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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 27, 2018 - 03:06pm PT
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Yes, thanks for that Moto GP link.
I enjoy watching a little Flat Track & TT action, especially now that the Indians are running again! (I'm partial to the big bore bikes [Twins] when it comes to half-mile & mile ovals)
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G_Gnome
Trad climber
Cali
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Mar 27, 2018 - 03:07pm PT
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Yes, these days MotoGP is a better form of racing. Until F1 gets rid of the current aero package the racing will mostly be boring. And making them faster just exacerbated the problem. After all, would you rather watch 6 or 8 bikes nose to tail with frequent passing or the F1 parade?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 27, 2018 - 03:34pm PT
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Hamilton, in November of the 2017 season, holds forth on his expectation for the three engine limitation for 2018:
 What he thinks shouldn't come as much of a surprise! Running his engine in party mode to save it, as Reilly noted. That euphemism just cracks me up!
"We should be able to push more, sprinting is what we're missing in F1."
"If you look at the front guys, they were managing, and that's generally what we are doing when we are in front," said Hamilton.
"I don't think that's exciting for people to watch."
"When it rains, because you don't have those limitations, or the races where Max Verstappen has been coming through the back, those have been the most exciting ones."
"How do we provide that for the future? I'm not sure that cutting down the engines is helping it in that direction."
https://www.eurosport.com/formula-1/f1-s-2018-three-engine-rule-sucks-hamilton_sto6409597/story.shtml
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Niki Lauda holds forth on the three engine limitation:
In light of Formula 1's controversial grid penalty system, Mercedes' Niki Lauda believes next year's rule which will further limit engine usage is a big mistake.
In 2018, Formula 1 will bring down the number of power units a driver can use over the course of a season from 4 to just 3, a move which Red Bull's Christian Horner has highly criticised, believing it will only exacerbate the ridiculous effects of F1's grid penalty system.
Lauda agrees that the scheduled change from 4 to 3 engines is "a mistake by F1's Strategy Group".
"Everyone said that the engines could only be cheaper for customers if we build less," he told Auto Motor und Sport.
"But we have known for a long time now that nothing will be saved with the 3 engines," Lauda added.
"Because the development on the test stands actually costs more."
http://en.f1i.com/news/279570-lauda-blasts-2018-engine-rule-change.html
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Mar 27, 2018 - 04:16pm PT
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Completely burnt my dinner watching the Australia GP
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Mar 27, 2018 - 04:38pm PT
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just tried to watch a 2017 F1 race. thought I was watching a 00 tie soccer match.....
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Mar 27, 2018 - 05:01pm PT
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Most engines and vehicles have very distinct musical resonance tones, allowing them to be identifiable, just like the distinctive harmonics of a musical instrument. For example my Piper Comanche can be identified before you can even hear the engine, from a high pitch note caused by airflow over the special retracted landing gear that I built for it.
One of my NASA Glen engineering friends is a leading expert on worldwide rotating turbo machinery. He can hear a jet overhead and tell without looking the type of aircraft, type of engines, maintenance status of the engines,and sometimes even a specific engine that he has worked on.
It is relatively easy to identify the distinctive exhaust notes of Ferrari 12 cylinder engines. With practice you can even hear gear selection and vehicle speed from engine RPM combined with the notes of chassis resonating wind noise, exhaust tone and gearbox lash noise. Getting in tune with these vehicle songs is a critical aspect of the game for highly competitive drivers with no time to look at console instruments.
This is especially true for pilots, and has become a critical safety degrade for modern aircraft with sound modifying headsets and sonic isolation from engine and air-frame harmonic notes. I've been having recent discussions with one of my NASA friends who is working on commercial airliner stall recovery systems. Pilots use the term 'helmet fire' to describe the vertigo-like sensations of sonic sensory overload in a modern cockpit.
What I remember especially about that 1967 Honda at Watkins Glen was an apparent lack of any fundamental harmonic tones...just a white noise ripping sound...unlike the RPM variable exhaust note tones that we are used to hearing from engines. There was so much going on in the engine, that the resultant high volume white noise was masking all the fundamental components.... rather like a big rocket engine that overwhelms all dimensions of our sensory identifiable sonic components.
I can't verify that my memory of that engine design is all correct from an hour of working on its gear box fifty years ago. However that unique sound it made on the track has stayed with me, just as distinctly as my memory of the first time SpaceX fired off all nine Merlin engines together on the first Falcon 9 rocket in the test stand in Texas, which we were viewing from way too close.
I think of a race engine or a prototype rocket engine as a big bin of random components that gets assembled by an engine wizard. The history books may not accurately depict the resulting engine. I can be wrong about it, but some things tend to stick with you over time ... even if I was mistaken at the time or in my memories ... that's what makes these forum discussions so interesting as a way to tune our knowledge and verify memories.
In the case of that Honda engine, it was just that amazing sound!
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Mar 27, 2018 - 05:56pm PT
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Bill Alsup had an auto parts store and machine shop in Woodstock VT when I was a teenager. I had the cylenders of my RD400 bored there. He worked on race engins and when he started one up you could hear it all over town!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 27, 2018 - 07:39pm PT
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That was a very enjoyable post, Tom.
What you are describing is not so dissimilar from something as disparate from motor racing as being a wine connoisseur.
I doubt you are mistaken in your recollection of the Honda engine.
Wikipedia is good, but it's not the end-all reference, especially for something as multivalent, if I might use that term, as motor racing and all the attendant machinery and various tweaks involved.
My father is gone now, but had a mind like a steel trap for such things, and may well have known something about that motor, why it was laying around at the time, so to speak, and why they pressed it into service for that particular race.
And back to your descriptive of getting in tune with exhaust note, gear lash and so forth, as cues to diagnostic work, something all drivers do and did, often by feel, literally by the seat-of-the-pants, a sophisticated racecar representing essentially a symphony of vibrations which can be selected and interpreted (Phil Hill being one of the best at reading and saving the machine), there is a parallel.
As Turn Marshalls, my dad and his buddies definitely used anticipatory skills, and those auditory signals were among them. Visual cues were also helpful in terms of anticipating oncoming drivers, with whatever particular challenges they might independently represent. So, for instance, it was helpful to know exactly what all the different headlight configurations looked like in a field comprising a variety of makes when anticipating an oncoming car, IIRC, more pertinent to endurance racing when assessing oncoming cars at night.
Cheers,
Roy
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Mar 27, 2018 - 09:46pm PT
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Without a doubt the most impressive Honda engine is the one that was in the McLaren F1 cars the past three years. If the chassis hadn't been such a dog.....:-)
Nice to see the boyz way up in qualifying with the Renault power plants.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Cascade Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Mar 27, 2018 - 11:36pm PT
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One of my back burner projects was restoring a 1973 Corvette basically from scratch. I happened to find a trashed frame in a pasture with no engine or transmission and only shreds of the fiberglass body. It sat in my garage for years while I picked away at it, building up a four-bolt block 350 engine from a bare block and restoring all the body work and interior. I am no engine wizard, but I rebuilt that engine four times before deciding I was sort of happy with it. When I finally had it all finished, it would definitely get up and go... I drove it around for a while and then got bored with it, being as I am more partial to Lotus. There was a young man working with our marine salvage company who was all gaga about the Corvette, so I bartered it off to him.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 28, 2018 - 08:32am PT
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Lars H Christensen's Lamborghini Espada S3 V12, blue printed, upgraded and etc.
'Love this guy's work! Check the bit where he runs it with different exhaust pipe configurations, 6 into 1 per bank & 12 into 1.
Talk about some beautiful sounds ...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Part 1 shows the original startup after 32 years, where he discusses some of his worthwhile, engine critical ancillary mods:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
An articulating lift he used to position the V12 monster into the engine bay:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
And the finished project!
Lamborghini Espada Evoluzione.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Garden-variety Lamborghini Espada for comparison:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
WTF, let's go for a tour in a stock Espada on the Route Napoleon:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Route Napoleon,:
https://www.ultimatedrives.net/top-10-roads/details.php?route_ID=100009
In contrast with the mountain passes this route is more designed for speed and the ability to really appreciate the performance of the car. The advantage of the Route Napoleon is that it is much the same smooth rhythm from beginning to end, so you can appreciate any part of the road without needing to confine yourself to one specific part. The smoothness of this route makes it a fantastic driving experience for anyone, which along with the scenery makes for a truly thrilling driving experience with many photo opportunities.
Could almost get on topic here, with a detour to the Verdon!
We recommend coming off the route Napoleon towards the “gorge de verdon”, a French version of the Grand Canyon, at over 730M up you can see down into the gorge, a fantastic experience at 40km from the route Napoleon.
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Mar 28, 2018 - 10:49am PT
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Tom, fabulous story.... one of those forks in the road decisions. You picked “the woman”. What if you had gone racing? One never knows.
Roy, thanks for posting all this, gives me hours of entertainment.
One of the saddest days of my life was the day Jim Clark died. I was 14 and In love with fast cars, the Drivers, and Jim Clark in particular. I was going to my first ever Formula Car race, F2 in this case and Clark was entered. I went with one of my neighbors. A young Army captain who lived downstairs from me who owned a 911s... we blasted to the track from Stuttgart in a light rain, going faster than Dad ever drove. It was so cool to see Jimmy going by lap after lap and then nothing.... just a huge plume of smoke rising from the forrest.
That was how it went back in the day, here than gone.
I’m so happy to see increased safety measures have put a end to the death spot era in motor racing.
It would be nice if we could get professional TV broadcast.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 28, 2018 - 12:09pm PT
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It would be nice if we could get professional TV broadcast. Ho Man!
When Reilly and I were picking up the pieces from the coverage of last weekend's race, I totally forgot to bring that up: what about Leigh Diffey, David Hobbs, Steve Matchett, and Will Buxton?!
I was kind of in denial, thinking I just missed the pre-and post race shows, as an aspect of the usual fallout from not watching the race live.
Totally bummed about the loss of this team. From Road & Track, November 2017:
Based on the information shared by ESPN, U.S. F1 fans will lose the studio experience altogether as a new U.K.-based broadcast team is assembled--one that's unaffiliated with the beloved British Sky Sports F1 group--to deliver a generic international feed in its place. NBCSN's in-depth pre- and post-race shows filled with interviews and analysis are also expected to be lost after Leigh Diffey, David Hobbs, Steve Matchett, and Will Buxton sign off from Abu Dhabi this weekend.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a13914932/the-end-of-an-american-motorsports-broadcasting-institution/
I'm shattered !!!
I NEED those guys. Not to mention I used to watch David Hobbs race, so that was a special treat to see him all these years later.
They are to commentating in motor racing what Martina Navratilova, Paul Annacone, the brothers McEnroe & Chrissie Evert are to tennis commentating.
...............................
Something MUST be done. I'm taking to the streets over this one! Who's with me?
While we are at, we can lobby to bring back the Grid Girls. Ha!
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Mar 28, 2018 - 12:47pm PT
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I thought Martin Brundle was OK. What the old team(Diffey/Hobbs/Matchet) really needed was someone who drove F1 after the birth of Christ. The cars are so different, even from year-to-year, that the team needed someone with recent racing experience.
I spent some time with Jarno Trulli and Jenson Button(they are both big cyclists) and their descriptions of what it takes to drive an F! car were very interesting and enlightening.
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G_Gnome
Trad climber
Cali
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Mar 28, 2018 - 12:51pm PT
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Yep, I liked the old announcing team except that I didn't really like Matchet anymore. He was just so out of date and so wrong so often that I had learned to tune him out. Hobbs and Diffy were great though. And Will still shows up on the Sky/ESPN coverage.
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Mar 28, 2018 - 06:08pm PT
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The announcers were the worst I have ever suffered through, and that’s counting th boys who comment on Indy car.
The go kart races have better announcers, much better. Tune in EKN... Rob Howden is a really good one, he is working his way up the ladder and is now calling the shots for Indy lights, pro-mazda and F2000.... He is a real pro. At the Kart races I do I’m pretty busy lining up the karts. I listen in on his channel..... It’s just like watching.
Tell ESPN they scored an F.
So now I need to find the Sky-sports coverage, or maybe the Brazilian feed so I can watch without the headache.
I do like the new drivers, most of them seem to have paid their dues. Look for Brendon Hartley to do good things.
Roy, keep up the good work!
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Mar 30, 2018 - 01:37pm PT
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I had a Tarbuster sighting in Breck!
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Winemaker
Sport climber
Yakima, WA
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Mar 30, 2018 - 06:07pm PT
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If one wanted to, one could go to this site and watch the British Sky broadcast live, including all practices and qualifying, but that would be illegal. I haven't been watching races here for four years, and will continue not to. One might have to fiddle with the feeds, but that's not my business.
https://www.vipbox.st/
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