hrd-hr30

that certainly is a cut above our average track days! Shame those Porsches got in the way of all the cool cars though

some pics from QR a few weeks ago.

the point is, Vettel left him room and Karthikeyan hit him trying to tuck into the tow. the rest is just escuses for Karthikeyan or justification for attributing blame to a driver you don't like.

you say yourself he left a car width. how much more do you want for a bloke 3 laps down? there's no rush to get back over to the other side of the track, but even if there was, you don't move over if there's another car still alongside you! pretty simple. and that's not what Karthikeyan was doing anyway, he just tucked in behind Vettel, and even went left again after that. He was still mid track by the braking zone, and not because he was being squeezed...

the camera angle is deceptive. From the rear it looked like SV cuts across on him, from the front that's clearly not what happened. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxVxZeYZ_IU&feature=related

nup, Maldonardo ran into Grosjean, despite being left plenty of room.

NT01 100 UTQG NT05 200

maybe we're a bit behind, but I remember the RA1 was the benchmark hillclimb tyre up here in the early 2000's. The R888 took over from it around 2004 or something, and was universally hated by hillclimbers. cheap price is on ebay - probably shooting myself in the foot, but its $249ea for 255/40x17 NT01 with 2011 manufacture date.

Hard to say. I had a set of RE55S and loved them, but that was 5 or 6 years ago on a very different car - GTR. They are available in soft compound too. Can't remember how much faster Paul was on the softs compared to the mediums. Can't speak for pace compared to A050 because so few people use them up here, but I very much doubt they are equivalent to them! From what I hear, its A050 and that Hankook semi, then the DZ03 which was the pace setter for a few years, then the rest... I'd say these are up there with the best of the rest. I do have a mate with a 206rwkw Sil80, stripped out, with basic aero and alot of setup work on corner weighting etc... and he's a self-confessed data nerd so pretty much everything is optimised, but its still a real budget car. Anyway, he runs 2.5 sec faster than me at Lakeside on these FZ201s. So who knows...

That's very good buying Richard! You probably know, but Nev and I are hitting Lakeside April 5 NT01 is nothing new either. It looks like the photo is the same because it is the same If they cbf spending 30min to make a new pic of it's different construction, what makes you think they'd spend time developing a new construction and retooling to make a new tyre and then sell it cheaper than the R888? But for the money they're going for, they're definitely worth a try. In fact, at the price I saw just now I might buy some this payday! I don't mind sliding around a bit to get the times if I have too.

Nitto is a brand division of Toyo Tire (USA) Corp. http://www.toyojapan.com/cgi-bin/column/data/release/1119852599.html They have the same construction, and use the exact same picture in their marketing - the only difference is the tread pattern. They have the same 100UTQG rating, and they are made in Japan with the Toyos. lol, ditto is a good name for them!

shame for Williams and Maldonardo. nasty hit! Good to see the right man from McLaren won! RBR had surprising race pace. Looks like being a good close battle between those teams this year. Hats off to Alonso dragging that dog Ferrari home in 5th. They've got some serious catching up to do, yet again... Seems they've swapped places with Mercedes from last season. Maybe even further down the field in reality. Man its tight between a whole lot of other teams!!! Bring on next weekend

boxheadmr, I tried a set of slicks for the same reason. cheaper and yes they turned out faster by 9 tenths at Lakeside. Kumho S700 slicks 58.9 vs Toyo R888 semis 59.8. There was almost certainly more time in the slicks because I ran that time with a stock viscous diff, single spinning everywhere. Took a few laps to really get them up to temp, but when they were, the cornering grip was awesome! But they didn't heat cycle well. Next day there with a shimmed diff, I was 2 tenths slower and suffered a blowout on the front. Next track day I had aother front blowout and the other front delaminated. So don't buy Kumho slicks is my tip! I always felt like I was cheating on slicks too. Roy, you should be able to get the Federal FZ201 much cheaper than $500. They were about $100 cheaper when i bought them and have heard they're cheaper now - but that was the old 'mate of a mate' story... Mine have done 9 days of sprints and hillclimbs on 2 different cars, and still going strong - probably another 4 or 5 days in them and they're still getting me PBs. So heat cycling is not a problem and they're wearing well. I've got the mediums. They are VERY wide for their size - the 255/45x17's overall width is about 275 and tread width is almost 265. I bought 10" wheels for them because they were bulging so much on 9s. Pic of 255 on 10" and 235 on 9": R888 I used to hate them when I had them, because they felt gripless. But they got decent lap times if you were prepared to use a fair bit of slip angle. They are cheap, durable and heat cycle well - never lost any pace over their life span of a couple of years. All evidence says Nitto = Toyo with a different pattern.

very interesting qualy - good to see it all mixed up this year. Grosjean did an awesome job, so did Maldonardo - nice to see the Williams back up there too. And Hulkenberg. Schumacher consistently outpaced Rosberg through Practice and Qualy too. Now we just need one of his storming starts and watch Lewis tear up with memories of Monza lol... I don't think he'll be an easy beat this year bring on the race!

bloody hell, not alot of room there! Got away with it unscathed though by the sounds of it? Was the pedal slightly 'longer' than normal when you got on the brakes there?

based on natsoft times done in the last 12 months... It wouldn't be too hard to work out what reasonably fast times are for interstate tracks. Particularly now that we've had a couple of WTAC events - you can easily compare who did what at EC WTAC to what they do at their home tracks... People are paying to get in to watch this event, and there's more demand than supply for positions. Why shouldn't we see the fastest cars. Who wants to pay to watch a 2min Clubsprint car, or mid 50's Open Class cars when faster cars miss out just because they didn't get their entry form in within an hour of entries opening?

went back to QR yesterday to see if the diff change helped. Beat my PB by 4 tenths, so I'm pretty happy with that. Here's a short 2min video - PB on 2nd lap:

Its an improvement, but I don't think it goes far enough. They should be accepting entries based on how fast their car is, not on how fast their entry form is.

lol a little nip to the roofline here, little tuck to the wheelbase there and slip the control suspension and driveline under it... job's a peach

I think I used the full url from the address bar at the top of the browser. Paste that into the 'insert media' button. Got the split timing form Mt Cotton. The 180SX loses almost all its time in the first sector compared to my other cars. It matches the GTR in the second sector and there's just a couple of tenths in the third sector which I can probably make up, but that first sector is a bit of a surprise. I remember the GTR being awesome of the slippery concrete launch pad, and would be better out of the tight first turn with its taller first gear and AWD traction, but 1.6seconds? That's a lot of time! The 1200 was very good off the line in 2nd gear as well with the soft RA1s, and very fast up the hills with 310rwbhp & 950kg. At least I can see the car isn't completely hopeless around the rest of the track and know what I have to work on next time. Might make some changes to the car too...

S13 & S14 5spd manuals have 4.083. Its only the 6spd S15 manual that has the 3.692 The S13 and 14 diff gears feel too tall on the street. They're much better with a 4.363. But this is with 235/45 R17 tyres, 644mm OD. The BMW probably runs a smaller OD tyre so that lowers your gearing again.

I did the Mt Cotton hillclimb on the weekend in the 180SX. Bit dissapointed with my times, but it was only my second hillclimb in 5 years and I really struggled to get my head around it all again. Took me till the 6th run of the weekend just to get the first corner right FFS! Had some front pad knock off, leading to a couple of rear brake lockups in the first downhill braking zone. So I was having to pump the pedal up with the left foot while negotiating the tricky exit of the first loop, nicknamed 'lover's leap' because of its sharp drop off - which was a bit distracting. I was still driving like an old mole through that 1st loop (in both directions) by the end of the weekend, so hopefully there's better times to be had by getting more used to the place again and pushing harder. Still not sure which gear to use in the hairpin either. I recently changed from the stock 4.083 diff to 4.363 to try and help at Lakeside and QR, but I think it hurts at Mt Cotton. The taller diff would help make 1st gear more useable. Softer spring rates would probably work better at that low speed track too. I got my best time on the last run of the weekend after a long delay for an oil-down in that first loop by a caterham three cars ahead of me in the queue - I took it so easy through there I couldn't believe I got a decent time! I ran two 48.1's on Sunday, but that's miles away from where I wanted/expected to be. To put it in perspective these are the times I've done in previous cars: 48.3 in a 145rwbhp L20 powered Datsun 1200 on A032R's 46.3 in a 300rwbhp CA18DET Datsun 1200 on nice soft Toyo RA1's 46.2 in my old R32 GTR - never dyno'd but only had Mines ECU, 0.9bar, exhaust and coilovers on puny little 225/50 R16 SR (hard) compound RE55S on stock rims. Would have been a rocket with some nice soft 255s. Shouldn't have sold it! 48.1 in the 270rwbhp 180SX was pretty dissapointing - only a couple of tenths faster than my old two litre Datto! anyway, here's some vid of me driving like an old woman around Mt Cotton:

V8 Supercars dying out is a nice thought... but let's face it, if it did, V8 Brutes would take over as our premier category...

The answers are obvious. They were phasing out GroupA racing like the rest of the world already had. The only reason they didn't make it one clean cutover was they don't want to loose all the privateers in the smaller cheaper to run Group A cars so gave them a year or two to make the changeover into the new cars. Longhursts BMW was a special case. I'd say their long term involvement and the cash they brought to the racing allowed them to negotiate a special case until they made their decision either way.

so what? I said "by that logic", not "by that date". What actually happened is everything else got the arse. They just allowed things that would never be championship contenders to hang around for a while to bolster the grids. And the fact remains that by the 95 season no other cars except 5l V8s were permitted in the ATCC, banning everything else. Its the same logic.