It looks like these cars are able to break the rules of physics – so how do they engineer them to make this possible? And given the perfect conditions, just how steep an incline could a car go up? Could they climb a vertical wall? So, we did some maths to find out.
But before we do that, I want to talk a bit about what’s behind these amazing vehicles and how they manage to climb these ridiculous inclines. You might think it’s about hitting the accelerator as hard as possible and just going for it, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s really tricky to get a car to do this, and even these specialised Formula Off-Road cars can get it wrong. Deploying enough power, without slipping the wheels or pulling a wheelie – is an art in itself. So how do they design these cars to do this? Their first challenge is creating enough grip. Normally tyres rely on gravity to push the tyres into the ground. So the Friction force is literally equal to the downward force on the tyre, times the coefficient of friction. This is basically the relative stickiness of the tyre and the surface. But this becomes a problem when at such steep angles. Because this force is not acting directly against the surface, less of it can be used to create grip. When we split this out, the force pushing the tyre against the surface is small, making the friction much less.
