The sad state of Formula 1

I've been a passionate fan of Formula 1 for over 30 years. I've been to F1 races at Spa, Monza and Indy. I've walked the track at Monaco. When I was in hospital last year and woke up from a three month coma, the first thing I watched were the F1 races I had missed. I worship the drivers, engineers and teams that make those magical cars work so amazingly fast. Like many I've frequently been challenged to understand the mercurial leadership and hazy rules. As those rules have increased in scope with each season we now find ourselves in a sport where 11 different teams spend hundreds of millions of dollars and toil to build cars that that are essentially identical to each other. Innovation is stifled and the show suffers accordingly.

This year I've reached the end of my rope. Between the useless fuel limits and draconian penalties to the senseless prohibition on "Driver coaching" over the radio, Bernie and the team have lost the plot. And they have finally lost me. For tomorrow's Austrian GP some drivers must serve a 25 grid spot penalty for changing engine components. A stiff penalty for sure, but a little silly given that there are only 22 cars in the race.

As a replacement I'm really enjoying watching the World Endurance Championship. It offers the close racing and the engineering innovation that makes racing worth watching for me. The cars are the stars and the rules are open enough to encourage teams to try all sorts of different approaches. At the 24 Hours of Le Mans I watched the V6 turbo diesel Audis dice with the gasoline powered 4 cylinder turbo Porsches and V8 Toyotas. Add to that mix the craziest car in years, the front engine/front drive Nissan and you have about every possible vehicle configuration covered. I love it.

It's taken a few events and a little research to understand the classes, specification and teams but I'm now pretty much up to speed - so to speak. I can't wait for the next event.

  

Has it really been 5 months?

It sure has.

I've not really done any car stuff for a while. We bought a used Audi Q5 for the wife to drive relegating  Izzy the 328 to "spare car" duty.

The 95 M3 Time Trial car is still sleeping in the garage waiting for a motor rebuild to get back on track. Although disconnected the little golf cart battery I've been using seems to have given up the ghost so I'm thinking about a full sized replacement.

The truck is giving me fits however. It developed the dreaded Dodge "Death-Wobble" a couple of years ago and I've been replacing steering and front suspension parts to resolve it.

After replacing ball joints, tie rod, tie rod ends, pitman arm, steering stabilizer and steering box it went away for a while but returned after a couple of months. I replaced my badly worn tires this week and that seems to have banished it again, but I'm pretty sure it will come back at some point. The only thing left is to replace the track rod. Since the Power Wagon basically has a 2" lift from the factory, I'm going to get a slightly longer track-rod to compensate.

WERC Champions

It doesn't look to impressive, but I can tell you that it takes an enormous amount of work to win a endurance racing championship. We did it in our third full year. Here are the results for the 2012 season. Team TC design wins overall.

6/23 Buttonwillow Enduro

We did really well at Saturday's 3-hour enduro. We finished 2nd overall and 2nd in class just 15 seconds back from the winning car. This is our second 2nd overall finish and shows that the E0 class is often as fast a ES and ESR class cars.

It's been a while but...

After last years "25 Hours of Thunderhill" season ender - where we broke on the first lap and officially finished dead last - it was hard to find a reason to update the blog. We, last night we found a little solace by finishing 3rd overall, ahead of nearly 50 other teams in the Buttonwillow 3 hour event. Our class "E0" is the generally the third fastest class after "ES" and "ESR" so competing for an overall win is uncommon. Last night all the "ES" and "ESR" cars broke or retired so the top three cars overall were all "E0" cars. In addition, we shared pit space and fueled a S54-powered E36 M3 "Diablo" that won overall. Quite a night for a team that just a year ago was hoping for a class podium.

The top step

We moved to the top step of the podium with class win in E0. Details to follow.

On the podium

On Saturday night we finished 2nd in class and 5th overall out best performance to date and easily the best race we have run in a number of areas. We are starting to get our race strategy in order, we qualified well and our stops were quick and mistake free. Tony qualified the car 7th out of about 30. The race started a little early at 6:15 so it was still plenty warm making the fuelers in their three layer Nomex pretty miserable. We gave up a couple of places at the start but got them back within the first few laps.

After the second stop we had moved up to third behind a car that had only made one stop so we were looking good. ...and here is where we learned a lesson about car classing. There are dozens of different sprint series and classes that all feed into just 6 endurance classes ESR, ES, E0, E1, E2 and E3. In our class, E0 most of the cars are from either BMW Club Racing's I Prepared class or NASA's GTS-3 class. The Club's I Prepared class has been around for over a decade so there are many fast, well developed cars available to endurance racers. NASA GTS-3 is newer and attracts smaller fields, but offers a better power to weight ratio than IP so some dedicated endurance racers have converted their cars to that spec. This year NASA's Super Touring 2 class was added to E0 and offers and even better specification.

Super Touring is pretty much wide open regarding rules, anything goes including tube-frame chasis and slicks. Super Touring 2 is limited to a power to weight ratio of 8.75:1. To reach that level we could remove 400 lbs of weight or add 47 wheel horsepower. It's going to be increasing difficult to remain competitive if we continue to race is IP specification. Some drivers are suggesting that the WERC leadership may reclassify the ST2 cars from E0 to ES -- maybe even before the 25 Hour in December. We shall see.

Anyway, back to the race. The lesson we learned here was the lesson of the fuel cell.

The M3 can run about 75 minutes when the stock fuel tank is full. The ST2 car that won was able to go over 90 minutes. That is a critical number in a 3 hour race. Half-way. They were able to complete the race with just a single stop while we had to make two. The fact that we finished only 45 seconds behind them shows that with a fuel-cell we may have done even better.

Enduro Update

We missed the second event in the WERC series while the engine was being rebuilt. Actually we showed up with the E30 M3, but it had some unanticipated engine trouble which kept up from racing. This weekend is the third race of the series, a 3 hour affair at Buttonwillow.

The new engine is back in the LTW and has been broken in and seem a little more powerful after the rebuild. Our goal is to finish on the podium in our class.

Here is a shot of the E30 M3 we tried to get together for the event. Great car, great engine, what a blast to drive. I'm reminded why these are my favorite M3 on the track. This one isn't pretty on the outside but it's beautiful inside.

First time racing a car without a dash-pad. The upper sheet-metal is painted flat-black to reduce reflections in the windshield but it doesn't prevent them completely. I love the digital dash with sequential shift-lights. The dash is also a complete Data Acquisition system that is wired into everything, brake pressure, throttle position, four independent wheel speeds, and all the temps and pressures for the car. Pay no attention to the J-Stock stickers, it's probably a little out of spec for that class.

This is a great cage build by Tony Collicchio of TC Design. It's a touring car style cage that ties in the front strut towers as well as the entire rear sub-frame and diff mounts. The BMW E30 chassis is pretty narrow and this car has a very large seat -- so big that at nearly 200 lbs, I have to use a foam insert to get a good fit. Tony built this door bars right out to the door skin to provide room for the seat.

First Enduro Practice

This year I'll be co-driving a BMW M3 in the Western Endurance Racing Championship. This is series of eight multi-hour endurance sports car races at tracks in Northern and Southern California. Our team is called Boulder Creek Ring.

I attended the team's first test session of the season last weekend at the Buttonwillow racetrack in the central valley. The goal was to get some seat time in the car, gain familiarity with it's systems, and -personally- to show these guys that I can actually drive. It was a great session and I learned a lot.

These tests are chock full of new and exciting things that require the driver to adjust. For me the first adjustment was the fully digital dash in the car. No traditional tach or speedo, just a single LCD screen and a bunch of shift and warning lights. Lots of data to deal with at high speed. Using shift lights was also pretty interesting. It was hard to tell when the actual redline arrives and based on data I was shifting 500-600 RPM too early to avoid over-revving someone elses race car engine. During the second session I noticed that there is a tach-like graphical display that I found much easier to use. Later in the day I gained confidence in my ability to use the lights and shifted back to using only the lights.

The LTW we are racing this year is much like my (non-LTW) 1995 M3 so I was quite confortable as I strapped in. But, as I got out on track, there were more adjustments. I have to admit that I've never had to shift a BMW into 5th gear on a race track. All my cars have had stockish rear-end ratios that use 2nd-3rd-4th on the track, but the LTW has a lower 3.73:1 diff that uses instead 3-4-5 on the track. It doesn't sound that hard, but shifting is done without thinking so I had to retrain my hand to move up-and-right instead of straight down on the straights. It took most of a session to get used to it (and also not shifting down to 2nd for the hairpin). This car has a radio system so I got to test all the gear recently installed in my new helmet which seemed to work just fine. All my driving gear was new this year as my old helmet expired last year and my fire suit was a 1997 model.

Boy have fire suits improved in the last 13 years. My old 3-layer suit weights 6.2 lbs and feels like a heavy blanket. My new suit less that 4 lbs and feels like a windbreaker. The car also has a cool shirt system that pumps icewater into the drivers suit to keep them cool. I swore that when I took the air conditioning system out of my M3 that I would get one but never did. Now having used one, I never want to go back.

We also conducted some fuel consumption tests to accurately forecast fuel use during the events. Based on the data the car consumes about 1 gal of fuel every 5 min. This is a critical measurement as fuel use is the most critical factor during the race.

By the end of the test day I was most proud of the fact that I was able to deal with all the new gear and all the little adjustments and still get up to speed quickly in a new car. By the end of the second session I was putting up times that were competitive with the drivers from last year (not "faster than"... just "competitive with") which is OK for the new guy. I also didn't wreck the car or do anything else stupid.

On Saturday afternoon, the car's owner campaigned it in the BMW Club Racing series sprint race finishing 7th overall. Saturday night was the first Enduro of the season, a 3-hour event starting at 6:10pm. Because this is a short event I didn't drive. Tony qualified the car well, 7th overall, and we had a cleanstart. The first stint was unremarkable and after about 70 minutes we brought the car in for fuel and the only driver change. We added 15 gallons and sent Tony out for a double stint. Tony is our fastest driver and did a great job moving the car up to 2nd place in class and 5th overall with a good margin before his fuel stop.

Here is where we made a little mistake -- it actually ended up costing nothing, but it's a lesson none the less.

I radioed Tony an hour into his stint for a fuel level check he estimated that there was still 1/4 of a tank remaining so he stayed out for another 6 laps. When he pitted we only had about 30 min remaining in the race but our previously agreed-upon fuel strategy called for 2 full cans of fuel. We stayed with the plan and held the car in the pits while we added the second can and sent him out again.

When I got the first Timing & Scoring update after Tony returned to the track, I realized that the extra time had allowed the 3rd place car to close to within about 20 seconds of our car. I immediately radioed Tony to tell him and he immediately responded by trimming 2 seconds a lap off his times. I'm not sure we could have stayed ahead to the end, even with faster tiems they were gaining every lap and we still had about 15 min to go. Either way, we were in for a podium, one of our goals this year. Sadly Tony radioed in a couple minutes later and sad there was a coolant temperature alarm and he was coming to the pit box to avoid destroying the motor. Thats how is ended for us, 15 minutes to go, parked in the box.

So for the next race I'm developing a simple fuel model that tracks consumption by lap and provides data about what is in the car and about how much more fuel can fit at any time. Data is Power.

More BJ Ambulance Fakery found

The saga of the fake JFK ambulance continues...

http://jalopnik.com/5744193/key-fake-jfk-ambulance-evidence-also-fake

What is a reputation worth?

Yesterday at the Barret Jackson auto auction in Scottsdale, an ambulance crossed the block for $132,000 in what is a sad display of greed. The seller claimed the ambulance was the one that carried President Kennedy's body from Andrews Air Force base to the Bethesda Naval Hospital for autopsy on the afternoon of November 22nd, 1963 and provided a number of documents to validate his claim making this a very significant vehicle. However, a dedicated group of experts and members of the Professional Car Society (a group of enthusiasts that restore and research professional cars; Ambulances, Hearses and the like) have provided unequivocal evidence that this ambulance is NOT the one to carry the President's body, and that the documents in support were likely forged, but they produced pictures of the actual ambulance being destroyed by the Kennedy Family trust in 1986.

The PCS provided this information to BJ prior to the auction and yet they did nothing to address the inconsistencies. I just watched video of the woman who won the auction claiming that she is convinced it is authentic and wondering if the Smithsonian would be interested. I'm not sure which fits better here, "There is a sucker born every minute" of "A fool and her money as soon parted". In the collector car world where reputation is everything, Barrett Jackson seem to have decided that money is more important that their reputation on this day.

Read all about it on the Professional Car Society forums HERE

Awesome DTM nostalgia

E30 M3 FTW!

Rental Car Insanity

Only to a rental car company could a Chevy Impala be considered a full size car.

1 Series M

I've not been a fan of BMW styling for many years, but i have to say the new 1 series M look quite nice. Not real pretty, just kinda mean. I like it.

Ugliest. Car. Ever.

http://www.nissanusa.com/juke/

Yes, even worse than this..

Finnish Roll Cage Testing

They don't call them Flying Finns for for nothing.

Chevy Volt is NOT an electric car

I was discussing the upcoming Chevy Volt with a colleague yesterday who proudly how the US is getting into the electric vehicle business because "even Chevy makes an electric car".

I pointed out the the Volt - despite it's electric name - is in fact a hybrid, no different that a Toyota Prius. "No, No, No, it's an electric car" he stammered, "the gasoline engine only charges the batteries"

I beg to differ...

The new Chevy Volt is no more an EV that a Toyota Prius. It uses the gasoline engine to assist the electric motor to drive the wheels when necessary. You see my colleague made the mistake of actually listening to GM.

GM has recently uh.. 'adjusted' many of the original claims about the car. The first one to go as the 230 MPG claim. How didn't see this one coming. In August 2008 then-CEO Fritz Henderson claimed "230 MPG in city driving". Popular Mechanics recently tested a pre-production model and saw about 37 MPG, more than a little short the original GM claims.

I could write that off and new product optimism. What pisses me off is that contrary to 2+ years of PR claims, it's not even an electric car. It's a plug-in hybrid very similar to the current Toyota Prius.

GM now claims the original description was misleading because they wanted to ensure all their patents were approved before disclosing the real nature of the drive system. So, dishonestly is fine in the name of IP protection.

I'm not saying the Volt isn't fuel efficient, or that it's a bad car. I'm saying when you call something an electric vehicle for 2+ years and then launch a hybrid partially driven by it's gasoline engine, some people are going to cry "foul".

Izzy gets sick -- again

It's hard to believe that there are some places that so remote that you can't get wireless data service. On Saturday I learned that Pt. Reyes Station, CA is one of those places. 30 miles from central San Francisco yet a thousand miles away. The wife and I went up there to visit my newly rediscovered bubba Mike at Black Mountain Cycles and to procure some of that fine cheese at the Cowgirl Creamery.

Sure, that sound remote. But the fully grasp remote (in the 2010 context) take the long and bumpy drive through the Pt Reyes National Seashore to the Pt. Reyes Lighthouse. Out there you are on the dark side of the moon -- no cell service at all.

I know this because this is exactly where Izzy (the wife's E46 328ci) decided that power steering should be a optional luxury. So less than 100 yards from the parking lot and ~25 miles from cell service, Izzy started making Bad Sounds (tm) from the front end so strong they shook the steering wheel.

At first I though 'flat tire' but the sound was clearly tied engine speed which aint a flat tire. The fact that Izzy was now steering like a supertanker is what we call a clue. Nothing was amiss under the hood, even the power-steering fluid was still full so we reviewed our options. Hmmm.. ten cars in the parking lot but no people. ~25 miles back to town. No cell service. Ok, so we drive it.

What a workout. All in I drove that thing almost 50 twisty, turny mountainous miles in the quest to get home. The worst miles were the 10 miles stuck behind a tourist bus at 25 MPH. Three days on, I'm still a little sore.

Safely home, a little time on the internets showed that E46s share the habit of failing PS pumps. Typically the shaft between the pulley and the pump fails. Not ours, ours failed inside the pump, creating a loud buzzing sound that felt like something very heavy fell off and was dragging along the ground under the car.

My new cali-style mechanic (frosted hair and all) is now replacing the pump, reservoir (with built-in filter) and a couple of hoses. He's also going to replace both idler pulleys as a preventative measure as well. Tally: $1k

Ouch. Oh, I never did get to see that damn lighthouse but the bike shop was spectacular (How many Charley Cunningham road bikes have YOU seen?) and the cheese sublime.

Dick Trickle -- Heh, heh, heh...

Listenin'

While the internet give anyone the ability to publish their thoughts, some thought are more worthy than others. I recently discovered Adam Carolla records a really entertaining daily podcast. I listened to him for years on Loveline and really appreciate his sense of humor. He's also a real car guy and records a weekly show that is focused exclusively on cars. After discovering the AC show, I found that stand-up comedian and UFC commentator Joe Rogan also does a daily show.

Both are available on-line and on a mobile phone via Stitcher. The Stitcher app makes it easy to listen to the shows in the car without having to download them or sync in advance.