Is Torque King?
Its about area under curve, and where in that curve your transmission/gearing keeps you.
for example new car with about 150hp can beat 300hp muscle car, even if muscle car has way more torque.
Why because of gearing and trans keeps that 150hp on tires right from start.
other simple example.
I had 50cc dirt bike at kid, we tuned it and it would rew 18000rpm. that thing was fast even when 0-14000rpm was useless, it made all power 14000-18000rpm.
But with good clutch operating i could keep that thing on that power curve.
But anyways torque is more fun on street car, makes tires go away :)
Hopefully I won't sound like a total ignoramus. I definitely am not an expert on this subject. What peelo57 says about the torque curve seems logical to me.
Because a motor is not going to be running at a steady RPM, the contour of that torque curve it seems to me would have to be a critical factor in determining the type of results you would see at a drag strip. For an example, an engine that won't produce a lot of torque until it's running 3000 to 4500 RPM should be in a car set up to take maximum advantage of where that peak torque is achieved. A radical camshaft profile combined with a rear end ratio of 3.23s would struggle on the strip until the RPM would reach the range it ran best. Through the use of gears and a stall converter (if an automatic is used) a person should be able to set a vehicle up to try to stay in that sweet spot where the most power is produced.
So if these assumptions are correct, wouldn't a guy be best off (if he wanted to be as quick as possible) designing a build to have the most torque he could get at the RPM he will be running most of the time?
And wouldn't that mean that for a street car you would want that torque maximized at a lower RPM than for a race car? A street car that will rarely see 4000 RPM would probably seem like a pooch to drive even if the engine put out gobs of power at the higher revs but put out very little in the 1500 to 2500 range.
I would think that a short track circle burner would need as broad a high torque range as you could get because it of the way it will be running. I would think that an engine designed for that use would be able to outperform (on the track) a car with an engine that produced more power - but outside of the power curve it's running half the time.
The HP and torque numbers might sound great if you're only going for bragging rights about what's on a piece of paper, but the best 'real world' result is a more complex proposition.
When I was younger I built a few engines that ran great but I didn't focus on the full package. They sounded mean as hell but I hadn't been taking advantage of what RPM they produced the best torque.