Wowzers that's one fat misfire

I dunno if its fixable [I have a car engine knowledge of nearly zero], but I hope so because those Craner Curves won't be nice

Quote from tristancliffe :

You must have raced me enough in LFS to know that sideways and on the grass is just my style

i vaguely remember it as backwards and into the wall from that night we all tried drifting together
i should check if i still got the replay somewhere

Ah, we've had (and melted) two of the HQ2 cameras. They offered replacements but it was our fault so I declined.

The ChaseCam is a nice unit, but a bit bulky.

Quote from tristancliffe :

We got it all from DogCamSport. It's a Sony HQ1 bullet camera, mounted on our roll hoop via a bespoke home-designed, home-made mount, and linked to a Chasecam PDR100 Compact Flash MPEG2 recorder at 8Mbps and 720*576.

The footage is pretty good. The raw footage is interlaced, so looks best on a TV screen (that likes interlaced video), and looks a bit naff on a computer monitor. But I deinterlace the footage for use on a computer (done automatically when the datalogging overlay is added in Trackvision) so that it looks nice there.

I also make a non-overlayed .flv version for hosting on my own website which is also deinterlaced (but lower bitrate).

The deal I have with DogCam is that I have to send a DVD of my footage to them after every race. In return they provide almost unparalleled customer support

Must say some good driving.

there seems to be huge speed differences in the class though.


You seemed to lack rear grip on the first corner compared to the other car though why was this, there seems to many different types of cars in this class too.

The car was virtually on rails. I certainly wasn't lacking grip to the other car at any point during the weekend (except when on the grass!). Maybe you are referring to the misfire that was slowing me down? We've already talked about it

The grid had two classes on it. Mono2000 and Mono1800. The other grid has the bike engined Mono1000 class with the Mono1600s. The bike engined 400kg spaceframe cars don't like racing with our 560kg carbon cars. So we tend to share one of the slower classes. The speed difference is much greater so it's a bit safer.

Having said that some of the Mono2000 drivers are dangerously slow, but that's what you get in every level of motorsport!!

Quote from tristancliffe :

The car was virtually on rails. I certainly wasn't lacking grip to the other car at any point during the weekend (except when on the grass!). Maybe you are referring to the misfire that was slowing me down? We've already talked about it

The grid had two classes on it. Mono2000 and Mono1800. The other grid has the bike engined Mono1000 class with the Mono1600s. The bike engined 400kg spaceframe cars don't like racing with our 560kg carbon cars. So we tend to share one of the slower classes. The speed difference is much greater so it's a bit safer.

Having said that some of the Mono2000 drivers are dangerously slow, but that's what you get in every level of motorsport!!

Might look different from the driving angle but from the video it certianly looks as if he has more speed around the first corner.

Um. Have you read the thread, or my reply just now. No lack of grip at all. Just a lateral-g related misfire that cost me time. I don't mind explaining again, but it would be much easier just to read the thread, as all of this has already been discussed.

^ Watch the throttle and listen to the revs

That car is very close tpo the fox performance wise?

Quite similar. My car is a little heavier, looks more aerodynamic, and has a slightly lazier engine (similar peak power, but ours peaks at around 6500rpm)

I don't know about downforce levels or grip though. It takes about a lap to get the tyres working, which is probably around R2 compound (from cold, not from LFS's preheated tyres. What sort of lateral and longitudinal Gs can the FOX generate on R2s?

Quote from tristancliffe :

Quite similar. My car is a little heavier, looks more aerodynamic, and has a slightly lazier engine (similar peak power, but ours peaks at around 6500rpm)

I don't know about downforce levels or grip though. It takes about a lap to get the tyres working, which is probably around R2 compound (from cold, not from LFS's preheated tyres. What sort of lateral and longitudinal Gs can the FOX generate on R2s?

Just done a really quick test on Kyoto National - get about 0.9G under acceleration, and about 1.1G around the big U-turn in the middle

I rarely generate that much under acceleration, but nearly double that round corners. On the brakes it seems to vary from about -1.4 to -1.8 depending on factors I haven't deduced - graduent? Bumps? Lack of driver ability?

Tristan... your (giant ) mass is throwing off the weight balance...

Ignore what I said above - its BS :doh:

Max Acceleration: ~0.9G
Max Lateral [on Kyoto National]: ~2.5G @ T1 [2.3 around U-Turn]
Max Deceleration: 1.9G

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Tristan... your (giant ) mass is throwing off the weight balance...

boom boom, tisch

Quote from J@tko :

Ignore what I said above - its BS :doh:

Max Acceleration: ~0.9G
Max Lateral [on Kyoto National]: ~2.5G @ T1 [2.3 around U-Turn]
Max Deceleration: 1.9G

Hmmm, a bit higher than I can manage (and I use a much softer compound than British F3). That implies to me that R2's are a very soft compound and therefore R1s must be sprint/hillclimb tyres. Fancy doing the same with R3s?

I'd have thought the FMB would be a closer comparison of your car (though that could just be because it looks about right).

Hmm, well there was an FBM in that race, and Tristan's car was leaving it for dead.

So he would be in between FBM and F3 in pace you would say?

If only you would have used your cape.

The FBM is a bike engined car. Must less power and torque, but less weight, narrower track and shorter wheelbase. Some circuits would suit them more, others would suit F3 cars.

There were no FBMs in my race. There is another race for bike engined stuff - mostly Jedis, Speads, JKSs and OMSs. The quickest driver/car at Mallory was a 43.8 by a girl in a Jedi with a 1000cc engine. My best of the weekend was a 44.1, and that's an average speed of 111mph (including a <30mph hairpin!!!).

Quote from tristancliffe :

The gear thing is calculated from the RPM and Speed (GPS). I tell the dash my gear ratios and it works it out. But it gets confused with clutch slip, revving in neutral, and even tyre slip... It almost gets it right, but generally to late to look very good. I'd like that to improve, but that's down to the people who make the dash and software (Racepak) not me

Interesting, thanks for the explanation.

Latest race video, with overlayed data.

http://www.vimeo.com/5928148

The general gist is that I start 3rd - qualifying was the first time I'd driven the car properly in the wet (testing was just a shakedown that happened to be in the wet, but we didn't know much about the car to learn anything about it's handling in the wet or a suitable setup). Dropped to 5th before the first corner, got to 4th by the second, up to 3rd when the chap who shot passed me off the grid fell off (you can just see him to the right when I get the twitch accelerating onto the back straight).

Then I spun (I guess on a puddle that I didn't see) and dropped to 13th. From there, the race was on.

Spoiler: I finished 2nd, 20 seconds off the winner (who was quite lucky to win, and was gifted it when other people fell off, but to finish 1st, 1st you have to finish), and passed 3 cars for position (plus lapped drivers) on the last lap. My fastest lap was 3 seconds clear of anyone else, and 5 seconds clear of the next fastest Dallara. What a stupid, stupid spin. But no hard done...

Nice driving, and a nice time too!

Nice car control by the way. Im guessing you would'nt get much downforce at them kind of speeds, i.e round Luffield.

It looks almost as though a road car would be quicker for the first few laps. Great recovery drive after the spin though.

Was the aquaplaning caused by the tread depth of the tyres, the ground clearance of the car or both? Did you make any engineering changes to the car (springs, wings etc) for wet conditions? Did you do any of the things like blanking the brake ducting/radiator ducting we hear about in F1 and other formulae when they run in the wet?

Well driven considering the conditions and nice one for not giving up, open top cars are horrible in the wet.