On this turbocharged episode of "MythBusters"...
the whole team feels the need for speed in an Indycar special.
Holy crap!
First up, it's a sporting-superstar showdown...
Show you how we do it in the Olympics.
In a short-course sprint...
- Let's do this. - ...That'll knock your socks off.
Go!
Can man beat car?
That was close.
Then, there's some sensational suction...
Whoa! Look at that.
as the guys see if a road-hugging racecar
really can mobilize a manhole cover.
You're getting faster.
Beautiful!
Meanwhile, Kari, Tory, and Grant strip down...
Apparently, my intestines are measuring 101 degrees.
...Then suit up.
I'm about to drive an indycar for three hours! Whoo-hoo!
To test out a race-day, weight-loss myth...
Goodness gracious, that's fast.
That pushes them all to the brink and beyond.
I am exhausted. I feel like I just got beat up.
Who are the MythBusters?
Adam Savage...
It's scientific!
and Jamie Hyneman.
Quack, damn you.
Between them, more than 30 years of special-effects experience.
Together with Kari Byron...
Golden dragon!
Tory Belleci...
Why are we doing this?
and Grant Imahara.
Somebody order an explosion?
They don't just tell the myths.
Aw!
They put them to the test.
MythBusters 12x04 - Indy Car Special Original air date May 22, 2013
Sync and corrections by atrn97g for www.addic7ed.com Refitted for HDTV.x264-WNN by someone
First out of the blocks is a myth
that pits hamstrings against horsepower.
What are you doing? Research.
Only you could call playing around with toys "research."
So, what's up first?
First up, we've got a doozy.
There is a myth that a man can actually outrun an indycar.
I'm sorry.
I don't know any dudes that can run 220 miles an hour.
He doesn't have to, because this race takes place
over only a distance of 30 feet.
Ah. Well, that's different.
That's all about the physics of it...
traction, mass, that kind of thing.
That might just work.
You feel like running?
Maybe after lunch.
Good idea.
The incredibly Indy 500 is renowned for its rolling starts.
One reason for this "go, go, go" game plan
is that indycars struggle to get a grip from a standing start.
But is their traction really so terrible
that in a 30-foot, man-versus-car race-off,
it's the human who'd take the checkered flag?
Well, what better place to test it
than America's Mecca of motorsport?
We've been lucky enough,
in the course of doing this show,
to film at some pretty iconic locations.
We got to escape from Alcatraz.
Welcome to The Rock.
We got to throw pennies off the roof
of the Empire State Building.
Wow.
And we looked for Jimmy Hoffa
on the 50-yard line of the Meadowlands.
But today... today... I am standing on the starting line
of the most famous track in racing,
the Indianapolis Motor Speedway,
known, because of this strip I'm standing on, as The Brickyard.
These bricks are some of the 32 million
used to build the original, 2 1/2-mile-long track
back in 1909.
The speedway's seen speed records smashed
and a lot of cars trashed in its 100-year history.
But safe to say it's never seen anything quite like this.
Well, our track is all set up.
You ready for some sprinting, hoosier?
I'm good to go. All we need is a car and a driver.
I'm no psychic, but I believe one is showing up posthaste.
Hey, everybody.
- Hey, Ryan. How's it going? - Good.
Ryan Briscoe's a bit of a legend around here,
not just for his driving but for walking away
from this calamitous crash back in 2005.
Today, he's offered to coach Adam on how to get off to a flying start.
This is the car I'll be racing against Jamie in our head-to-head match
but I've never driven one before.
Ryan, what would you say to a novelist about getting this one off the line and driving it?
You've got a lot of horsepower here,
and the key is really gonna be, you know,
getting that feeling with the clutch
and not stalling it, 'cause it's got a very touchy clutch.
So, you're gonna have lots of RPM.
And then, just find that bite point.
Get those tires spinning, and off you go.
With a top speed of over 240 miles per hour,
these are the fastest racecars in the world,
and Adam's pretty quick to get his butt behind the wheel.
All right, I'm gonna start it up.
Wow. I feel a rumble in my soul.
"Rumble" is right, because this car goes
from zero to 100 in 3 seconds flat.
Let's see how Adam handles the horses.
Well, that was a little spotty.
I'm gonna give it another few tries.
Any minute now, I'll be ready for the Hyneman.
The challenge is a 30 foot match race between man and car.
And there's just a few minutes for Adam to get up to speed.
Gotta see he's getting a little better.
Okay, here we go.
One more try and then I'm coming for you, Hoosier.
Here we go.
Yeah, that's it!
After four practice starts,
Adam's convinced he was born to burn rubber.
So, cue test number one...
700 horsepower versus one hopeful Hyneman.
You wouldn't think it would be much of a contest,
but here's the thing.
I weigh a little over a tenth as much as that car does.
So, I might just be a little quicker getting off the line.
The feeling trackside is, it's gonna be close,
so let's see.
Are you ready? Start your engines!
Go!
Sure enough, there's barely the width of a moustache between them.
I don't know. It was a close finish.
That was close!
The high-speed shows Adam flashing through for a win
in the last fraction of a second.
It's so close, there's no question.
This calls for a do-over.
Start your engines!
Go!
To the naked eye, it's another close call,
but the high-speed shows Adam has increased his edge.
How'd that go?
You were ahead of me by about three feet that time.
- Really? - Yeah.
It's amazing to watch it, because I'm leading you
right up until about I'm ready to cross the finish line.
And then there you are, and you're gone.
I did spin out a bunch at the starting line.
- You want to go one more time? - Yeah.
This is Jamie's last chance to confirm the myth
and boost the morale of pedestrians everywhere.
But it's not "third time's a charm."
I think I got my ass kicked.
This time, Adam wins out by way more than a nose.
We just did a very exciting three tests - man versus machine
and in the first one I won by a few inches
second one - by a couple of feet
third one - kind of by a mile.
Now, two things are happening that I think causes that.
One is I'm getting better at starting off a line each time.
Two, the tires are getting hotter and that makes them stick better.
I thought I did pretty well.
A couple of those runs, I was neck-and-neck with the car.
But I'm just wearing street clothes,
and maybe if we put somebody in proper gear,
and maybe if that person happened to be
a little younger than me, A.K.A. Adam,
he might have a fighting chance.
Yep. Just down the track,
we've got Sprint-King Savage up against Hair-Trigger Hyneman.
He's no Usain Bolt,
but the finish of this race is certified gold.
Next up is a "lose weight real fast" myth
that should get anyone's motor racing.
Okay, Indycar special. What have we got?
All right.
This one sounds a little fishy, but here goes.
It's that, during the course of a race,
an Indycar driver can lose 10 pounds.
Seriously? 10 whole pounds?
That's what they say.
Wait a minute.
Does this mean we're gonna be driving racecars
- to test this myth? - I hope so.
I'm gonna go suit up.
Excited much?
If this diet dilemma is true, it's one of the most exciting
and potentially perilous ways ever to slim down in a hurry.
The weight these drivers supposedly shed
is due to extreme exertion and plenty of perspiration.
But 10 pounds is more than most of us
could hope to lose in a month.
All right. I'm ready to race.
Since this is about sweat, maybe we should narrow it down first
and find out how much water weight you would lose
in three hours from just heat alone.
That's a good idea.
That way, we could get a baseline before we hit the road
and see if driving itself causes you to lose
more or less weight than that.
Exactly. Kari, know any good SPAs?
Well, that's a stupid question.
Better question is, where did you have a race suit?
I'm always prepared.
The green flag drops on the control test,
so for now, Tory can leave the race suit behind.
Down here, the dress code is... well, let's call it relaxed.
Now, we do a lot of crazy things on "MythBusters,"
and most of them aren't that pleasant.
But, finally, we're doing an experiment
where it sounds like it's not gonna be so bad.
Think again, because a sauna gets up to 120 degrees,
which is the same temperature as the inside of an Indy cockpit,
and we're gonna be in there for three hours,
which is the same length of time as a full race.
In fact, things just might turn unpleasant enough
for some medical monitoring.
And we've got that stitched up.
Dr. Clifford Sewell will be monitoring us.
We have thermometers that we've swallowed...
For science.
...ingestible thermometers that are wireless
and can take our core temperature
and make sure that everything's okay.
Well, that was a big one.
They'll weigh themselves now,
then again when the three-hour furnace has finished.
Tory's the first to proclaim his poundage to the public.
Okay, so, I weight 176.
As for Kari's gross tonnage...
I'll write it down.
Grant strains the scales up to...
137?
Now all that's required is a sizable snooze in the sauna.
But how much of their mass will go missing?
Whew! Three hours of this?
This is hot!
Now, normally, when you're in a sauna, it's very steamy.
But as you can see, we're going with the dry sauna.
The reason why is if there's too much moisture in the air,
it's too saturated.
When we sweat, our sweat won't evaporate,
which means we won't be losing weight from losing the moisture.
This is a common method for people to shed
some water weight really quickly.
Models, jockeys, fighters, they all do this kind of thing.
So, I mean, I think it's a possibility.
10 pounds is quite a lot.
I'm not looking forward to it.
Hey, you guys come to the sauna often?
Aah!
Ew! Really?
Just so we're clear: Last night, each of us swallowed a pill
that contains a temperature sensor and a wireless transmitter.
It's gonna be picked up by this and displayed in real time.
As the minutes and hours melt away,
the perspiration puddles and pools,
and it seems like each of our sweat hogs
has his own odd response to heat stress.
For Tory, it's all just a drive in the park...
You see, I'm pretending like I'm driving an indycar.
...while Grant has his eye on the instruments.
Apparently, my intestines are measuring 101 degrees.
According to science, Grant's hot.
So is Kary, and's she definitely starting to wilt.
Now I'm starting to feel why this is a dangerous experiment.
I feel a little dizzy, a little overheated... ...definitely sweaty.
But with just minutes of hot-house hardship
left to endure,
the guys decide they can brazen it out.
Thank God we are done with the experiment.
We've been in here for three hours.
Now it's time to go out and weigh ourselves
and see if we lost weight.
It's a good thing, because I was about to lose the towel.
I'm lightheaded.
All right, Grant. You weighed 137 before the test.
Get on the scale and see how much weight you lost.
136.
All right. So, you lost a pound.
The news is no better for she who suffered most.
Looks like you lost one pound of weight.
- That was just one pound? - Yeah.
And for the man who did get in some driving practice...
Wow. I lost two pounds.
That's far from the 10 pounds the myth talks about,
so it's got to be more than heat.
It's got to also be exertion and stress.
Well, you know what that means.
I think we need to add driving to the mix.
Let's hit the showers. It's that way.
Sweet.
After the break... Whoo-hoo!
Tory tries to lose 10 fast pounds
without hitting the wall...
My heart is racing a little bit faster now.
While Adam redlines
in the challenge of beating the indycar.
Oh, my God. It's so close!
That's crazy.
There's not much on four wheels
that could outrun a turbocharged indycar,
but one myth says a man could do just that
if the course was just 30 feet long.
And while vintage Jamie ran out of steam...
I think I got my ass kicked.
A slightly younger model might reverse the result...
Now it's my turn to run.
With the help of an added spring at the start.
So, Jamie was running from what I would call a standing start.
I'm going to use a little technology to help me,
a racer's set of chocks.
This ought to give me an edge.
Jamie's first race was so tight that these slight advantages
of age, clothing and chocks
could be enough to make Adam an unlikely sports legend.
Now I'm ready.
Start your engines!
Go!
Ohh!
I think that was close.
I dont know, it was awful close.
It's officially a photo finish,
and Adam's the first to consult with the stewards.
Oh, my God. It's so close!
That's crazy!
He's literally beating me by a nose...
by, like, the five inches of the nose of the indycar.
Let's do it again!
If the course was just a foot shorter,
we'd have a new champion and a confirmed myth.
That's incentive enough to race back to the blocks.
Aah!
I don't think I won! But I was close!
Well, that's one way to put it.
The replay confirms
that this race was a frame-perfect dead heat.
Jamie, that was a tie.
- Way to go. - You want to go one more time?
- Sure. Why not? - All right.
This will be Adam's last run, and, boy, does he know it.
I want to win. I want to win so badly.
Go!
I think he smoked me on that one. Shoot!
It's exactly what happened to Jamie with his runs.
Third time, unlucky on those fast-fading, middle-aged legs.
That might be some of the most fun I've had
testing a myth ever.
Yeah, those cars are great.
I'll tell you what I'm seeing.
When I'm running and you're driving,
we've got a shot at the beginning
that makes it look like I'm smoking the car.
I'm way faster off the line,
but 30 feet later, you're ahead of me.
Yeah, I saw the same thing.
I thought I was winning the race.
And then, there's a car, and it's gone.
I don't think we can call it based on these tests alone.
- No. We're not done yet. - No.
Grant, Tory, and Kari are sweating on a myth
that says an indycar driver
can drop 10 whole pounds in body weight
during a three-hour road race.
But an experimental sweat-a-thon
saw them shed just four pounds between them,
so it's time to shift up a gear.
All right, so, to properly test this,
we need to go to the source, which means we're also going
to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
But there's a catch.
There's only one car, so only one of us can drive.
All right, I'll do it.
I'll take the bullet here. I'm willing to do this.
No, I think we should wrestle for it.
No, no, no.
Wait a minute.
- Roshambo? - It's the only fair way.
Yes!
I'm super-happy for you.
Let's do this! That felt good.
But as it turns out, Kari will have a tale someday for the grandkids.
If she holds back just a bit on the details.
Oh my god, look at this. This is amazing!
I can't believe we're driving the Indy speedway.
We're hitting peak speeds of 25-30 miles per hour!
We decided to come here because we needed to step it up.
We need to find out if Tory can ride around this track
and lose 10 pounds.
But, first, we're gonna need a car.
And this is the car.
It's a Dallara.
It weighs about 1,200 pounds, has 750 horsepower,
is capable of driving at 210 miles per hour,
and can pull two to three G's.
Oh, yeah, and one more thing.
It costs about $1 million to put this car on the track.
But before they let me jump into an Indy car
I need to learn how to drive one of these things.
Because these machines are a completely different beast.
Looks like dreams can come true.
And while Tory gets some intensive driver's ed...
Don't be afraid to let out and gas at the same time.
You kind of want to go...
Grant and Kari get a first-hand account
of the punishing pursuit
these pro drivers go through from Ryan Briscoe.
Each time I hit the brake pedal, it's like 150 pounds.
And I'll be doing that literally hundreds,
maybe, you know, thousands of times in a race.
Your neck is really the only part of the body not supported in the racecar,
so the weight of your head plus the helmet
with 4 g turns constantly every lap,
you need a really strong neck to hold your self upright in the corners.
And the steering wheel is really heavy. No power steering.
It's like pushing probably 40-pound to 50-pound weights
every time I'm turning the wheel.
And that is, like, thousands and thousands of times
during the race.
Sounds like racing at Indy
amounts to a three-hour boot camp.
Couple that with the heat and the pulse-thumping terror
of taking these 200-mile-an-hour turns...
well, you can see how you might kick a few calories.
Was that so much fun?
It didn't suck.
Oh my gosh. It's like, your're so low to the ground, you feel like..
You're.. I can't even describe it. It's the craziest feeling ever.
There's just one piece of business
to tend to before the big race.
Alright Tory, you're all hydrated.
Jump on the scale, let's see your weight.
All right, so, the weigh-in... 184 pounds.
All right. So, that's your before-race weight.
For this to be confirmed, after you're done,
that's got to say 174.
What are you waiting for? Go get in the car!
All right.
You got three whole hours.
Tick-tock.
There's a lot of pressure on me right now.
And I'm not gonna lie... I'm a little nervous.
Who am I kidding?!
I'm about to drive an indycar for three hours! Whoo-hoo!
All he has to do is stay on the track, go fast,
pump some break-pedal iron, and perspire freely,
which should be, well, no sweat.
I'm in the zone. Let's do this.
- All right. Good luck. - Thanks.
Meanwhile, an appreciative croud of two
settles into one of the world's biggest sport stadiums.
Woohoo!
Team Mythbusting!
Tory's losing weight while we're gaining it.
This whole experience is so surreal.
I mean, you're so low to the ground, you're going at such high speed
the ground is basically just flying by you.
As fun as it is, I didn't realize how much energy
I would be exerting by focusing on the road.
Back in the bleachers, the partisan fans are still hopeful.
That looks like so much fun!
Now, here's why Tory might lose 10 pounds.
He's covered head-to-toe in fire-retardant material,
including a head sock.
Then, he's got his race uniform and his helmet.
He's gonna be hot,
and that means he gonna sweat in order to cool down.
And then there's the exertion.
Even at these speeds,
this car generates a lot of downforce,
which means the steering's gonna be really hard in every turn.
Finally, there's the stress.
See, most of this course, the walls are concrete.
You make one mistake,
if you have one lapse in judgment,
you're in the concrete,
and a $1 million car is destroyed,
not to mention risking injury or death.
That's a lot to think about.
In fact, there's almost no end to the stresses and strains.
On the turns, Tory's pulling as much as three G's,
and that means he feels like he's carrying
three times his own weight.
My neck muscles are definitely sore,
trying to keep in position
as I'm going around those turns at high speed.
My arms are getting sore.
I keep my foot slammed on the gas
probably harder than I have to,
but the adrenaline is rushing so much
that I kind of forget that I'm doing it.
The adrenaline's pretty much worn off for Grant and Kari.
There's a limit to how long
you can watch someone else have the time of his life.
Whoo!
I wish I had a watch on.
Back on the track, Tory's delight has turned to disquiet.
So, it's just started raining.
I don't have any rain tires on this car,
so the stress factor has just gone up
because there is a very good chance
that I could go sliding into the wall.
My heart is racing a little bit faster now.
Tory's heart might be faster,
but his speed has dropped off in the drizzle.
For the last hour, his top speed is just over 120.
How was that?
Is that it? Three hours is up already?
It is.
- That's it, man. You're done. - Oh, my God.
I am exhausted, and I feel sweaty as I could possibly be.
Why don't you get out of here. We'll weigh you and check your vitals
and see what this myth is. Sounds good. Come on.
After three whole hours and with all that exertion,
Tory's just about swimming in sweat.
All right. You ready for the final weigh-in?
Yes. All right.
After three hours of driving,
I don't know if 10 pounds were lost.
181. I lost 3 pounds in 3 hours.
Dude, that's it?
That's nowhere near the 10 pounds the myth talks about.
The myth would seem to be just about dead in the water,
but maybe not.
The rain slowed Tory down for almost an hour...
and no other cars on the track
means less stress and less exertion.
And that's not the end of it.
Now, another factor, and perhaps the biggest one,
is the temperature.
We're here at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway,
but we're here in the off-season.
During the Indy 500, it wouldn't raining,
and it would be about 30 degrees warmer.
One thing they can't do is hang here till summer,
so it's time to warm up a plan "B"
and get this myth to the finish line.
Still to come, we find out if indycar suction...
Holy crap!
Can literally rip up the road.
You're getting faster. 149.
Beautiful!
Now to tackle a myth that starts,
and might end, in the sewer.
- I've got one. - Okay, shoot.
You know, I've heard that at about 150 miles an hour,
when indycars are doing a street race,
their aerodynamic effects are enough
to pull manhole covers right out of the manholes.
No way!
Dude, that is totally something we have to test.
I thought you'd like that.
When indycars take to the street,
it's standard practice to weld shut any manhole covers
in case the cars suck them right out of the ground.
That's because indycars are built to take full advantage
of Bernoulli's principle.
As the air underneath the car gets funneled faster,
it causes the air pressure to drop,
helping the car to stick to the road.
That same downforce
can supposedly suck up a manhole cover.
But is this myth destined for the drain?
This manhole-cover story is gonna be hard to test.
There's a ton of logistics just making sure
we don't damage the indycars in any way.
Well, what say we get our feet wet first
with a small-scale at NASA's water tunnel?
See if there's anything to this suction effect at all
- and then go from there? - Exactly.
Perfect.
I'm standing in the NASA Ames Research Facility's
fluid mechanics lab, and this place
is almost like one of our second shops.
In that wind tunnel right there,
we tested whether or not you should leave your windows open in a hurricane.
It doesn't matter!
We also tested the aerodynamic effects of a spinning baseball.
And a golf ball pop marked car.
Today, it's all about racecars.
They're studying the car's aerodynamics,
but they'll do it with water.
Air and water are very different mediums,
but when engineers work with them,
they tend to think of them both as fluids.
And because water is so much more dense than air,
if we inject a dye into a moving column of it,
we can more clearly visualize
how it's interacting with another object.
In this case, our object is the car.
The first test is simply to see
how the currents are moving around their 1/18-scale indycar.
All right. Let's turn on the dye.
This is where science gets seriously seductive.
Ohh.
Oh, that is so beautiful.
Once this smoothes out,
I feel like we might see something underneath.
Looks like the bottom surface of the car
is very, incredibly low-turbulence.
The water tunnel,
in addition to looking really cool,
is actually giving us exactly what we were hoping to see.
That is, these cars are famous for their downforce,
how much air pressure they're able to use
to push themselves into the ground
and give themselves more traction.
If that's the case,
we would expect to watch this move air over its top,
rather than under its bottom,
and that's what we're seeing from the model.
Now that we've seen that, it's time to find out what happens
when we drive this model over a scaled manhole cover,
and that's what our next test is.
Adam's mini manhole weighs next to nothing,
but it might disclose a clue as to whether
the shape of the car can show up some suction.
There we go.
For good measure, he pumps red dye into the tiny tunnel
to see if the predicted change in pressure
sucks it up to the surface.
Ohh! Look at that!
So, our little car picked up
our little, plastic manhole cover
and took it right along with it.
So, that means there is some kind of suction
being created by this car.
To be clear, the car never actually touches the cover.
But the drag of its shape is sufficient
to pry loose the plastic and release the red dye.
It really seems like the forces we were looking for
might actually be there,
and that gives us a perfect excuse,
as if we needed one,
to get to driving some real-sized indycars.
I'm gonna need a new outfit, clearly.
You know, the Indycar experience wasn't that great.
It was awesome!
But, unfortunately, we were not able
to test this myth thoroughly,
because the conditions weren't the same as a real race.
Yeah, you know, it wasn't very hot in the car,
and you didn't have the stress
of a real, competitive situation,
both of which would have made you sweat more.
I think I have a solution for this.
I know a track nearby that's phenomenal.
It's gonna be hot, and we all can drive on it,
so it's more like a real race.
Cool.
The new venue is Thunderhill Raceway
in Willows, California.
It's a very different kind of track, and so are the cars.
So these are the cars that we are gonna be using to test this myth.
Now this one right here is a road racing sprint car.
The one we have in the middle is a classic American muscle car.
And the one in the end is another road racing car
however, this one is an enduro car which means it's a little beefier.
The car in the middle is an automatic and that is the car that Kari's gonna drive
because she can't drive a stick.
All right. Now, I know what you're thinking.
These aren't indycars.
But here's why this test might give us better data
than the previous one.
Number one, temperature...
it's 90 degrees out here at Thunderhill today,
and that's not even inside the car.
In these suits, in the cockpit, we're definitely gonna feel it.
Number two, physical exertion...
these cars, they don't have any power steering.
So we're gonna be constantly fighting the wheel
to keep it on the track.
Finally, number three, competition...
all three of us are gonna be on the track at the same time,
in a real race scenario.
It's actually an ideal track for testing the myth.
The corners should really add to the g-force factor.
And the prospect of misreading a turn will keep their adrenaline spiked.
Should be fun.
I got to tell you now, though, I'm sort of scared "shiftless".
You'd better believe it.
In fact, Kari's so distracted that this time,
she announces her weight to the world.
My beginning weight is 124.
Grant follows.
Oh, really? 145?
Then, Tory.
All right, 180.
So, after this race, I should weigh 170,
if this myth is true.
Let's start shifting those pounds off.
Once they've all had a last-minute health check...
About 74. Excellent.
...our three rookie racers get the green light.
Hold on.
And within minutes, they're feeling the heat.
I'm feeling extraordinarily sweaty,
and I feel a lot of exertion on...
Well, that would be turn number 11,
where I'm having a hard time keeping the car on the track.
Ohh. Goodness gracious, that's fast.
Apparently, the car has a mind of its own
and wants to go off-roading.
Even with only three cars,
I'm definitely feeling an adrenaline bump
whenever I get close to Kari, who's going much slower,
or I try and catch Tory, who's going much faster.
It just raises that level of adrenaline,
and that adrenaline burst raises your heart rate
and, in turn, burns a lot more calories.
There's not one moment that I take my concentration off the road.
As soon as I do, I loose control and I might go off the track.
And it's so hot here. Especially with all this fire retardant wear it's hot.
So I can feal the sweat building up.
Just like at Indy,
they'll stop twice through the race
to refuel and regain some composure.
Do you feel dehydrated at all?
I'm... like, my throat is super-dry.
Then, it's back to the tarmac
to, hopefully, forfeit another few pounds.
I started out really friggin' scared and very stressed.
But at this point I just fell into a zone of concentration
and I'm just trying really hard to keep the car doing what it's supposed to do
but.. it's exhausting!
This is constant mental concentration.
And there's so much physical exertion: Steering the car, breaking, shifting...
It's tough, but it's fun. Oh my god!
It occurs to me that there are three things
that make this a much different test than the sauna.
One is concentration.
You have to focus entirely on keeping this car on the road.
If you lapse for a second,
you're off the road and in the dirt.
Two, this is a workout.
This is no power steering,
so you actually have to muscle it into place.
And the third thing... it's the "G" load.
Now, let's just wind back to that first thing again.
I'm sure Grant murmured something about concentration.
Aw.
Just a momentary lapse in concentration,
and I was off the tracks, spinning out,
dirt flying everywhere.
This is hard.
Real hard.
It seems like an appropriate time for their second pit stop.
And Kari's got her own mini crisis to deal with.
I'm feeling dehydrated and I have to pee.
You wanna take a break? And step out? I think I'll be alright.
Back on the track, Tory's still pushing the pedal
as hard as he did on lap one.
This is probably the best day of experimenting ever on this show.
I'm exhausted. I'm sweaty. I'm hot.
My body is getting fatigued. I'm sore.
My neck is sore from holding the weight of the helmet.
I don't know if I'm losing 10 pounds of sweat weight,
but, man, it's tough work.
With Kari and Grant also back on the road...
well, mostly on the road...
the minutes melt away to the magic three-hour mark.
I am exhausted.
I honestly didn't think I would be this tired.
I feel like I just got beat up.
The truth of this myth rests
on the numbers they'll read on the scale.
They know they've put everything into this last-ditch attempt,
and it's ladies first.
Let's see.
5 1/2 pounds, I lost.
- What? - Wow.
- That's amazing. - Oh, my gosh.
What a diet.
That's almost half the weight of the myth.
- All right, Grant. - All right.
Let's see how much you lost.
Ha! 4 1/2 pounds.
- Whoa. - Whoa.
I had no idea.
That's pretty incredible.
I lost 5 pounds after 3 hours of racing.
I mean, that's half the weight that the myth talks about.
There's no question that racecar reducing works like a charm.
But is it thumbs up or thumbs down for this Indycar myth?
So, how we gonna call this one?
Well, after three hours of racing,
we did manage to lose, on average, five pounds,
but that's not the 10 pounds that the myth talks about.
Yeah, but what we're doing out there
and a real Indy race... a little different.
Yeah, you know, I could see a real Indy race
being a lot more physically demanding.
I could see, under the right conditions,
with everything they have on the line,
that they could lose twice the weight that we did.
Right set of circumstances, not an everyday occurrence,
I think we could call this one plausible.
I agree. Plausible.
Now, who's driving home?
Not you. Let's just say that.
- Me! - What?
Welcome back.
We're at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway,
and it's indycar versus manhole cover.
We're gonna bring an indycar up to full speed
and see whether its aerodynamics are powerful enough
to suck a manhole cover right out of the ground.
Well, look at that...
a manhole in the middle of nowhere.
It's not in the middle of nowhere.
We are in the middle of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway complex,
and they dug this just for our experiment.
Cool. I'm gonna get to work.
And there's plenty to do.
As well as installing a camera,
they're hooking a force gauge up to the cover
to measure how much it moves, if at all.
When we first conceived this experiment we were concerned about the fact
that we're not placing our manhole cover over a real sewer.
We're placing it over a small hole with a bottom on it.
Now, the problem there is that, just like when you pull a cork out of a wine bottle,
you create a partial vacuum and that's why you hear that small "pop!",
and in our case we have the same problem.
If not for the fact that the good folks here at Indy
have provided us with a vent that goes to the side of the road.
But the star and the source of this myth is the cover.
Beautiful.
They made this one themselves from clear plastic
so sunlight gets through for the cameras.
And it weighs 30 pounds.
I know what you're saying.
You're saying, "Adam, your see-through manhole cover"
"doesn't weigh near as much as a cast-iron manhole cover."
How can this be an accurate test?"
And you're right, except that we've already thought of it.
We are going to make this weigh as much as this
with these four chunks of four-inch-diameter steel.
We are going to bolt them to the see-through manhole cover,
and it will weigh exactly as much
as a cast-iron manhole cover.
We got you covered. Ah.
There it is.
One scientifically accurate manhole cover.
And while nobody knows
how this full-scale test will pan out,
they've all considered the possible perils of success.
When the car comes down this road
at 150 miles an hour and drives over it,
it might just lift out of the ground.
And that could be very bad
for an instrument as precise as an indycar,
with a ground clearance of as low as 7/8 of an inch.
So, Jamie, right now,
is tying some very high-strength line
so that, when we have the manhole cover in place,
it can only lift about half an inch.
It won't be able to actually hurt the car,
but we'll still be able to measure the force
that it's actually being pulled up with.
Logan Gomez is our driver ...or should I say, chauffeur...
because Adam will also have his butt
just an inch off the bitumen.
The car is a tandem.
This is where the literal rubber meets the literal road
meets the manhole cover.
This Indy racing experience car
exerts just as much downforce as the real thing.
Target speed for today's test is 150 miles per hour...
pretty much the top speed for a city-street circuit.
In lieu of a steering wheel, my seat is equipped with these.
We call them HCHs. They're known as "holy crap handles."
"Holy crap!" Hold on really tight.
With Adam's knuckles whitening by the second,
Jamie takes charge for the first run.
I'm gonna call you guys on the radio
when you're doing 100 miles an hour, all right?
Copy. Have fun.
It's agreed they'll start off at a stately 100-per
to get the lay of the land.
It's fast.
Logan warms up the tires,
shakes Adam around like a strawberry daiquiri,
then gets down to business.
100.
Logan's fast, focused, and right on target.
Haha! Perfect.
Right about 100.
Did we go right over the manhole cover?
I believe so.
Did you see any movement?
I couldn't see it, but then it only comes up
about a half an inch before it's stopped.
It's true.
The key tool in measuring lift is the force meter,
and they just can't go on without sneaking a peak.
Nope, it's totally blank.
It's a rare myth that has to suck to succeed,
and this is one of the them.
The aim now is for Logan to crank up the speed to 150.
Hey, Adam, I can try one from the end of the runway,
see if we can get a bit more speed.
Let's do it!
If the car gets close enough to 150, it's time to throttle down
and either bust or confirm the myth of the fine manhole cover.
With Adam latched tight to his HCH,
Logan whips the horses up to a full gallop.
140.
149.
You're getting faster. 149.
Beautiful!
Shall we go look at the evidence?
Let's go look at the evidence.
The physics suggest that the split second near-vacuum the car creates
will have a lifting effect. But at a 130 pounds
this manhole cover is no push over.
All right. My favorite part... high-speed review.
I'm not seeing it.
Nothing. Absolute nothing.
It did not budge.
Nope.
Well. That's pretty definitive.
I think so.
We had our clear manhole cover
weighing the same as a cast-iron manhole cover,
and Logan passed over it several times at a top speed
of almost 150 miles an hour.
And how much movement did we see on it? Bubkes.
Now, we're gonna pull all the weight from it
so our manhole cover only weighs 30 pounds
and see if we can get anything at all out of this.
And there is some science here to salvage.
30 pounds is the weight of an average, flat-screen TV.
And try lifting that with your home vacuum cleaner.
That's a lot like what Adam and Logan are trying now
with the natural suction of a low-slung racecar.
Whatever happens, this will be the day's last Indy drag race.
Well, that was a good speed. It was 148.
It's right up there with your top.
Bingo!
Let's see what we got.
Let's see it.
I'm gonna need some help getting out.
Finally, the cameras confirm a belated liftoff.
Oh, oh, oh! Movement!
That is so cool. Yep! It is lifting.
It is totally lifting. Yep. Came right up.
That is awesome. Let's check the force gauge.
Okay.
37.
- 37? - 37 pounds.
It would have been enough to lift this out of the ground,
but only just.
Well, here's the thing.
It did pull up our plastic manhole cover,
and that weighs 30 pounds,
which means it's not exactly a paper bag.
But then, it's also not exactly
a cast-iron manhole cover, is it?
I got to say, I am disappointed,
with all of our small-scale tests
showing that there was definitely a force
trying to lift that manhole cover.
And we did see a significant amount of lift
on the lighter manhole cover,
but it wasn't enough to pull up the full-sized, 130-pound one,
and not with a 150-mile-an-hour car.
- It's busted. - Yep. It's busted.
Let's go.
So far, on our Indycar special,
we've seen sweat...
I am exhausted, and I feel sweaty as I could possibly be.
Spills...
Goodness gracious, that's fast.
And, most of all, speed.
You're getting faster. 149.
But there's one fast fable
they haven't seen through to the checkered flag.
The 30-foot match race between man and car
is about to be rerun with some serious sports talent.
Let's tally up.
When I was driving the racecar, I beat Jamie three out of three.
When he was driving the racecar,
he beat me two out of three, with one tie.
Neither of us is a professional driver.
Neither of us is a professional runner.
I think we need one of each to continue this test.
Lining up for the showdown are two of the speediest guys on earth.
Ryan Briscoe's the man who will be driving this home.
As for the runner, well,
only six men in history have run a faster 200 meters.
You may recognize our runner for today's episode, Wallace Spearmon.
He's not only the seventh fastest man on the planet,
being the 2012 200-meter olympic trials champion,
but he's also been on an episode of "MythBusters" before.
We asked him to run on the water...
something it turns out, surprisingly, humans can't do.
I don't think it's working, guys.
Try harder.
Today, we are asking him to do another superhuman feat...
race himself against an indycar.
I don't mind telling you,
Wallace is a little nervous about it.
Won't lose to no stinking car.
A car? I'm faster than a car.
I got this.
In order to keep this fair, I have to use a starting method
that both our contestants are familiar with.
So for Ryan, it's the flag. For Wallace, it's the pistol.
I will raise them above my head, say "on your marks.. get set.. go!"
and hit the gun at the same time.
I have to ride on the center console here
because if I fall to either side, I'm dead.
Well, so long as he doesn't dent the car, we can live with a little collateral damage.
Now to find out if upping the talent quotient
will swing the result.
All right, gentlemen! On your mark...
Get set...
Go!
Aah!
That was close.
- Do you think you beat him there? - I'm not sure.
Mm, probably the first 10, 15, but he kind of caught me,
so I'm gonna have to go out, change a few things.
I think I can get him, though.
Round 1 went to Ryan with that familiar, flying finish.
But Wallace is just getting warmed up.
I can't tell who won!
In test 2, they both got off to a whip-crack start,
but 30 feet on, it's another come-from-the-clouds win
for the car.
How'd that one feel? I think he'd give Bolt problems.
Look at it this way: We got the best car and the best runner.
All we're doing is answering a question.
There's no shame in whatever happens here
because it's just a solid question.
I just don't like losing.
Good, good! Let's keep that energy for the last run.
- I got you. - All right.
Unless Wallace gets off to a near-perfect start in the last race,
this myth is about to be roadkill.
Maybe the smart thing to do is to rethink his tactics.
What's going on, Wallace?
I'm not really known for my block start. I think I'd be quicker without them.
It's all about that first start. You got to get an edge on him.
Definitely. I'm gonna need something.
He sure is.
Even though Wallace makes Jamie and Adam
look like they're running backwards,
Ryan's also putting their "Miss Daisy" driving to shame.
His last run was just 1.48 seconds,
while the boys' best was 2 seconds dead.
Now it's pro versus pro for the very last time.
All right, gentlemen! On your marks...
Get set...
Go!
Car beat him.
Man.
I haven't got beat like that since kindergarten.
It's a three-from-three wipeout for Wallace,
but he can tell his friends that he's raced at Indianapolis.
According to our experts,
you can put out about a horsepower at max for an impulse.
So, one horsepower, 700 horsepower...
that's not much of a contest, I guess.
It's not much of a thing, right?
It shouldn't be as close as it is.
And close it was, from the very beginning.
So, why is that we came closer to beating an indycar than Wallace did?
Well, let me tell you it's not because we're faster than Wallace.
The fact is that we're obviously not as experienced
at driving them as Ryan is.
Let's just leave it at that.
And the last 10 feet, that's where it all is, isn't it?
Yeah. In a 20-foot race, it's a dead heat.
We should try that next time.
Maybe even, like, at 5 or 10. Something I can run.
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