I’ve decided to address this issue since I see that the term “driving beyond the limit” is grossly misused herein. For starters, it’s (almost) impossible to drive beyond the limit of a vehicle.
Let me explain. Anybody who went to school knows about the laws of physics. Cars, mostly operate under the laws of physics with a small touch of Chemistry in the engine. Here are some of the common myths explained:
-
Drive beyond the speed of the car(engine). - You cannot possibly drive beyond what the car’s powerplant can produce. Power generated by the engine, which is subsequently availed to propel the vehicle is finite!!! Speed is a function of this finite propulsive power and as such cannot exceed what can be provided for with the same.
What about driving downhill you ask? I refer you back to your basic high school physics in regards to drag(both wind and road/tire friction) and terminal speed(if you were falling with your vehicle straight off the back of a plane) -
Drive beyond the handling of the car. - Car handling is a function of many components but the main ones are mass, suspension, tires and brakes. The mass of car plays a lot into it’s centripetal and centrifugal forces around a corner. This is where G forces come from(with function of velocity obviously). Suspension helps in adjudicating the vehicle’s lean into and around corners and bends produced by the afore mentioned mass. Vehicles have a computed optimum ride height and this is what suspension systems strive to achieve while delivering comfort to the driver. Brakes are primarily affected by material used and surface area. Brakes work by transferring kinetic energy to heat energy. How fast and efficiently they can do this is what makes them good/bad. Now, the most critical of them all – tires. All these count for nothing if all that performance enhancement cannot be channeled to the point where the car meets the road - i.e contact patch(about 30 square inches per tire).
So keep in mind, that cars are extremely complicated pieces of engineering and (almost) everything about them, including the design by automotive engineers who have been doing this much longer than you have been driving, is guided by the laws of physics. Respect this and you’ll live to tell the tale.
P/S: When you’re driving fast and start to feel the vehicle misbehaving, that’s your cue to let off because the car is telling you something. Modern vehicle design includes a rarely talked about concept called “feedback”. This means that they’re design to “tell” you what’s going on with the car. The feedback mechanism has designed into it “error thresholds and allowances” to allow you receive feedback and adjust accordingly in time. That’s why they don’t just abruptly loose control like cars of nether years(read 60s/70s/80s).
Part 2 - Overdriven/out of control cars i.e race/rally cars.