Advancements Developed For Motorsports That Made Their Way To Street Cars

What do think will be next advancement of road going cars that will come from racing?

First, I will limit my answer to F1 and, to some extent, IndyCars. NASCAR uses four speed transmissions… abandoned in most street cars a long time ago.That said, I cannot see any immediate candidate right here, right now.The performance technology of F1 is rather divorced from street cars. F1 engines are hybrid, which is nothing new; it appeared in street cars before F1. But F1 also uses two “energy recovery” systems, one based on braking recovery (MGU-K), the other on turbo exhaust gases thermal recovery (MGU-H). This allows F1 cars to develop crazy horsepower with tiny engines… but do we need more of that in street cars? Particularly, at the price of expensive and often unreliable technology? I don’t think so.Also, F1 performance depends heavily on aerodynamics. All the appendages and wings on F1 cars allow them to take turns at impossible speeds that no other car can develop. But then again, who needs that in street cars? First, turns in highways are designed for pretty conservative speeds, achievable by any street car without any grip-increasing aero device. Plus, aero devices are really effective at very high speeds… do we want to lure the soccer moms who drive a Prius into taking a tight turn at 120 mph? And did I mention that F1 cars create accelerations in the order of 6 to 7 g, the very limit even highly trained athletes can take without a pressure suit (like the kind fighter pilots use)?Safety is a better candidate… if it wasn’t for the cost. The survivability of modern open wheel cars is amazing. See this video of Scott Dixon’s flying car hitting the concrete barriers at Indy; his car was reduced to a nearly wheel-less box, yet he walked out of it with just a fractured ankle…That said, IndyCars as well as F1 have tubs made of carbon fiber and other exotic composite materials. Is that affordable for ordinary street cars today? Nope. Could it be in the future? Maybe… road car safety advanced a lot in the last 30 years, yet we still use carbon steel and sometimes aluminum (a dangerous trend if you ask me; aluminum is roughly as strong as steel, but less ductile, the same issue that doomed the Titanic).Still, I hope someday we will be able to use better structural materials for street cars, at an affordable cost. If that happens, open wheel race cars would have been the pioneers.

Why do we still have car races knowing that it's a waste of increasingly valuable oil?

I think it's a really good question. Probably many people who are not fans of motorsports wonder something similar.It SEEMS like your question is really about whether motorsports is justified. So a larger question is how do you justify any activity, given that everything humans do has some external effect, whether in consuming resources or damaging the environment. Some activities, like war, have enormously negative consequences on the planet, while others seem to have very little negative effects (think jogging or sailing). I personally don't think that activities that do not directly and immediately harm others require justification. People do largely what they want to do and tastes change (bear baiting and cock fighting used to be far more common and socially acceptable). But if you HAD to rank large-scale activities by some sort of social-justification scale, where would motorsports be compared to, say, soccer (futbol) which is probably the world's most popular activity after canoodling? It's obvious that far more oil is consumed by people going to soccer games than participating in or attending automobile races. So which is more socially justifiable (not that I think that's a relevant question, but let's just assume it is for a moment).Motorsports has, historically, driven technological advancements in automobiles that have increased safety, comfort, and efficiency. Some of these are referenced in previous answers to your question. Disc brakes, anti-lock braking systems, electronic fuel injection, engine management systems, seat belts, crush zones, fuel tank safety improvements, aerodynamics, lighting, and energy recovery systems all come quickly to mind as things we have on modern cars that can be traced back to a simple goal of winning races. Those improvements, having made their way to passenger cars and trucks, have reduced fuel consumption and saved lives over the last 60 years or so compared to cars without those advancements. Soccer, on the other hand, has given us what exactly? Synthetic shirts? So perhaps your question should really be "Should we still be playing soccer knowing it's a waste of increasingly valuable oil?"

Do you think it will ever be illegal for people to drive because of the large advancements in self driving cars?

I think that it could become illegal for people to drive on public roads in the future. As autonomous cars become a greater proportion of the vehicles on the road then the risk of human drivers causing accidents will greatly outweigh the benefits of road safety provided by cars which can communicate with each other.Insurers might decide that it is not economic to insure human driven vehicles and so not offer insurance products for everyday human drivers.I don’t think that the skills of driving will disappear though. They will live on for a few driving enthusiasts and motor sports will continue.The next few decades will see a great difference in the world we know. People one hundred years from now might wonder how we ever managed to drive our own cars and perhaps look on today with nostalgia.