What do we want?

Real Racing. And things to believe in.

I think I'm reaching the end-game. Or maybe it's just a matter of choice.

So once again I spent three whole days at the track for what amounted to 15 minutes of honest conversation, 30 minutes of bullshit conversation, and maybe 15 minutes of stimulating optical input.

I'll try to be postitive:

Big Question Number One: Will the pro's shed any light on the whole front bar thing?

Easy answer - Yes! Cunningham & Pobst = no front bar. Kleinubing & Crescentini = front bar. Fast setup in qualifying = no front bar. Science. Done.

Hard answer - I dunno....Pobst was smoooth. Pierre was banzai. Peter must have been going fast somewhere else. And Dino was lucky his car settled down enough to turn in lap after lap.

I was camped out in the best spot on the track with my camcorder mounted to the fencing. I got an eyeful. Out of the box the TSX's looked pretty smooth thru the curbing and transitions. The 6's were bouncing up and down on their rear ends. The RTR crew was all chanting "we've got handling". By the end of the weekend Pobst's car wasn't bouncing around anymore (though Dino's still was). I couldn't tell if it was the driver or the setup.

What else is there to believe in at a World Challenge race?

That they really know what they're doing?

Data Acquisition. In car video. Team debriefing meetings. What's left?

Perhaps they look hard at their sector times, and the data from one driver is used to coach the others. But I couldn't help but wonder.

I was watching practice and when it was over I headed back to the paddock to hang around the RTR pits. Peter wandered by and asked what I knew. So I told him. Pierre was thrashing and struggling. And it looked like he (Peter) had just given up on mastering the circus - and that he was barely using the curbing. Peter was taken aback and replied that he'd been using all of it and had sorted it out by the end of the session. I demurred on that, and noted that Eric looked good. We parted and didn't talk again all weekend. When the times were released, Eric was fastest, with Pierre back aways, and Peter further back. My eyes weren't lying, and my camcorder certainly wasn't. Eric was driving easier on a better line than Pierre. And for the whole weekend they never appeared to figure it out. I don't mean to make light of it, but to note that for all the resources that they (and the other teams) apply to their enterprise, there's one asset that ought not to be marginalized - direct human observation.

I know the teams get plenty of unsolicited advice of varying quality, and that beyond being professional and polite, they don't have time to evaluate such input. They must necessarily be confident and self sufficient. And of course - it's a race track, not brain surgery.

But, think back to an analysis of Schumacher & Barrichello's relative speed in Racecar Engineering a year or two ago. Think how hard those drivers and that team worked on the smallest increments of performance, and how useful increments of time continued to persist between them. It's entirely reasonable to presume a large multiple of such difference between drivers in World Challenge. Enough to be visible to the naked eye. I can definitely say I believe in That.

In some ways this is the kind of thing that makes me want to watch racing. But in other ways it's what can reduce me to boredom.

The pure sport is excitement. The sport mediated by rules management and the teams response to it (ranging from Altenburg's "expression" on track, to Peter's perhaps doing the same thing a little differently) is a perversion of the sport.

I may not be an average spectator. And there were plenty of spectators over the weekend. And they were looking pretty satisfied. Dad's introducing their sons to what might turn into a lifetime passion. The endlessly repeating cycle. But over time, the health of the cycle depends on the currents beneath the surface.

And the teams are getting less accessible. The paddock arrangements are heading toward what you see at the higher levels. The cars get tucked deeper into cover, the invitations to crawl around evaporate. Only RTR and Bimmerworld were laid out like they should be. There ought to be a rule.

Some of these teams do a really nice job of turning out a race car. Some are clean, competent and workmanlike. Others have what amounts to some fine art in their fabrications. They could be proud. But they're more apt to be secretive. Peter said something like "We don't need any pictures floating around out there - but you can take a picture of the whole car". Fault me if you must for underapprciating a desire to protect speed secrets - I admit I don't buy into that idea.

And in that spirit - here are some shots I took from permissible distances (well, at least I didn't get yelled at or chased off):

Mazda-6 Unloaded:



Mazda-6 loaded:



Mazda-6 front end (bump-steer correction, fab'd LCA):



Mazda-6 rear end (it's dynamically similar to the DC2 - with the toe link placed near the axle instead of ahead of the TA pivot - a floater):



Mazda-6 rear sway bar - bronze bushings (sphericals would be better), jack screw - nice fab:




TSX UCA - nice, shims, lots of caster:




TSX front sway bar - medium bar, medium blade, so-so motion ratio, great place to feed in the load (Peter had 1000 lb springs on the front with no bar, and 8-900 on the rear - don't know what Pierre had). You know one of the best parts of using helper springs? Setting preload/cornerweight (unless you are lucky enough to get to use a jack screw):



TSX tasty LCA - absolutely gorgeous. You can't see the standoff pressed into the uprights LBJ boss - they said they haven't been a structural liability:



I'm glad it's all over for another year.

I'll get the video finished and post it up later (what a lot of work that is!)

Scott, who thinks the price of trying to be like Rob Walker is that you'll never get to be like Rob Walker...too bad, so sad.

 

i love your detailed reports and speculation/theories... it's a bit late to read them tonight but i'm looking forward to read this post in detail tomorrow. thanks for sharing! if you need bandwidth/server space to host the videos just pm me.

do you know what kind of diff the RTR and Mazda's are running this year?



Modified by quisp at 1:44 AM 8/8/2005

 

Great Job inspecting those real racecars..