezza's gained lots of attention because they could accelerate from 0-100kph faster than what ever Ferrari was cool at the time. It could even hold off the Ferrari all the way to 160kmph. Sounds impressive until you dig a little deeper and find that all 6 gears in the WRX were so short it hit red line at 180kmph in 6th while the Ferrari was still pulling in 3rd.
Iv worked on a car, that was even de-tuned, to make it faster. Peak power was sacrificed for more power lower down in the power curve, creating a longer flatter curve that made better use of the cars limited (by class rules) gear ratios.
A:
It is quite common for race engines to be detuned to give a more linear, easily controllable power curve. The motoGP bikes, when the 1000cc limit first came out, there were some bikes making over 250hp, but within a year, most of them had detuned them to only about 200-220hp with broader power curves.
I have no doubt the same is for F1 cars and any other serious compitition, you always go for the highest average HP AND smoothest power delivery.
A:
I've seen a few power- and torque curves from F1 engines and they aren't that bad. I tried to explain the power curve of a F1 V10 engine in an earlier post.
Even the 1.5 litre turbos from the eighteis aren't that bad. For example Honda's turbo engines gave a high and almost flat torque curve between 7000 and 13000 rpm.
MotoGP has poor grip, so for them driveability is more important than the highest power output availible. A F1 car on the other hand have a good grip, so power is more important than driveability.
These days MotoGP are back around 250 hp due to competition, and more power may very well be on the way, still, this is much less compared to F1, especially since there are much less regulations in MotoGP that limits the power output (except the smaller displacement of course).
In MotoGP throttle modulation is extremly important if you want a fast bike. The engine can almost always produce more power than the bike has grip for, so if the driver should be able to handle the bike throttle modulation is teh key, the engine must respond to every small throttle change just how the driver expect it to respond. Full throttle isn't used that often.
In F1 the driver tend to use two differend throttle positions most of all, no throttle and full throttle (up to 60-70% of a lap can be made at full throttle). No throttle is used during braking and into the turn. Then the driver goes on the throttle softly until full throttle is reached, then the driver keep full throttle until it's time to brake again. So in F1 maximum power is more of an issue, can you increase engine power then you can decrease the lap time. Normally the F1 engine is kept at speeds within a range of 3000 rpm, but speeds down to 4000 rpm can be used in low speed turns so a wide power curve is quite important.