(engine revving)
- This is the Bugatti Bolide
a new experimental hyper car built
around Bugatti's eight liter quad turbo W16.
And this is a golf ball that was rolling around
in the back of Cain's pickup truck.
He's a Ford ranger guy
so he's got a lot of stuff out there.
He's got golf balls, he's got old golf clubs.
He's got chairs, he's got dead people. Ranger life.
Now what do these two things have in common?
Well, supposedly they're aerodynamics
at least according to a bunch
of articles and Bugatti themselves.
Bugatti has the Bolide set to break
some serious records.
But how much of what they say
about this golf ball arrow is really real.
Well, turns out not all of it.
Today we're gonna double on the black magic
that is aerodynamics.
Explain the science behind the Bugatti Bolide
and see how much it
and this old golf ball really have in common.
If there's one thing I hate more than hypocrites,
It's people who play golf.
(chuckles)
(upbeat music)
- Looney, Looney Boonie.
Are we good?
- Thank you to off the record
for sponsoring today's video.
- Top of the morning to ya.
St. Patrick's day is here,
and I know how fun it is to go out for the holiday.
But remember that the police know what this holiday means.
And they'll be out looking for speeders, swervers
and all kinds of reckless driving.
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- [Narrator] Register now to use code donut
for 10% off your first ticket at offtherecord.com/donut
- Was that great? Did I Nail it?
- [Man] Nailed it.
- Yes.
(chuckles)
- A few years back Bugatti asked themselves what if
we strip away all of the Chiron's heavy bodywork
and creature comforts and replace everything
with the latest, lightweight aerodynamic parts
and crank up that legendary engine.
(shouts)
- You ever seen someone crank up something
on crank? You get it.
The answer they came up with is the Bugatti Bolide.
Bolide is Italian for fireball
and it's a track only monster weighing
just over 1200 kilos with 1800 horsepower.
That's like the weight of a Mini Cooper and the power
of two Indy cars,
but a great power to weight ratio isn't the only ingredient
for a fast race car.
You need race car tires, race car suspension
and maybe most importantly, race car aerodynamics.
But I'm not sure if race car aerodynamics is the right term
because the Bolide has a feature
I've never seen on any race car.
On the roof is a giant air intake
which feeds that massive W16 engine.
And on top of that are 60 inflatable bubbles that can extend
up to 10 millimeters from the surface of the car.
Bugatti says that this more football outer skin reduces drag
and improves both agility and efficiency.
They say it can do this because those bubbles work just
like dimples on the surface of a golf ball.
So there you have it.
That completely explains Bugatti's new golf ball arrow.
Thank you for watching like, and subscribe.
We're not done.
Look Bugatti I get it.
Arrow is complicated, but for starters
those are bubbles and golf balls they have dimples.
Those aren't the same.
They're kind of like the actual opposite.
So let's pick up where Bugatti left off and see
if we can fill in some of the gaps in this story.
Before we get into how Bugatti's golf ball arrow works.
We need to understand some of the basics of aerodynamics.
Race car arrow is complex
and involves many parts working together.
But aerodynamic design is based on a simple principle.
Adding or reducing pressure to one side of an object
will create an imbalance that can move that object.
Let me show you what I mean
just by being in our atmosphere
these two ping pong balls have a constant force
on them from both sides, about 14 PSI or one atmosphere.
Since the pressure is on all sides
it's balanced and the balls remain stationary.
Now, if I add more pressure to one side,
for example by blowing on it.
It moves towards the area of lower pressure.
Now, what if instead of increasing pressure, we lower it.
We can do this by using the Bernoulli principle
which states that an increase
in the speed of a fluid occurs simultaneously
with a decrease in static pressure.
If we create a current
of air between the two ping-pong balls
you might think this air current would push them apart
but the moving air actually reduces the air pressure
between them causing the balls to move inward.
Increasing pressure
or decreasing pressure it doesn't matter.
Any imbalance will create motion.
So how do these principles apply to race cars?
Vroom, vroom, let's go speed.
Let's start with the most obvious example
of race car, aerodynamics, the rear wing.
It creates a vertical pressure differential
with high pressure on top
and low pressure below.
This produces negative lift
or down force pushing the car into the track
which means more grip, which means faster speed,
when you're going around corners.
The Bolide has adjustable wings, front and rear
and at 200 miles an hour
and maximum attack angle Bugatti says they're good
for 5,700 pounds of combined down force.
That's a lot of your mamas.
Now another way race cars produce down force is
by taking advantage of ground effect.
Similar to how creating a current of air
between the ping pong balls caused them
to move inwards towards each other,
creating a fast moving current
of air underneath the car will cause it
to be sucked down to the track.
So why not just install some six side skirts
and a huge wing, call it a day?
Well arrow, isn't all that simple.
All the down force producing parts
of a race car can create huge amounts
of grip and high speed stability
but they have to be precisely calibrated to work in harmony.
If the front splitters angle of attack is too shallow
this can create lift and that lift can cancel out
the down force from the ground effects
and without ground effects and a rear ring producing
huge down force on the rear of the car.
Something like this can happen.
- [Narrator] Here we go. Oh my god. Oh my god.
The Mercedes has taken off.
- Your car stops being a car,
and it starts being a plane.
We don't want that.
Planes are planes for a reason, right guys?
(laughs)
So now, you know the basics make everything work in harmony
and create tons of down force.
Well, that would be great
for high speed handling and braking,
but it comes at a cost of acceleration and top speed.
Because most down force producing parts also create drag.
Usually when we think of drag, the first thing that comes
to mind is having to push air out of the way.
But there's a secondary drag called pressure drag,
and it's just as important.
Pressure drag is when a fast moving object leaves
a low pressure area or weight behind itself.
And this weight increases the pressure differential
pulling the object backwards, slowing it down further.
So how do we reduce this pressure drag?
Well, in Bugatti's case, they turn to a concept that's
over 100 years old.
And it looks like this.
Like any object,
a moving ball displaces the air in front of it.
And air has viscosity.
It likes to stick
to whatever surface it's traveling over.
At low speeds air travels along the ball surface
in nice orderly layers, all going the same direction.
This is called laminar flow.
As a ball moves faster.
The inertia of the faster air
overcomes the viscosity forces
that were keeping it stuck to the ball.
And so the air detaches and that separation
leaves a large low pressure wake that gradually fills
in with detached air tumbling into it.
This causes that pressure drag we were talking about before.
So how do dimples help with separation?
Well, the dimples create microscopic areas
of high and low pressure.
These turn the boundary layer
of laminar air into turbulent air.
So the layers are no longer gliding smoothly
past each other.
This turbulent air has less inertia
so it can stick to the surface of the ball longer.
It's not much extra stick
but a dimple golf ball can fly twice as far
as a smooth one.
So how does this compare
to what Bugatti is doing with the Bolide.
The Bolide suffers from the same detaching air dilemma
as our flying golf ball.
At speeds over 50 miles an hour
the air passing over the intake scoop would detach
instead of following the curve of the roof line.
As the car increases in speed, the wake
of the hood scoop would reach further and further back
eventually producing a low pressure area
around the rear wing, making it way less useful.
So, they brought in the bubbles
like the dimples on a golf ball,
the Bolide bubbles prevent the separation
by creating multiple areas of high and low pressure.
All those small pressure differentials produce turbulent air
that can stick to the surface of the car
and follow the curve of the body towards the rear wing.
When Bugatti says
that those bubbles reduce the aerodynamic drag
of the scoop by 10%, they're not talking
about the air resistance at the front of the scoop.
They're talking about the pressure drag behind it.
Bugatti is actually not the first company
to use bubbles like this, to reduce pressure drag.
But they are the first to make those bubbles active.
So why not just have the bubbles inflated it all the time?
Well, below 50 miles an hour, the air is moving
over the intake slowly enough that it doesn't detach.
If the bubbles were there
they just create drag in the form of air resistance.
Dimples on a golf ball, they have the same problem.
The perfect golf ball would have active dimples
that don't appear until 55 miles per hour.
When their positive impact on pressure drag
will outweigh their increased air resistance.
I guess I found out how to make a lot of money
make an active golf ball and sell it to cheaters.
All golfers had cheated at least once
in their golfing life, right?
So why use bubbles instead of dimples?
Dimples would create areas of low pressure
but probably would be less effective than bubbles,
which protrude into the air flow.
Maybe they'd work even better
if the bubbles had dimples,
but that's untested speculation.
And unfortunately, so is a lot of what Bugatti is saying
about the Bolide.
According to Bugatti the Bolide's massive power, lightweight
and high-tech arrow means it could lap The Nurburg ring
in five minutes, 23 seconds.
It could lap the 24 hours Le Mans circuit
in three minutes seven seconds they say.
Seven seconds faster than the fastest race car.
Bugatti says the Bolide could do these things
but they haven't actually done it.
The Bolide is a real functional car
and it looks pretty sweet.
But apart from the weight and the horsepower
every number Bugatti has said is based
on computer simulations.
The Bolide has not run from zero to 60 in 2.1 seconds.
It hasn't hit 311 miles per hour.
It has not produced 5,700 pounds of down force
and those magic bubbles on the roof
they've never produced a 10% reduction in drag.
Those bubbles success is all based on simulations too.
It's like the matrix over there Bugatti.
I wanna believe all those numbers are possible.
I really, really do, but for me to believe it,
I need more than just a simulation, I need to see it.
I need to see it happen.
I didn't believe in Brendan Fraser
until I saw him in a Walmart in Rancho Cucamonga.
He's a nice guy.
Where has he been?
Nobody knows since I saw him there.
(chuckles)
Thank you guys so much for watching this episode of B2B.
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Bye for now.