The biggest car news and reviews, no BS<\/p>\n
Our free daily newsletter sends the stories that really matter directly to you, every weekday.<\/p>\n
RFK Racing<\/a>, a storied outfit you might recognize as Brad Keselowski<\/a>\u2018s NASCAR<\/a> team, decided to run an aerodynamic analysis of Lightning McQueen from Cars<\/a>. Now you can watch Seth Dillard, an Aerodynamics\/CFD Engineer at RFK, break down Lightning\u2019s aero viability.<\/p>\n \u201cCFD\u201d stands for Computational Fluid Dynamics, which can refer to the study of any liquid or gas in motion. But in this context, it\u2019s an aero simulation, examining the movement of air across McQueen\u2019s body. With powerful computer processors, a technician can understand how aerodynamic a car will be at different speeds and in different conditions using math.<\/p>\n Dillard refers to McQueen\u2019s mouth as a point of \u201cstagnation,\u201d which means air doesn\u2019t move there. But if McQueen were real, he\u2019d be breathing through there (I don\u2019t think he has a nose?) so maybe opening his mouth actually creates an aero benefit.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure what exactly inspired this\u2014maybe somebody at Disney just leaked Lightning\u2019s specs? But safe to say, this has to be the first car Dillard\u2019s analyzed that has different aerodynamic properties depending on its facial expression.<\/p>\n And spoiler alert: McQueen might not be the sleekest machine in the Cars universe!<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the video:<\/p>\n Got a tip? Send us a note at tips@thedrive.com.<\/p>\n Automotive journalist since 2013, Andrew primarily coordinates features, sponsored content, and multi-departmental initiatives at The Drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest car news and reviews, no BS Our free daily newsletter sends the stories that really matter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-232770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}