Something I don’t quite understand from a physics standpoint. Imagine a car going down a road approaching a roundabout, on neutral; it can follow the roundabout 180 degrees and start going in the reverse direction while only losing a little speed/energy. But the car did a lot of “work” in the physics sense — a multi-thousand-pound vehicle completely reversed direction in a few seconds. How is that energy redistributed (force diagram, etc) to show where the energy for all that work came from?
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It loses quite a lot of energy and speed. The straighter the line the less speed you lose. The more change to the line you introduce the more speed will be shed. The lateral forces exerted on the car during turns and moves is where the speed is lost. I would also add that you have ‘circled back’ rather than reversed direction. The energy for all that ‘work’ was present at the starting conditions. The loss in speed post-turn is dependant on the traction and amount of directional change.
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