Red Underwear, Cheap Fiats and Other Moto Stuff

[fas42]

Bit of proper racing ... like it used to be, 😉

 

 

[fas42]

A more interesting view of a road mentioned earlier ...

 

 

[sphinxsix]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

A more interesting view of a road mentioned earlier ...

 

 

 

Still tempted by an one wheel drive option.. Some cool roads and cool driving skills as well.. (is this sport really more dangerous for drivers than for spectators.?)

 

 

[fas42]

11 minutes ago, sphinxsix said:

 

Still tempted by an one wheel drive option.. Some cool roads and cool driving skills as well.. (is this sport really more dangerous for drivers than for spectators.?)

 

 

 

Yes ... I wonder what the injury, etc, count is per season, drivers versus spectators ... 🙃.

[sphinxsix]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

 

Yes ... I wonder what the injury, etc, count is per season, drivers versus spectators ... 🙃.

 

More injuries (and worse case scenarios) among drivers actually, regardless what one might think after watching this video - I once googled it.

 

[accwai]

On 11/6/2020 at 5:40 PM, fas42 said:

A more interesting view of a road mentioned earlier ...

 

Sure, being a motorcycle allows the guy to pull those crazy passes. But the road itself is probably interesting enough that spicing things up with those dangerous stunts might not be all that necessary...

 

On 11/6/2020 at 8:20 PM, fas42 said:

Yes ... I wonder what the injury, etc, count is per season, drivers versus spectators ... 🙃.

 

I'm no expert but hasn't rallying been studied as much as track racing? Here is Jilly Broadbent driving a full Group B spec Peugeot 205 T16 under DiRT Rally 2.0:

 

 

For comparison, this is him driving the Porsche 919 Evo at Nürburgring Nordschleife under Assetto Corsa:

 

 

The run is actually faster than when Porsche later took the car there and broke the lap record... There is obviously huge stylistic difference between the two types of simulator runs of course. If nothing else, look at the frantic footwork in the Peugeot run. The Porsche on the other hand is much faster car but doesn't require this kind of paddle dancing.

[bluesman]

On 11/6/2020 at 12:47 AM, fas42 said:

Bit of proper racing ... like it used to be, 😉

 

 

Ahhh! The good old days......when the tires were skinny and the drivers were fat.

[AudioDoctor]

It would be impossible to link all the great Porsche rally videos on youtube, so I will offer this link instead. May want to set aside a good chunk of time before clicking this link.

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rally+porsche

[accwai]

21 hours ago, bluesman said:

Ahhh! The good old days......when the tires were skinny and the drivers were fat.

 

That was then, but this is now:

 

 

So one needs to be rather more careful with weight now:

 

 

11 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

It would be impossible to link all the great Porsche rally videos on youtube, so I will offer this link instead. May want to set aside a good chunk of time before clicking this link.

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rally+porsche

 

Interesting... Just checked DiRT Rally 2.0 and a Porsche 911 RGT is in there :

 

 

Apparently there is no specific Porsche 911 GT3 version that is Group R-GT homologated. So each car needs to be prepared to spec and granted an individual R-GT technical passport. And there is the old 911 SC/RS too:

 

 

This one is in Group B so it had set itself up against some real savage beasts, like the Peugeot above. Ouch!

 

[bluesman]

1 hour ago, accwai said:

That was then, but this is now

I raced Formula Vee in SCCA for almost 20 years.  The first Vees were like Cadillacs compared to current ones.  At 6’2” with 36” arms, I had plenty of room in Formcars etc. By the time I got into FV from C sedan (1275 Cooper S), they’d already shrunk some - but I still fit into my Zink C4 once I made a custom seat to lower me and stretch me out a bit.  And I was consistently in the top 10 at regional races years after most Zinks were on Medicar.  

 

As I and my Zinc aged gracefully, the average driver shrunk to fit each new design because every advance in aerodynamics & suspension design left less cockpit room but cut lap times.  So successful drivers grew younger and smaller and I fell further back in the pack despite mods like zero-roll, aero and NACA scoops, and lower drag body panels.  I wear a 12A shoe, and there’s insufficient room to hold my feet straight up in many current FV (& FF) models. 

[sphinxsix]

Fiat factory rooftop test track in 1920s.

 

[fas42]

How about a change of pace ... ?

 

 

 

[fas42]

My idea of a fun car ... 😉

 

 

 

[fas42]

Adrenaline hit for the day ...

 

 

 

[sphinxsix]

Not everyone lacked adrenaline today. 

 

 

 

[Confused]

I watched the F1 live at the weekend.  The deceleration caused by the front of Grosjean's car going through the barrier cased the back end of the car to spit off.  The front "safety cell" of his car then continued to proceed fully through the barrier.  Still conscious, he managed to climb out and get over the barrier.  

 

I think the engineering involved here is very impressive.  Not just the "halo" device that prevented the barrier from impacting the drivers helmet, but the HANS device (Head and Neck Support Device) and safety cell that kept driver in one piece, and critically, conscious.  If any one of these things had not been in place, there would have been a very different outcome.  Still lessons to learn though and progress to be made, for example, it would have been better if the car had not caught fire. 

 

Better engineering than driving on this occasion, you might say ....

 

(Also, on this particular occasion, fireproof underwear is arguably preferable to red underwear)

 

 

 

 

[accwai]

13 hours ago, fas42 said:

Adrenaline hit for the day ...

 

The video below is from the AMG GT Black Series' new Nordschleife production/street-legal lap time record run beginning of November:

 

 

It's obviously much faster than an M3, but the actual amazing part is the apparent lack of eventfulness. The nonchalance is downright eerie...

 

3 hours ago, Confused said:

I watched the F1 live at the weekend.  The deceleration caused by the front of Grosjean's car going through the barrier cased the back end of the car to spit off.  The front "safety cell" of his car then continued to proceed fully through the barrier.  Still conscious, he managed to climb out and get over the barrier.

 

The scary part here is probably the fire. But in terms of impact speed, it's actually quite a bit slower than Sophia Flörsch's 2018 crash at Macau. The fact that she's back at F3 in 2019 and started driving LMP2 this year is quite a miracle.

 

3 hours ago, Confused said:

[...] I think the engineering involved here is very impressive. [...]

 

F1 is probably pushing every aspect of both machine and people to the outer edge. One example of such extreme is the pitting sequence for tire change. The change itself is like a little more than 2 sec. The mechanism and procedure for doing this reliably is obviously impressive. But to take full advantage of this, the car needs to come from the pit lane speed limit down to a full stop no more than like an inch off where the team is expecting the wheels to be. If you threshold brake to stop for a traffic light, where would your wheels be at the end?

 

[fas42]

7 hours ago, accwai said:

 

The video below is from the AMG GT Black Series' new Nordschleife production/street-legal lap time record run beginning of November:

 

 

It's obviously much faster than an M3, but the actual amazing part is the apparent lack of eventfulness. The nonchalance is downright eerie...

 

Yes, the AMG run is almost a computer game sequence; I lost interest very quickly - in the M3 clip, the perspective is everything; you see the driver working the vehicle, at the same time, and in the same view, as the reactions of the passenger, and the broad vista of flow of the track and vehicles in front - everything is connected, and keeps one fully focused.

 

Quote

 

F1 is probably pushing every aspect of both machine and people to the outer edge. One example of such extreme is the pitting sequence for tire change. The change itself is like a little more than 2 sec. The mechanism and procedure for doing this reliably is obviously impressive. But to take full advantage of this, the car needs to come from the pit lane speed limit down to a full stop no more than like an inch off where the team is expecting the wheels to be. If you threshold brake to stop for a traffic light, where would your wheels be at the end?

 

 

When the technology works so fluently, and almost invisibly, it takes a lot of the buzz out of watching it, to me - the robot like appearance of much of F1 leaves me a bit cold, I just don't tune into watching it, these days ...

[accwai]

12 hours ago, fas42 said:

Yes, the AMG run is almost a computer game sequence; I lost interest very quickly [...]

 

The car is still a physical object. To make this kind of lap time, the driver still needs to do all the right things at the right time. It's in the video for those interested in this kind of thing

 

As for computer game, proper simulators are actually quite common these days. Many are driving the same car both in real world and computer. Principles are very, very similar. This video compares Toyota GT86 at Nordschleife for real vs in Assetto Corsa:

 

 

In this video, the simracer Jimmy Broadbent got thrown into a GT86 and did pretty well in short order:

 

 

Getting up to speed this fast in a manual transmission 86 is no joke. So simracing apparently does help develop certain real world skills. And the reverse is true too. Many high echelon race drivers are training extensively on simulator these days.

[accwai]

On 11/30/2020 at 4:31 PM, fas42 said:

[...] in the M3 clip, the perspective is everything; you see the driver working the vehicle, at the same time, and in the same view, as the reactions of the passenger, and the broad vista of flow of the track and vehicles in front - everything is connected, and keeps one fully focused.

 

Just found this mirror pair Frank. Probably be more to your taste:

 

 

The Lotus side presents better than the Porsche side... And would be nice if they would show pedal cam, telemetry etc.

[fas42]

Note what they don't have in sim's ... bug splats, on the windscreen ! 😁

[fas42]

Gotta get the sound happening ... this is an old favourite of mine - for some reason, current laptop doesn't do it justice,

 

 

 

[accwai]

13 hours ago, fas42 said:

Gotta get the sound happening ... this is an old favourite of mine [...]

 

Speaking of that, I was at the socially distanced supermarket checkout yesterday and the overhead TV panel had a Ford ad with static picture of a group of Ford cars fanned out, Mustang, current generation GT, huge SUV and huge pickup truck and the Toronto CN tower in the background. The ad copy was like no matter your style, we're here to serve you. Yeah right 🤣🤣🤣 Although the Ford GT is made in Toronto, I doubt any significant quantity would be staying. Seen one in the street once ever.

[sphinxsix]

Showtime.

 

 

 

[fas42]

Which reminds me ...