** OT **
Thanks, they are funny.
In remembering the movie "Days of Thunder" (Tom Cruise)
I wonder if the character playing along side TC was representative of Dale Ernhardt.
On a more serious news, involving another personality of the Racing world....
Super ego-maniac Bernie Ecclestone (Of Fromula One's Constructors Association's fame FOCA) holds the key to a German media group. Business and sports blurry border line of which is what.
news.ft.com
More
news.ft.com
And space age technology abounds in Formula One...
THis is one incredible article in Wired magazine. How technology has "invaded" Motor Sports.
Literary the driver becomes just another "gear" in the intricate machinery.
wired.com
Here is page 2:
wired.com
Formula One cars, with some 9,000 components, are daunting works in progress, so the pit crew deserves a moment to gloat. Unlike the cookie-cutter vehicles usually driven around ovals in America's popular Nascar and CART races, every F1 car is custom-made and must be designed for both high speeds and hairpin handling. In the two weeks between contests, McLaren crews are likely to do more than just tinker with Hakkinen's ride: They often perform surgery, if only to shave off a few grams of weight or cut a hundredth of a second from each lap. "There's no such thing as a perfect car, we'll never reach that," a McLaren engineer tells me after the race. "Every time the car goes out, it's different."
Seconds later, Hakkinen pulls in and cuts the engine. I turn to Schattling. So what's new under the hood? I ask.
"There are two secrets - the horsepower and our budget," he says. I look at a stack of tires and ask him if any particular type will be used during the race. He shrugs: tire secrets. Apparently, everything's a secret. The aerodynamic wings on Hakkinen's MP4-15 are quickly covered up, and big vertical screens are placed across the driveway so people can't peer in.
That's the way it is with F1 - like dealing with the Pentagon. I'm not even supposed to be in here. I passed through three security checkpoints just to reach the outside of McLaren's pit garage. Then, only because I hounded Schattling, I was allowed into an area that most journalists never see.
Nearly a mile of wiring, 120 onboard sensors, and a telemetry transmitter feed the battle stations in the pit 3-Mbyte chunks of data on everything from brake temperature to oil pressure.
Growing fidgety about my questions, Schattling decides to give me the boot. I'm ushered right past Hakkinen, a two-time world champion who, in F1-crazed countries like Italy, France, and Germany, is every bit as famous as Michael Jordan. His handlers force reporters to wait months for five-minute interviews. I get the feeling that if I so much as say hello to him I'll be gang-tackled.
"It's a very intense competition," Schattling says, pressing down on the latch. "We can't give away too much." The door closes tightly behind me. Nice chatting with you, too.
A control-freak style is nothing new to auto racing. Nearly a century ago, when the first spoke-wheeled race cars were steered down Europe's public dirt roads by men in floppy hats, organizers tried to get a handle on the wide variety of engines and vehicle sizes by establishing particular "formulas," or rules and restrictions on design and engineering. By 1934, for example, with the cars reaching dangerous speeds of 150 miles per hour, it was proposed that a weight limit of 750 kilograms (1,653 pounds) would decrease engine size and capability. In the late '40s the sport's governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, or the FIA, formally recognized the need to distinguish the most powerful and technologically advanced cars from the rest of the field, and the designation "Formula One" was established. Modern Formula One cars all have V-10 engines with somewhere around 800 horsepower. Weight standards are now aimed at keeping cars from being too light - the minimum is 600 kilograms (1,323 pounds), including the driver and a full fuel tank. Teams constantly work to pare down parts and then add the saved weight to the bottom of the chassis, with the goal of lowering a vehicle's center of gravity.
About the time Formula One came into its own, Ron Dennis was born in Woking, 27 miles southwest of London. When he was a kid he bred rabbits and cleaned cars. With his interest in fast objects intensifying, he left school early and became an F1 mechanic. But Dennis hated getting his clothes dirty, so he worked to become a Formula One team leader.
As a rookie boss for McLaren in 1981, Dennis helped revolutionize F1 when he and designer John Barnard rolled out the McLaren MP4, a car featuring the first carbon-fiber chassis. They came up with a structure of woven, baked, and resin-covered fibers that could be shaped into intricate, efficient forms - forms that would have compromised the strength of metal alloys.
"Carbon fiber had been used successfully in the aerospace industry," says Dennis. "Compared with metal, it was advantageous - five times as stiff as steel and up to four times as strong. It was the way forward."
Competitors soon followed suit, but Dennis kept surging ahead of them. In 1982, with sponsorship money from the TAG Group - Techniques d'Avant Garde, a privately held business empire run by a Saudi Arabian industrialist who remains a silent partner - Dennis hired Porsche to build cutting-edge engines for his McLarens. The Porsche turbos helped him win three world championships in the '80s. Part of the power plant's magic was that it incorporated sophisticated fuel-controlling electronics that helped trigger a digital takeover of the sport.
Today's Formula One cars would fit right in at Comdex. Under a 71-inch-wide, carbon-fiber roof lies a monster machine that has been designed, stressed, and even test-driven by computer. Snaking around the chassis, nearly a mile of wiring serves as the circulatory system for the chips, sensors, dashboard, and telemetry transmitter. The car's onboard brain is an electronic black box holding 500,000 lines of code that control the motor and gearbox and took an estimated 20 man-years to write.
Technology is such a big factor in F1 - more so than in any other sport - that there's a constant push-pull between what the engineers can do and what they're allowed to do. In the early '90s, for instance, the FIA outlawed two-way telemetry - which had the potential to let pit crews remotely and instantly alter suspension and engine traits - because officials worried that F1 was on the verge of becoming a race-by-joystick affair.
To make sure they don't become superfluous, drivers work hard at keeping up with F1's digital innovations. Bravery and quick reactions still count for a lot, but now these men (only a handful of women have competed, the last qualifying some 25 years ago) perform like high-speed processors, poring over reams of telemetry data in the pits to see where they might shave a millisecond around a curve or brake an instant later. They tune their bodies with massages, jock food, and workouts under the guidance of personal trainers.
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FYI
Telemetry = Data transmitted between car components and engineers at the pit for further study/evaluation in order to improve car's performance. |
