I love all kinds of racing including Champ car and they certainly are exciting to watch and very, very fast. I certainly meant no disrespect toward the series or cars. I've been to quite a few Champ Car races at Long Beach and Portland and have always loved the show.
It's simply a given, however, that an F1 car is considerably more nimble, stops much faster, and acclerates more quickly than a Champ car. Like Mike said, Apples and Oranges. I've seen F1 cars in person and it's just obvious when you watch them that they are on a different level.
Champ Cars have a minimum weight of 1545 pounds, empty. If you were to add in say, Danica Patrick, at maybe 100 pounds, the Champ car would weigh at least 1645 pounds.
F1 cars weigh a minimum of 1323 pounds
with the driver, and you know that the F1 teams more than likely get the cars right down to that weight. The difference is over 200 pounds, maybe up to 275 or so. That is at least a 20% increase in weight the Champ car has to carry over a F1 car.
The Cosworth engines of the Champ cars produce about 850 horsepower and the F1 engines produce about 750 these days (last year the F1 V10's were making about 960 horsepower). So, 12% less horsepower is pushing at least 20% less weight around.
Tire technology in F1 is in the stratosphere too so you can imagine the grip those things must produce.
Here's a quote from Wikepedia, the online encyclopedia concerning the difference in lap times when the two series raced on the same track within a few weeks of each other:
Quote:
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" In recent years it has been possible to compare the respective performance of the two series. Since 1978 Formula 1 has made an annual visit to the Circuit de Villeneuve in Montreal . Champ Car added this circuit to their tour in 2002. During the inaugural Champ Car visit in 2002 Cristiano Da Matta won the pole position in the Champ Car race with a lap time of 1:18.959. Several weeks before former Champ Car Champion Juan Pablo Montoya seized P1 in the Formula 1 race with a lap time of 1:12.836."
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The F1 car ran a lap over 6 seconds quicker on the same course. 6 seconds!
As for the Ferrari F1 car that failed to take the Laguna Seca record a couple of years back. Who knows what was going on that day? One thing that comes to mind however, Ferrari had their test driver trying for the record, not Michael Schumacher or Rubens Barrichello (their # 2 at the time). Both of those two drivers are head and shoulders above any test driver and would have given a much better showing had they participated. I'm sure there were a lot of other issues going on that prevented the Ferrari's from putting on a good show.
