Shame Radio 2 told me the result without any prior warning, complaint lodged.
They have bigger trailers, drive a lot faster and some US freeways are steep in places, still fast and wide but the lie of the land is beyond even Americans to play with.
We find 12 mpg disappointing from a ten year old 28 ton laiden tractor/trailer, admittedly you're probably carrying a lot more unlaiden weight and a heavier load. Having said that it is nothing compared to the 7.5 ton converted skip truck, completely unsuited to motorway running, delivering 6 mpg at a 1000 rpm, into the red at about 55 mph.
About the work needed to produce a competitive car? In fairness I think I do having worked with both current spec touring cars and endurance cars, from Group N to much more serious. I don't think that it is in any way unrealistic to get a competitive touring car for under £80,000 (factory customer cars don't go for a lot more new), assuming you're prepared to think outside of the box and turn up with a tidy car but without all the bells and whistles, factory standard aerodynamics will be fine on what is effectively little faster than a Group N car, if anything you'll be trying to focus on reducing drag, not on adding downforce. So long as you can find something rear wheel drive then there are plenty of relatively inexpensive sequential transmission options on the market and the drivetrain in anything well built should be able to go racing without issue. What do you think is so wrong in what I've said?
No North America probably has more club circuits (excluding rovals) than the rest of the world put together. Quite a few of them are fantastic tracks, but largely unacknowledged in the racing community.
I don't think the cost of a made for television banger series has anything to do with the cost of running a club single seater the other side of the pond. With some crafty engineering, careful reading of the rules and most importantly choosing the best starting car you could be front running in BTCC for under £200,000 with a professionally run car, and that would include taking on the works teams (who aren't really showing any interest in it atm and would probably just pull out if any real opposition came along).
In order to do well you would need a properly built car with an extensive well designed cage, lots of bodyshell preparation there's virtually no limit to how far you can lighten a standard steel shell/panels whilst leaving it looking visually standard construction (which is usually as far as they get checked). A fully prepared bodyshell and rollcage should cost around £30,000 assuming you'll be able to brag a shell from somewhere (and ideally if you can get a competition shell you'll knock a load of time off removing little bits and pieces that aren't needed and won't have to deal with the protective coating that modern car shells have which makes welding them tricky). Add £20,000 for engine and gearbox, they're quite highly strung in BTCC but it shouldn't be anything that radical, another £5000 for an exhaust manifold, based on the assumption that if you choose a quirky car nobody is going to be producing racing manifolds for it so it will need to be hand made. Add another £2000 for a new airbox, assuming again it is custom made will require a bit of work sorting out but can be made out of fibreglass for a fraction of the cost with a negligible weight disadvantage over carbon fibre. Then add £10000 for suspension, and drivetrain. If you choose a good donor car the prop-shaft and drive-shafts should be fine for competition use, you will probably be able to simply re-pack the standard LSD without issue. Suspension will be pretty simple replacement of standard arrangement with tubular rose jointed bits that can be made pretty easily, given the rules you probably won't even have to (or be able to) think about changing the geometery radically. Add in another £10000 for other bits and pieces, mandatory safety equipment, something to sit on, perspex windows (they are pricey), new front brakes and master cylinders (rears should be fine if a decent donor is chosen), fabricate a new pedal box, twin plate clutch. No need for endurance racing components (dry break fuel system, air jacks etc.), which cost a fortune. Then stick some bodywork on it, if you don't have an urge to stick spoilers and big sills on it, then lightened standard bumpers will be almost as light as carbon fibre parts, the undertray can be made of plywood, which is far cheaper and more practical than carbon fibre anyway. The wheel arches will probably need modifying so say £3000 worth of labour including stripping panels. So for £80,000 you could have a car capable of running competitively, keep it out of the wall and you would have change left over even with lots of tyres, expensive fuel, transport costs, and engine rebuilds.
Apologies if I've made the odd grammatical error, not great I know, but I don't think it is quite as bad as aiming for a word and missing it completely, text speak, random capital letters and posting complete drivel anyway. Thanks for your input anyway, why don't you run and find something better to do with your time than searching through my posts
They'll probably still be lower with US petrol prices
The US has a big club racing scene, lots of superb club circuits and plenty of different club level single seaters though. Given that the front running cars in F4 are built new for the American market there must be somewhere to race them. A very quick search reveals that SCCA have a series which FF2000 cars are eligible for.
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I don't think you could really beat Skip Barber on price doing the work yourself if you wanted to be competitive in a competitive winged single seater series. Of course it can be done, in the past people have won Club F3 with considerably less than the average front running Formula Vee competitor's budget. It takes an all rounder though to do it, plenty of experience and connections, good engineering (thinking outside the box and never wasting anything), and good driving (both undeserved speed for the machinery and never making mistakes). Assuming the OP is human, incapable and/or unwilling at engineering and wants to be competitive then a hire drive centrally run series makes sense. Of course there are other aspects to club racing than just literally the racing, many of the figures in all the club racing scenes I've been involved with have never been behind the wheel in anger and have no intention to do so. Likewise there are always the edgey figures on the side who only seem to be there to take home pots, they may fit into centrally run racing much better than the club series they seem to have a rather miserable time with.
Start here and radically increase the chance of you getting 'highered' (into a job of some description).
Skip Barber is incredibly good value for money, $3000 for a two race weekend. You definitely won't find a competitive hire drive single seater in any series (and definitely not wings and slicks) for that over here. That also includes (limited) insurance. Preparing a car yourself will still be the cheaper option and if you go to an open series then you will be racing a considerably more advanced car but I think centrally run series have their place in the market.
Yes, a lawn mower engine on steroids is going to beat a car round the circuit with the longest straight in the country, I'd be suprised if you could beat my Focus...
EDIT - after a little bit of googleing I quickly find someone claiming Superkarts are faster than F3 cars (with no evidence) on another forum. For reference:
2008 Superkart fastest lap at Castle Combe - 1.05.881
2005 Formula 3 car - 0.59.387
In fairness it is quite impressive that they're only 6 seconds a lap slower, about the pace of club level single seaters, although that is still on a track with Quarry and two chicanes to help them. Round Snetterton would be very different and of course Alan you don't race a Superkart...
Last edited by ajp71, .
Correct me if I'm wrong but Skip Barber is reasonably priced arrive and drive centrally organised club racing featuring a very crude car that is reliable and cheap to run, given the level playing field the fact your driving something simple doesn't matter so much. Formula BMW (and I think Mazda) are almost exclusively run by professional teams, whilst there may not be any bar to entry for club racers (though there is an upper age or license limit on some of them) they will have prohibitively high entry fees and car costs (carbon tubs, expensive gearboxes and often limited availability of second hand cars).
I don't think the OP really wants to race in Formula BMW/Mazda and doesn't seem to have any aspiration of making it as a racing driver. I certainly don't believe that US single seater racing is so limited.
Don't forget they still race Formula Ford 2000 cars (LD200, tubular tub, wings and slicks), these chassis run in the UK with 1.8 Zetecs in F4, circa £35000 for a turn key car in UK spec, decent cars with potential and spares (and even a truck if your lucky) can be had for £10-15000. I would have thought cars in the US would go for similar amounts and there would be plenty of second hand ones on the market and lots of places to race them, they are a much better car for starting out in race car preparation.
With the exception of Skip Barber and Formula Ford (non-2000, non-professional) all of those series will have huge budgets and are aimed at the up and coming/semi-professional driver. Assuming that isn't you these aren't what you want to be looking at, there will be plenty of local single seater series for you to race very similar cars for a fraction of the cost.
You need to choose your budget and decide what you want to race in, preparing your own car/a professionally prepared car/running in a centrally run formula (Skip Barber/FPA).
You need to choose your budget and decide what you want to race in, preparing your own car/a professionally prepared car/running in a centrally run formula (Skip Barber/FPA).
The idea of social networking with strangers with no common interest is slightly less apealing than social networking with a load of people I barely know.
The normal demo had no time limit 1 track and 2 cars IIRC. Anyway no worries you can always sue him if he's wrong.
Another knowledgeless post full of bullshit...
Couldn't guess who it came from.
Couldn't guess who it came from.
There's clearly lots of space and it doesn't appear like the white car is interested in trying to take the inside and I'm pretty certain that he is aware of Tristan's presence and this is the reason why he leaves a big gap. He then suddenly veers right either because he has decided to try and overtake the car (without thinking about where Tristan has gone) or possibly he misjudged relative speeds and has decided that he would be unable to avoid hitting the other car and just hopped he'd get away with it (I think there was an element of this). It is a pretty typical single seater accident though, drivers often don't seem aware of their surroundings and throw caution to the wind and turn in on the grounds that anything in their way will have to scatter. Equally it is a typical single seater accident in getting a big crash with only the tiniest bit of wheel to wheel contact, I heard that someone I know escaped with minor injuries from another huge accident caused by wheel to wheel contact sending the car into a violent roll.
I would be careful what rubber you stick on without at least checking with your insurer.
The main issue is it has just got so much heavier for no real reason. Even the original Focus was a much better, lighter, car. I can't see what the newer model offers over the older one, it looks blander and fatter than the original, is probably no bigger on the inside and the original model lugged around air bags and aircon (which I'd choose to live without to save 100kg) anyway. In fact the rear leg room and seats are worse than the original IMO. The fact the current 1.6 model (100bhp variant) is nearly 200kg heavier than the same old model probably explains why it takes it an extra second to get to 60. I remember Autocar also rated the 1.6 Mk 1 as being surprisingly capable and far more enjoyable to drive than a lot of more expensive (heavier) material on a track test, they didn't think the same of the 1.8 Mk 2 the next year...
Looking at it the blue car seemed to be traveling very slowly (for a winged car), it looks like the white (unwinged car) had decided to slot in behind it on the outside letting Tristan take the inside. Presumably he was expecting the other car to be quicker than him round the corner as well and moved sharply to the right to avoid him when he realised this wasn't the case, I'm pretty sure the blue car was taken out by the white one but it is unclear and rather academic whether that was before or after hitting Tristan.
He does, but inevitably when you try and drive onto a low grip bumpy surface on the inside of a corner you are going to get thrown back onto the track (which is what happens).
It depends what you are after, LFS offers a reasonable range of cars, mundane tracks and is the only one which offers instant online racing. iRacing is superbly detailed in some respects, has real cars (if that does it for you), is extremely expensive and getting a race involves sitting around for hours. rF offers a much larger choice of cars and tracks (but the majority of them are rubbish and are like an undrivible version of TOCA), pick up racing is confined to a small selection of cars and tracks (and the popular ones are always the shiny ones rather than interesting or well made ones) and getting everything compatible for online racing is a joke. Personally I wouldn't consider using rF online out of leagues (or against the AI for that matter).
A mixture of practical experience, general interest and reading.
I don't really fancy a 150 mile commute and whilst there is nothing wrong with skilled manual work I chose to do a degree in motorsport engineering.
I think I know very little about engines, they're not something I am comfortable working with without guidance or a Haynes manual and aside from basic knowledge that Wikipedia or a basic textbook would cover (which would immediately reveal why by definition higher octane fuels will cause less knocking) I don't think I understand much of the theory either.
Rather nasty, you definitely weren't at fault though.
It's very rare to insure circuit racing cars, only normally done on some very valuable historics and some hire drives (getting the drivers to pay for insurance before hand saves the inevitable squabbling when you give them a 5 figure bill).
It's very rare to insure circuit racing cars, only normally done on some very valuable historics and some hire drives (getting the drivers to pay for insurance before hand saves the inevitable squabbling when you give them a 5 figure bill).
If you want to see what rF is capable of then you'll need the Realfeel plugin and a mod with decent physics, which are very few and far between.
If you own GTR2 (and have a disc) try the EOAA GT mod, likewise if you own GTL try the Historic GT mod. These two are the two best mods out their for rF and if you've been disappointed by the SimBin originals are well worth trying.
Other mods you could try are Niel's Corvette, Caterhams, Legend cars, Ferrari 312B, NAGT and the CSGT HPM.
If you own GTR2 (and have a disc) try the EOAA GT mod, likewise if you own GTL try the Historic GT mod. These two are the two best mods out their for rF and if you've been disappointed by the SimBin originals are well worth trying.
Other mods you could try are Niel's Corvette, Caterhams, Legend cars, Ferrari 312B, NAGT and the CSGT HPM.
Which is the same thing.
To get the full benefit of higher octane fuels the compression ratio must be changed, which means an engine has to be able to safely run on the lowest grade it could be exposed to, which for road cars is going to be anything that you can buy out of a pump so no normal road cars will take full advantage of their fuel. Equally a lot of racing engines will be built to run on premium pump fuel or low octane race fuel to add flexibility.
There's a lot more to fuels than just octane rating and there's a large difference between the premium pump fuels and lowest grades of racing fuel (usually 99 or 100 octane), some pump fuels have higher octane ratings but that doesn't make them better. Really the difference between standard and premium pump fuel is in the complicated chemical bits that aren't easily understood or advertised.
Active central differentials have not been banned.
My point exactly, take a £5 car, in goes the 'good' audio system on goes the stupid bodykit and you've turned a perfectly good work horse into a completely useless chav mobile.
It makes no difference, low octane pump fuels all come from pretty much the same source anyway and are all just enough to meet the required standards paying a premium to buy the same dishwater is madness.
I think you might just be bullshitting about stuff you don't understand, again...
Octane rating is effectively a measure of an engines resistance to detonation. If a car is detonating the simplest solution is to put better fuel in it.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG