Editor's Note: "Terminal Velocity" is a new column in which we hand the microphone to a renowned tuner; in this case it's Bob Norwood. Norwood's crazy creations have appeared in the Turbo pages on many occasions. His talent goes beyond conceptualization, fabrication and tuning; what sets him apart is the ability to take leading edge ideas and execute them so they work in the real world, on the street, or on the strip. We call him "The Mad Scientist" and look forward to his offerings from month to month.
Alternative ThinkingDuring the last 40-some years I have seen a lot of changes in motorsports in the United States. In 1955 I attended the first NHRA-sanctioned event in Kansas and since then I have actively participated in just about every form of automotive racing as a driver, tuner and team owner.
I am not fussy about what I race; the challenge for me is building and competing in a car that pushes the limits of the rules and is technnologically groundbreaking. People have called me crazy many times, yet I still firmly believe that if you don't go to the absolute limit of the rules then you might as well shoot yourself in the foot. If anything is left on the table, then the car isn't finished. It's still a project. It's as simple as that.
Of course, I have had a few run-ins with sanctioning bodies along the way. Sometimes my interpretation of the rule book does not entirely agree with the author's intentions. Communication is key to prevent this problem. Let's face it, it's not cheap to build a racecar and it certainly isn't cheap to build a car twice because you didn't think about talking to the sanctioning body about what you are doing.
Currently I am building a new Pro FWD Class car for Christian Rado that will be raced under the NORAD racing banner in 2004 (editor's note: the building of this groundbreaking car will be chronicled step-by-step in Turbo). We have set some lofty performance goals for the new car. How does 200-plus mph and sub 7.6-second passes sound to you? To achieve these goals I have had to completely rethink the design of the new car.
I started with the limiting factors that are causing problems for the current crop of Pro FWD cars. The first problem is traction. Most of the Pro FWD cars are using a 10-inch-wide drive tire. I decided to use a tire that is between 14 and 16 inches wide to get the kind of horsepower down to the ground that we will be generating from the NORAD Toyota 3RZ engine. Think about it: a tire that is as big as the rear tires on a Pro Stock car, on the front!
This starting point raises a whole bunch of other issues. First, there's a packaging issue. The front tires not only have to drive the car, they also have to steer and they have to fit within the constraints of the body so the chassis design has to allow for this.
The next issue is horsepower. It takes a lot of power to drive a tire that big without getting tire shake or simply bogging the car down. We have taken Rado's current engine and completely reworked it to raise the performance level. The current WORLD Racing Toyota Celica generates around 1,000 hp at the wheels. With our version we expect to see more than 1,200 hp at the wheels from just under 3 liters.