No "Melken"

Necessary with this car.

But as I said in the post I didn't know why. Mark was kind enough to send an Email pointing out that we aren't using the colder NGK plugs, and that it's the cold plugs that tend to get fouled easier at a constant idle. Hence, no cold plugs, no blipping at idle.

Mystery of the F1 Melken solved.

Great lunchtime viewing...

T.W. sent me these links to some You Tube videos, called "Secrets of Speed." About seven minutes each, featuring various Audi's, highly recommended...

First

Second

Third

D.W. Talks NASCAR Preseason

Over at Fox's website.

Warming Up...

Here’s a cruel racing driver joke. Take a lighter, light it, bob it up and down from left to right in front of you and ask somebody, “What’s this?” Answer, “Niki Lauda jogging at the Nurburgring.”

The method to my madness is of course, that Mr. Lauda, besides being a three time F1 champion (you might say he was on fire…I crack me up…) is one of the few pro’s whose advise on warming up a race car, from his 1975 text ‘The Art and Science of Grand Prix Driving’ is substantial. Obviously I’m not going to quote all three pages here, but a few highlights are in order.

“At first we only give just enough gas to avoid letting the oil pressure exceed 10kp per square centimetre, otherwise the cold (and hence viscous) oil might cause damage to the various oil pipes or the oil filter.”

Now I had known not to rev the engine at start-up, daily driver or race car, primarily to avoid spinning stuff up while the oil that is supposed to keep the stuff spinning is sitting in the oil pan. This was the first time I’d heard about the oil’s thickness under pressure mucking up oil filters and the like. Granted a Mazda GT is not nearly as exotic as an F1 car, even a thirty-five year old F1 car. But the major point remains true for both cars. Don’t rev the engine on start-up. Wait for 180 degrees of oil temp before touching the throttle.

One of the next interesting bits goes…

“Once the oil and water have reached about 60 degrees Centigrade we slowly push up the revs and begin doing what we Austrians call melken - blipping the throttle, to open or close the throttle slide in rapid succession either using the accelerator pedal or applying one finger direct to the engine. The reason for this blipping the throttle is to prevent the spark plugs from oiling up as they otherwise might when the engine is running at constant revs on an enriched mixture”

In a Mazda GT this is something we do not do. Why I’m not sure, I’ve simply been doing what everybody else does. The fact is that the 12A Peripheral Port does run very rich at low RPM. It is very important not to put a large load on the motor at low RPM. The reason is that the peripheral port sacrifices drivability at low RPM for performance at peak RPM. It’s tuned to deliver above seven thousand RPM. Hit the throttle hard with the engine too low, while in gear and loaded, and the engine can be seriously damaged, at any temperature. The verdict on ‘Melken’ is that it’s unnecessary for us since I haven’t seen a whole lot of fouled plugs.

One part of the warm-up that Mr. Lauda missed, doubtless because he had a huge crew looking out for his car, was to look for fluids under the car as it is getting its first warm-up of the day. Remember that the fluids, if they are leaking, are going to be under the car, so get on your knees. I forgot to check exactly once, but thankfully Leroy happened to be there as I was backing out and stopped me, otherwise I might have destroyed an engine. Trust me, no matter how big the puddle you won’t see it once you’re strapped in.

The money quote, from “Art & Science” my favorite and timeless…

“The first laps of a practice day are in any case only used for instrument checks and never for great acts of courage : so we keep a close watch on the oil and water temperatures and return to the pits if they are not right – we can regulate them in any direction we want by putting on or taking off strips of sticky tape on the radiators”

Seat time is so precious, and the wait for an amateur driver like me so long between race weekends, that the overwhelming temptation is to take the car up to speed as soon as I’m out of the pit lane. That’s what I’m here for after all, to go really fast. I have to remind myself that just taking off, even once the car is warm, is still a very bad idea. Besides even if the motor is warm the transmission may be like ice. Go slow, work the car and driver up to speed in recognition that both will continue to get faster as the weekend progresses.

When you get into an actual fight, at race time, you’ll have less time for the gauges than during the morning warm-up. So use it:

• Insure that your EGT’s aren’t splitting up dramatically (you’llprobably
only read one during the race, if it’s a proxy for both then make sure they’re
saying the same thing)
• Have you lost an EGT gauge? (Blank, or impossible readings like -10 degrees.) Is it just the sensor or something more serious?
• Note the difference between oil and water temp. How much tape is on which radiator?
• What is the lowest RPM where you can get acceleration without
the engine stumbling?
• What are your EGT readings in fourth at peak RPM? Do you need to get the car rejetted? Is it too lean (High EGT) or too rich? (Stumbles)
• Trailing smoke? Greasy feel from the rear tires? You might have an oil leak.
• Check water and oil a couple times a lap. Are they steady? Do you need more tape, less? Are you exceeding 220? Dropping below 180?
• Any harmonic or “different” engine vibrations, don’t question it, trust your
feelings, shut it down and I mean right now and wait for the tow truck.
• Vibrations from the brake rotors? They can warp between weekends or crack if you catch a stone between a rotor and caliper. If you’re pushing the pedal and it keeps pushing back, head to the pits. Can you tell if its front or back? Which side? Leroy will thank you if you can tell him the right one.
• Try some threshold braking. Are the rears or fronts going to lock first?
• Leave the transmission fan off until the fun begins, or you can feel some heat in the
transmission.
• Strong gas smell, you can bleed fuel straight into the cockpit, bring it back in. The gas can also ruin your windscreen, wipe it down when you get back or it’ll look awful before too long.

Above all, when you get back to the pits and are asked, “How’s the car running” have something to say. Know the EGT readings, oil and water temperatures, pressures, either good or bad.

Otherwise they’ll think you aren’t paying attention. And they’ll be right.

What I wish I knew...

...before I started racing that I know now, covers a lot of territory. What I have left to learn about racing is pretty dramatic as well. And while a lot of this blog is just bench-racing fun I’ve realized I can do a bit more with it than just link to video’s of Danica Patrick selling her ho ho’s (not that I have anything against delicious snack food, and while Legge may be the faster female driver, Patrick certainly… well...)

I can put up posts that are fun, and I can put up posts that cover what amounts to a driver’s manual for a Mazda GT. But it would do little good if I couldn’t separate the wheat from the chaff, the yin from the yang, the bada from the bing. Toward that end I’m creating a new feature, “The Driver’s Manual”, which will consist of all the posts I wish I had a chance to read before I got in the car the very first time. You can see it over on the right hand side, and this post is, in point of fact, its introduction.

As time goes on I’ll be adding more links, quotes from favorite sources and other drivers, and sundry goodness. A post will make it into the manual on only one condition. If I would have been better off having read it before I pushed the starter button the very first time.

Video embedded...

Seems to run about three minutes and then stop...

Update: It's fine now

Go Daddy & Super Bowl...

Commercial, starring Danica Patrick, got shot down by Fox (not exactly PG-13). Via the the garage blog, here.

Link to video here; Short & somewhat disappointing, but I suppose that's one way to get a sponsor...

Update: It's a new blog, and Joe America gets the very first comment. He also has an R rated link to a one and a half spit-take parody site. The pool cue was interesting if a bit unnatural, and although the Mrs Bush pun is a bit too obvious, it still gets an A for the Photoshop effort (You did have to Photoshop that one, didn't you Joe?)

Anyway,
Thanks Joe.

Remix in the year of the rat

Thunderhill 2005 was the original inspiration for this site. It's one of those races you're really fortunate just to be in. While Belinda's car was strong and she got by early and Jon checked out after Jim and I went side by side in the 13-14 complex, it still left a five car tussle that went on for about fifteen minutes.

At one point Bob got in trouble trying to get by Tom, and got passed by Jim, Dave and Myself. Jim had to actually duck off track so I got him after we were side by side in the following turns 11-12, while Dave got all three of us... six passes in one corner with two of the cars in the middle coming out of the esses side by side. We go into turn ten and the order is Bob, Jim, Paul & Dave; we come out of turn 10 and the order is Dave, Paul, Jim & Bob. It doesn't get much better than that. And it's not just a one turn thing. Two thirds of the way into the race I get shuffled back going into turn one because I don't like the idea of going in four wide and lost track of two of the other three guys contesting the corner. I know that kind of madness happens a lot at the beginning of races, but this was fifteen minutes in, which gives you an idea just how much fun we were having.

Jim was kind enough to provide me with his in-car video, so I combined it with my in-car and created what is probably the best all in-car video...ever...

Last night I wanted to get some practice using different viewpoints to tell the story of a race, so what better to do than to go back to the original source and do a... well... remix. I'll be uploading the mpeg version to Google Video tonight. Look for the link in race videos no later than tomorrow.

This year I'm going to be doing the same kind of videos for every race, and with a half-dozen cameras. It's going to be awesome.

Update: Video is on line, here

Some results from last year

I didn' t go to last years NASA championship at Mid-Ohio, but Jim, Dave, Bob and Tom did and finished third, sixth, seventh and twelfth. While we are our own spec class during regular season, at the National Championship we are part of Super Turing 2.

Like I said I wasn't there, but rumor had it that Jim put some sticky tires on in lieu of our regular Toyo RA-1's. As a result he wound up in what I heard was a delightful food fight with a CTS-V that had more motor, and tire, at the start of the race but burnt though his rubber trying to keep pace with Jim. Anyway, Jim won our 2007 series, went to Mid-Ohio and podiumed at the nationals. I certianly wouldn't mind having a year like that.

2007 Race results are here

Lunchtime reading...

T.W. turned me onto autoblog.com; for the 'vette fans out there check this out...

And for those of you who want to see what three million dollars worth of wreckage on PCH looks like can check out a 4 drivers only post...

Or via "the view from the windshield" comes this nominee for best beer commercial with a car somewhere in it...

Another transmission post

Mark forwarded an email to me from a pro, I believe an ALMS guy, the core of which is:

Some people do the blip between each gear going down through the box. A few very good drivers, bump the box into neutral at the beginning of hard braking, and having noted during practice what gear will be used next at the end of this straight, will gently rev the engine to that change speed and slip into that gear (1st for example) At the correct distance from the corner, and leave that corner with no fuss or mangled gears.

This method eliminates the possibility of 3 bad downshifts during very hard braking. And replaces that with one downshift. What could be easier than one downshift done very close to the apex?

So, if you can do this and the competitors cannot, you will be better under braking everywhere.

Some people never learn to downshift properly, and use the clutch during downshifts. This shortens dog ring life, because the lost connection between the engine and the trans, the trans parts decelerate during the downshift when they should have been accelerated to match the ground speed. The shift is then done with a huge difference between the dog ring face and the gear face. A very bad thing.

Engagement should be at close to zero difference in face speeds. Reving the engine on the downshift while using the clutch does (or can) match the engine RPM to the new ground speed so as not to upset the rear wheels when the clutch is engaged again, however, the shift alone with mismatched face speeds will add a braking load to the drive wheels that is not being managed by the driver.

Update: it was a Grand Am guy, I should have read more carefully...

Lost Hill

...Or Magic Mountain, whatever you want to call it (there are some stories about ButtonWillow's corner names but that's another post) is a corner I was always having trouble with.

Here T.W. is putting on some pressure on me at the lost hill turn. My problem turned out to be the rear springs. They were too soft, so when I went to turn in the back of the car would lean more than the front. That leads to a jacking effect as the opposite front tire starts to lift off the ground.

The feeling was a corner entry push, or understeer with a lazy turn-in, followed by a nice squat into a good rotation and no understeer through the rest of the corner. It would do everything the other cars were doing, it would just take longer to do it.

It turned out that my car, being older, had the orginal softer springs on the rear. A cheap and quick fix that changed the whole nature of what the car could do at the 'Lost Hill.' T.W. is going to have to find another spot to climb up my rear bumper from now on...

How to avoid a gap toothed dog

Fight! Mayhem! Disagreement Even!





Ok, so maybe I exaggerate and it’s more like a Gentlemen’s discussion. But it is real and it’s all about shifting.

Now it just so happens that when the NASCAR gods visit Infineon (Sears Point for those of us over thirty) it gets broadcast, being in the first half of the season, on Fox. Beside D.W.’s commentary the absolute coolest thing Fox does during that race is put a camera in a car’s foot-well and do a split screen thingy that lets you see the driver’s footwork as he motors around the track. And of course some of the drivers are banging up, and sometimes down, through the gears without touching the clutch.

Now people who’ve driven a manual transmission built for the street might wonder how they do that. The answer is the race transmission (a dog-box) they use is a bit different than the one in your daily driver. Since I happen to own a racecar, with a Jerico racing transmission, I have the opportunity to happily bang up and down the gears, just like the NASCAR guys, with or without the clutch.

The question is… should I go clutchless?

To be able to discuss it intelligently you first have to know what’s going on inside the drive-train. We need to quickly cover the difference between a race transmission (excluding the exotic F1 style paddle shifters) and the transmission in a daily driver. These can be broken down into three basic things.

First, they use straight cut gears instead of helical gears (see the picture).

The largest single reason to use helical gears in a daily driver is to reduce noise, and we don’t care much about that in a race car. In fact, your street car usually does have one straight cut gear in it. Reverse. So if you were to imagine the sound of going a hundred twenty or so in your car’s reverse gear you get the idea of what a Mazda GT sounds like from inside with the Jerico.

The second difference, and this one is huge, is the lack of a synchronizer mechanism.

To understand what the synchronizer does we first have to dispel a common myth. When you move the shift knob from first to second you are not disconnecting one gear and connecting another. All the gears in the transmission are permanently meshed together. It’s just that the gear on the output shaft is free to spin on that shaft. If the car is in neutral, all (four in my case) gears on the output shaft can spin as they like, (as long as it’s the same speed as the lay-shaft, technically.) What happens when a gear is selected is that you are moving a collar on the output shaft, that has teeth called dog’s teeth (on the dog collar a.k.a. dog-box, you get the idea) that bind that particular gear to the output shaft, forcing the gear to rotate at the same speed as the output shaft, which binds through the gear to the layshaft, to the input shaft, clutch, engine, etc… If you are having trouble envisioning this I recommend the site “How Stuff Works” which has more detail and a great animation of a simple transmission in action.

So, what the synchronizer does is to press against the freely spinning gear, before the dog’s teeth (on the collar which is what you are really moving with the shift lever) engage; which will get the speed of the gear and the speed of the output shaft to be the same. This rewards a slow shift, since the more time it takes to complete a shift the closer the match. By eliminating the Synchro, a race transmission sacrifices some drive-ability and longevity for the opportunity to spend less time between gears.

The third and final difference is a larger tolerance between the teeth themselves and the receiving end attached to the gears on the output shaft. The race transmission has far more “slop” between teeth and receiver.

Now we’ve all ground a gear now and again. What’s really happening is that the Synchro, for whatever reason, didn’t match the speed of the free spinning gear with the speed of the collar and so the teeth are sliding across the receiver rather than getting set in place. They drag, grind, and in the end, probably, finally, pop in place.

This is why a double clutch (clutch out, in neutral, blip the throttle to spin up, then push the clutch back in and select a gear) works when you are having trouble selecting a gear. A double clutch works in the race transmission as well. The better matched the speeds are, the easier the teeth pop into place. But in the race transmission, the extra “slop” between the teeth and receiver make it far more likely that, with a firm pull, the teeth will engage even if there is a difference in speed. One rule then, with a race transmission, that everyone agrees with, is to select a gear quickly and firmly, don’t dawdle. Most race transmission damage comes from shifting too slowly.

Beyond that, there are some different ideas out there.

Clutchless Downshift

I don’t do it. In fact I double clutch on the downshift and skip all the intermediate gears.

If I was to do it, the technique is straight forward enough. You want to pop it out of gear while the pressure on the dog’s teeth is minimal by doing it as you lift. If the car isn’t accelerating or decelerating at that moment it’ll pop out smoothly. With the car in neutral and slowed enough for the gear you are going to select, blip the throttle to spin up the gears speed over the shaft speed for the gear you are going to, and as the RPM drops back down from the blip they will match and the car will plunk down into the gear just so. The biggest and most common mistake here is to try too soon. You can get the car out of gear, brake, brake and brake some more before the blip will get the gears spinning fast enough to match the output shaft for a lower gear. Some drivers avoid this by going down through each successive gear. With a number of fourth to first corners out there that just seems to me to be begging for trouble. Cultivate patience, and then shift just before you need the gear (throttle application) is my preference.

Now the only reason to downshift in the first place is to be in the right gear for acceleration when the time comes. On the street some people aren’t aware, but a race car driver knows, that compression braking (using the engine’s compression to slow the rear wheels) is a very poor technique since it usually involves only two tires and will unbalance the car under threshold braking.

That said; just what is the advantage of a Clutchless downshift? To me it’s just three words, left foot braking.

The traditional heel and toe style reserves the left foot for the clutch while the right does double duty by controlling the brake pedal with the ball of the foot and the throttle with the side. If you don’t use the clutch the driver is free to concentrate his left foot on brake and right on throttle as well as gain the most excellent ability to modulate brake and throttle in opposition to each other (ease the brake off while easing the throttle on). Techniques like trail-braking work better with the superior control you get by freeing your left foot from the clutch. The downside is that if you can’t match the transmission perfectly, any shock transmitted through the rear tires as you downshift is going to unbalance the car. If your rear tires are already at 99% of grip and you ask for another 2% by plunking down a gear, what you’ll get is a spin.

Now when we first got the Jerico transmissions last season I thought about going to left foot braking, but the question quickly became moot. The pedals in my car are set up perfectly for heel and toe, but for left foot braking, not so good. The first time I tried it, going pretty damn quick into the sunset turn at Buttonwillow, my thigh caught on the bottom of the steering wheel wedging it in place. Not being able to turn the steering wheel is generally a bad thing while driving a race car at speed. I could get the pedals and/or seat moved, and try again, but if I give up where the pedals are now I’ll be forced to left foot it, and if it doesn’t work well for me I’m toast. So I decided not to, at least for now.

I don’t think I’m alone since I don’t know of any of the other Mazda GT drivers going left foot. But I’ll ask around. I’m not sure who, other than T.W. is going clutchless on the downshift; it might be everybody but me and Tom.

Clutchless Upshift

Dave does, Bob does, Mark does, Jim does, T.W. does. I did, but last October I didn’t.

Again the technique is simple. Just like with the downshift you need to get the dogs to relax by lifting the throttle. Not enough to slow the car since that will just put pressure on them in the other direction. The gearbox will pop right out under steady pressure applied just before you lift, as soon as the car is neither going faster nor slower. The difference between the clutchless upshift and the downshift is the lack of a double clutch blip on the way up. It’s all one movement from when you relax the dogs with the lift (really closer to a half lift) to when you plunk it into the next gear in one smooth but firm and quick motion. As long as you don’t lift too much or too little, or squeeze the throttle back on before the car gets back in gear, or especially shift too slowly, it’ll go like butter. If you are slow, the relative speed of the output shaft and gear will mismatch and the shift will officially be blown. If you get on the throttle before the teeth are seated the gear will wind up more than the output shaft and the shift is officially blown. If you get it wrong, badly and a lot, you can hurt the transmission, perhaps even knock out a tooth or two which would put paid to the whole thing and create an expensive mess. But it is easy to get right and the Jerico is very tough. So why not do it?

To me it is, like most everything else, a trade off. You may spend a fraction longer in gear (and therefore accelerating) clutchless than by using the clutch (and even that is disputed) but there are two prices to pay for this party.

First, you can lose everything you’ve gained and then some if you miss a shift during a race. Unless you’re a pro who gets to test for hour after hour you’re all too likely to miss at least one of the hundreds of shifts at some point during the weekend. With my luck, I can count on it to happen at the wrong time. Yes, you can miss a shift with the clutch as well, and nothing will save your transmission from damage if you have bad technique, especially, and without the synchro, I cannot put too much emphasis on this, if you shift too slowly.

The second price comes from considering the transmission in isolation. Anything that causes a shock to the drive-train is going to transmit that shock all the way up and down the system. The race car is an amazing collection of rapidly spinning stuff that’s all interconnected. Anything that makes one thing start or stop suddenly is best avoided, since it’ll make everything else start or stop suddenly as well. This means that the best technique might just vary from car to car, since different cars have different weak links (parts voted 'Most Likely to Break') and the best technique might be to minimize the strain on the weakest part.

With the clutch partially disengaged (and if done right you really don’t have the time to fully disengage the clutch) that banging up a gear is more likely to contribute to wear on the clutch, which is preferred over more expensive, and often race ending, types of drive-train damage. The pretty common exception to this rule would be when the clutch is so weak relative to the rest of the drive train that using it will quickly turn it into a bag of broken glass. So I'd assume most of the NASCAR guys will avoid the clutch even though we use the same transmission. But I’m using it, for the moment, for the same reason I'm trying to avoid wheel-hop or excessive off road excursions or banging into curbs; the theory is that it helps keep the car running so I can finish the race. The big question is whose theory is correct?

Dispute

Tom is the only other person I’m sure uses the clutch on upshift. Mark is adamantly opposed, going so far as to send me a link to Hewland’s notes on shifting which supports his position. On the other hand, the most excellent Skip Barber book, ‘going faster’ supports using the clutch, even with a dog-box transmission, except on high horsepower cars where the clutch is the weak link, or when the ratios are close together. We don’t have the horse power or torque of a stock car, and I don’t recall the last time I needed a new clutch, but our ratios are very close.

The major points in the Hewland piece are, first, that you can’t damage the dog teeth while they aren’t in the small gap of time just before being engaged, and second, that using the clutch in a ‘normal’ shift slows the shift which means more time is spent in that ‘danger zone.’ Everyone agrees this is where damage to the transmission happens.

I’m not really experienced or fast enough to dispute a guy who was winning at a level of racing I’ll never achieve, well before I was born, but I’ll try by paraphrasing Skip Barber (If an expert disagrees, find another expert).

The worry is that if a collar is moving when the throttle position changes; clutch out, it’s going to hurt the transmission. The shift lever, that moves the collar, is moving at the same speed regardless of what your feet are doing. If it takes two tenths of a second to do the throttle lift with the right foot, you can spend the same two tenths on the clutch pedal with your left. Dorsey Schrader points out that he uses the clutch, even when it’s broken, simply to stay in rhythm. In the end Skip Barber recommends using the clutch to swap shock to the drive train for clutch wear, except when they don’t (as mentioned, high HP/Close Ratio, etc).

Our clutch can take it, but our ratios are so close that the throttle lift isn’t even really a full lift. Which to me explains why this is such a grey area for the Mazda GT.

In the end I’m not certain where I’ll wind up. It’s even possible the best technique varies from person to person as much as it does from car to car. What I’ll try to do is flesh this, already way too long, post out with as many opinions and techniques on the subject of shifting as I can find, and put them in future bloggy bits. Or I’ll revise and update this post with any comments the other drivers want to make as long as they don’t start with ‘Paul you ignorant [insert swear word]’

Dromo 1: Four out of five stars

So last night, as planned, I met Mark and T.W. for a bit of preseason thunder at this indoor karting place over by Disneyland, called Dromo 1. It has all the aspects of a real race, just toned down. You have to be smooth to get around quickly, use all of the track’s real estate to get around the corners, and above all get the right entry speed for each corner. Traffic can make or break your race. If you can get on the throttle before the other guy on the corner leading to the long straight you can pull two or three kart lengths easy. It’s a lot of fun.

We got three heats for just $50, and while I didn’t cover myself in glory, I didn’t humiliate myself either.

Race 1:
Mark had been there before and T.W. got a race in before I arrived so for the first heat I just sat back and tried to keep them in sight. There was a wide full throttle right hander that narrowed into a hairpin and I kept entering the darn thing too fast. My plan was to get it right during the next “qualifying” session.

Race 2:
Best laid plans; they switched and ran the track in the opposite direction. I got a better start, got alongside T.W. which gave me the inside on the first tight corner for a nice clean pass, which put me right behind Mark. Within the next lap or two, while the tires were still a bit cold, Mark got a bit sideways and which gave me a really nice hole, which I used. The one thing not to do, if you can avoid it, is to overdrive these karts since they start with a bit of understeer, but rapidly switch to an oversteering rotation that will bring you nearly to a dead stop.

At that point I thought I was going to check out, since I drove and drove seemingly all alone except for just one slow guy to lap about every thirty seconds or so. But it was too good to last. I started getting a blue flag, a really fast regular was coming up, the race leader. You can’t see behind and they have no mirrors so I had no idea where he was, but thought he must be close if they’re waving the blue flag at me. So nice guy that I am I started giving him some room. One corner…Two Corners…Three Corners… no pass. So I told myself to forget it, I’m losing time, and went into a corner on my normal line and bam. That’s when he tried to pass. To put a cherry on top of the whole bit Mark was right behind him, saw it coming from a long ways off, and shamelessly took advantage. So after all that I gave the position up. My bad.

Race 3:
Was a disaster. I lost a spot at the start and the guy who took it would throw the kart sideways and wind up parked on the apex. So I tried going outside and he’d turn out from the apex to block. So I tried a throttle jump going onto the main straight and he pinched me down against the inside of the track as soon as I got alongside. So I tried a throttle jump going onto the main straight while going around his outside and he started weaving. Real cars or karts, at a hundred and twenty or at ten miles per hour Mark and T.W. are fun to race against, as are most all of the Mazda GT guys. Its drivers like that stranger that I wish would stay away from racing, even karts, because they just seem to live for the sole purpose of ruining a good time.

Anyway, I give Dromo four out of five stars. Well worth the time and quite a bargain besides.

Never, Never Spit Gasoline while smoking

duh

Spec Miata Vs. GT40

Mazda is heavily invested in grassroots racing to attract the enthusiast, and that’s never been more evident than when viewing one of their more recent commercials. Ford went another direction, recreating the GT40 as supercar (and doing a very cool Super bowl commercial at Thunderhill). To afford a GT40 you need an income stream in Jay Leno territory, while Mazda is doing a national media campaign that starts with a D production Miata, and while it includes professional efforts, it spends as much time featuring MX-5 cup cars and spec Miata’s being pulled out of Joe Blow’s home garage as Pobst's Tri-Point Mazda Pro Touring campaign.

So which strategy works best? Mazda sales are up 26% in North America this year. Ford sales dropped 13%.

A Tale of Two Sanctioning Bodies

From the SCCA:

Dear SCCA Members:
In the last several weeks, there has been considerable public discussion regarding the relationship between SCCA and Mazda. Recently, management and leadership from both organizations met face-to-face, and while we are not going to re-hash everything that has happened over the last 12 months, we are confident in stating that both SCCA and Mazda have similar goals and are moving forward together in a positive manner.

Specifically, we have discussed and reached an understanding regarding car classification, the Court of Appeals processes, the role of manufacturers within SCCA racing and comments made publicly and privately by members of both organizations.

Following our face-to-face meetings, we are confident that both SCCA and Mazda are on a positive path heading into the future. There have been things that both organizations have done to upset the other in the past, but we believe that we are all stronger, and smarter, moving forward.

It is important to note that the discussions and activities over the last several months have given us great feedback on how to better serve and communicate with not just Mazda, but all of our partners. Motorsports would be nothing without competition, and while some programs are designed specifically to remove the brand of vehicle, tire or other component from the equation, diverse activities demand diverse participation. That is something on which both SCCA and Mazda can certainly agree.

This is our first and, ultimately, only public statement regarding the issues of the last several months. Some will always desire greater detail, but it would not be productive for SCCA, Mazda or any of our partners to continue to focus on anything but the future and building stronger, more viable programs for the Club.

vs
From NASA:

Mazda Provides Lucrative Awards For NASA Racers RICHMOND, CA (January 11, 2008) — The National Auto Sport Association (NASA) is pleased to announce an extensive new contingency program for drivers competing in Mazda vehicles in 2008 worth nearly $500,000. Rewards are available for drivers in NASA’s competition racing and Time Trial programs. The regional program will pay up to $1000 to the top driver ($1200 if a local champion chooses to attend the NASA Championships presented by Toyo Tires at the Mid Ohio Sports Car Course) and will pay cash rewards down to 5th place for year-end finishes in each NASA Chapter. Mazda has posted a very generous payout for the podium finishers at the NASA Championships boasting a total cash value of $8750 per class where the champion can walk away with a $4,500 award. Mazda owners also have the chance to vie for two National Championships since many of the cars fit well into more than one NASA class. Thus, with the right combination and focus, a Mazda owner could walk away with $9000 if they won 2 titles!

“This is a remarkable program both in its breadth and the amounts of cash that it provides to racers in NASA’s regional and national programs,” said Ryan Flaherty NASA’s National Chairman. “Mazda’s strong support here reaffirms the reason that Mazda is the most popular brand in NASA and we look forward to seeing our racers enjoy the benefits of this generous program.” More details on the Mazda contingency program and requirements can be found at http://www.nasaproracing.com/forms.html

'nuff said

Looking for some Preseason Mojo

By going to the dromo. It’s some kind of indoor karting. I’ve never been, but Mark recommends it, so he, T.W. and I are going tomorrow night. I will report back.

Didn't run the car, but...

I was just getting over whatever that nasty bug going around here in SoCal is, so while I did the drive up to Buttonwillow and despite really liking the track configuration and conditions, in the end I decided not to run the car. I just checked out the new nose (it's not quite that orange…but not as red as the body, oh well...) set down some plans for the season and watched Mark and T.W. have all the fun.

I managed to debug the new in car camera, the brand is here. It produces MP4’s on an SD-Ram chip, which my laptop happens to already have a reader for, so gathering the video from the other drivers will be a piece of cake. The plan is for the video’s I post here to tell the story of the race from multiple viewpoints, so I’ll be gathering and archiving all the video from the participating drivers and then putting them together into about a twenty-five minute video for each race. It's sort of like I'm our own NFL Films guy.

I’ll be posting the start of season dyno results in a few days, but I don't anticipate any problems with the car.

Test Day, Saturday January 12th

I’m heading up to Buttonwillow tomorrow afternoon for the open test day. I may not take the car out, but I do need to get a number of things straight before the season starts next month. Beyond the yearly technical inspection of the car, which I can get out of the way, I’ll be running, and maybe posting some dyno results, and I'll be ordering some new graphics from Bette to advertise this site.

I also need to check out the new in-car cameras. As I mentioned in my first post, I intend to give the readers of this blog a first person view of the entire campaign, every race, start to finish. Now while in-car video is the best place to watch a race, most of the time a single viewpoint isn't all that exciting. However, as it turns out I’m going to be handling not only my own in-car video, but those of many of the other drivers as well. I’ll be combining the different viewpoints into a single video, one for each race, which will be posted to Google and linked, right here at GT Campaign. Just look for the Race Video gadget.

Nonsence

Like a lot of Blog-Spotters I belong to Google’s Ad Sense. With Ad Sense businesses can advertise on blogs and the revenue gets shared between Blog spot and the Blogger's themselves. Blogger's create content in endless quantities, and get free hosting, while advertisers only pay when somebody reacts to an advertisement. A really good blogger might make beer money as well as get a free service. To me it’s a true win-win.

Still, you have got to appreciate how difficult it is to automate which ad goes where among gazillions of small blogs. Google tries to be smart about trying to automatically tie the blog content to the ads themselves, which sometimes has some odd results. Case in point, my first entry here was titled ‘the nose job’ referring to my breaking and later fixing my cars fiberglass nose. As a result the first ad from Google was for plastic surgery in Los Angeles. Uh, not quite, but I’m sure they’ll keep working on it. Meanwhile… back to the day job.

Update: My bad, turns out there is a control for the blog's creator to choose content. I obviously went with automotive as the closest match...

Look upon my carbon footprint ye mighty, and despair!

The schedule for ’08 is out, first stop Willow Springs. It bills itself as the fastest track in the west, and you certainly spend a lot of time on the throttle. Exit of turn nine, the big sweeper, is wicked fast and ‘make or break’ as lap times go. One decent passing zone (under braking), going into four and a really good hole shot passing zone if you nail the exit of nine, draft a bit, and are willing to be pretty daring going into one.

I haven’t been to W-Springs in quite awhile (I have a race video from May 2005), but my memories of the track are bad, good, good, bad and good. Just to date myself, I went to the weeklong Jim Russell School back when it was there (oh about, 1978) and when the school’s reputation was less than stellar. I learned nothing at all, complete waste of time even on those very few sessions where the car I was in actually ran. After the school I had no money for racing for about the next twenty years… Of course that doesn’t mean that the school hasn’t improved enormously in the last thirty years. I don’t really know.

In September 2004, I took delivery of my Mazda GT, and found myself back at Willow springs (on the “streets” course) for the SCCA School. While waiting for another session, a twenty-something young father, wandering the pits with his two young boys, stopped to admire my car. So I offered to let him take some photos of his kids sitting inside the cockpit. The younger one, perhaps four or five years old, told me “I like your car the best of all!” And when I asked him why he said, “I like the flamethrower!” Now granted I had just taken delivery of the car, but I didn’t recall ordering a flamethrower as an option, EGT gauges, yes, Shift Light, yes, Flamethrower, sadly no… Although as a defense against dive-bombing it could be… no I’m sure that would be illegal.

Anyway, it wasn’t until a month later, during my first race, when trailing Mobi-Dave’s car that I realized what the kid was talking about. One distinctive feature of the MazdaGT is its 12a peripheral port rotary. For those not familiar with different porting types for rotary engines, peripheral porting basically means cutting a hole in the side of the motor and dumping as much fuel as humanly possible from the Weber carburetor straight down into the combustion chamber. As you can see from some race video, one of the side effects is that when you lift the throttle it spits out a couple of feet of flame. When first looking at it you might think the car is turbo-charged, but no, I swear it’s not.

On being fit

Two mornings, every week, I get up at just after five a.m. and trudge on down to Corona Del Mar to get my butt whipped by a girl. My theory is its better to be humiliated off track than on.

One thing I noticed as soon as I started competing was that as much as I love racing, by the time the last few laps came around I was looking mournfully at the starters stand for the white flag, and cursing every time it didn’t come out. It didn’t really make much sense. Here I am spending most of my spare income, looking forward with great anticipation to each and every race, and then wishing it was over just because it hurt. So I started working out, which, especially when pushing fifty, really does hurt.

But it does work. I started noticing that instead of wishing the race were over, I started wishing for just one more lap. And when I get out of the car, I’m badly dehydrated, but otherwise feeling pretty good.

The Nose Job

The car, not my face.

When running the car in '06, in mixed conditions, I managed to mangle the nose at the California Speedway. There's this left hander in a complex of turns leading back onto the oval where, at speed, you just have to have some throttle. I managed to accidentially hit the fuel switch on the way in and right when I needed throttle... DDDDdddoooooo.... With no rotation I'm pushing off course, and hit some tires on the way. Strong as the car is, it might not have been such a big deal, but the tires were full of water from the rain.

Thus was born... Franken nose.

Jim's crew pitched in, for which I'm grateful, right along with Tom, Leroy and the 7's staff to patch the nose up and get the car straight in time for the race.

Now the nose was pretty banged up, but it was just cosmetic, and while it doesn't cost a whole lot to completely replace, much less fix, I wound up running most of '06 and all of '07 with the "temporary" repair. It didn't really have any impact on the car's performance, and I really didn't want to spend any race cash that I didn't have too. But everybody, and Jim's crew especially, never stopped commenting about how great their temporary repair was... "If you're a mile away you can barely see it...", "I bet it barely effects the draft, in the pit lane"... "How cute, Bette duck taped it in matching colors...". Yada... yada... yada and enough is enough.

For awhile I was able to get away with the explaination of the 'already broken nose'. That is, if I fixed it, the car wouldn't be as afraid of walls as it is now and the nose would just wind up broken again. But it is, finally, time.

I'm starting a whole new season, with a whole, newly repaired, nose. This is a new campaign where I'm going to try to get into every single race, all ten points races and just maybe, one or two enduros as well.

This blog is intended to memorialize the 2008 Mazda GT season. Pictures, in car video, stats and points, thoughts and best laid plans; I'm putting all of it down right here. You are invited to follow along but be warned, it might just be a bumpy ol' ride...