hrd-hr30

lol the yanks get away with murder in DOT tyre classes over there - those R7 takes 'cheater slicks' to a whole new level! Not even '2 groove cheater slicks' anymore, just a few dots pretending to be tread now! Soarer needs semis to stay in the Road Reg class at Mt Cotton hill climb. And being a pure street car, street legal tyres are more suited to the car's philosophy. Besides, I have to remove the rear seat to have enough room to carry non road legal tyres out to the track, and that's a PITA. Would rather drive to and from on the semis. I bought a set of new (3yo stock) 235/40R18 Z221 C70/Soft compound (80 treadwear) semis for $264ea incl freight. I have a cheap-arse tyre buying gene that is hard to overcome... They still look and feel fresh and soft, so I think they'll be fine. The A050M I had for the 120Y that convinced me to buy better tyres for the Soarer, were 3yo and secondhand (off a mate, so I knew they were stored well) and they were awesome! Fitted them up on Saturday morning and I've entered a sprint at Lakeside this Wednesday to try them out.

Nice! I just sold my 120Y track toy and about to buy another set of semis for the Soarer, so it's great to hear this feedback. After driving the 120Y on A050M, I just can't bring myself to go back to the half worn Nittos I already have for the Soarer... Z221s it is!

$100 Bluetooth GPS receiver and $10 phone app will do at least as good a job.

A proper 4WD is one designed for 4WDing ability. Fully independent suspension is primarily for on-road ride and handling, then they have to add a whole bunch of electronic aids to keep it moving if it ever encounters anything more than a dirt road. That's not a proper 4WD in my books. It would also be nice if the shifter wasn't for the passenger to operate - it's not even a proper right hand drive Jimny? Yes, it's a proper 4WD, albeit scaled down a little too far to be practical. I've driven one off-road and about the only thing that stops them is ground clearance. I'd put money on a well driven Jimny with a $500 2" lift going places a Y62 won't. And the driver having a shitload more fun at the same time

oh, and proper 4WDs keep their wheels on the ground (except in the most extreme conditions). I guess I should update my cars list. I sold the GQ a few weeks ago and bought an IFS (inadequate front suspension) 4WD for more on-road comfort because I don't do any serious off-roading anymore. Just highway touring and beach trips. But just coz its got low range doesn't mean I'm calling it a proper 4WD

Can't say I've bothered to stick my head under one, or kept up with them since they were announced and every Patrol owner disowned the Y62 but Nissan said they were a monocoque...

that's because it's not a proper 4WD. It's a fully independent monocoque designed for blasting down highways and desert sands in the UAE where they give no farks for fuel consumption. Road manners is the area it should be good!

Romain got a beating by Kimi at Lotus... Why on earth would anyone entertain the idea of replacing Kimi, who's getting whupped by all the top guys he gets paired with, with a bloke who couldn't even keep up with him?

From the sounds of that (around 2sec faster and only 3 laps before they go off), he's almost certainly talking about the C90 supersoft compound.

Hankook mediums are the wrong compound choice for sprints. Not fair to compare those to A050 Mediums - the comparable Hankook compound is C70 Soft. Edited this earlier quote to make it a bit clearer:

A050 M seem to grip OK even when cold just an excuse to post a pic of the mighty 120Y at Mt Cotton yesterday But they are the grippiest tyre I've ever used.

Not exactly fair criticism IMO. The R32 GT-R was probably the largest volume seller of any Group A model in the world (ie versions with the same engine as the race car). The RS500 Sierra was also built to exploit the rules as much as they could. And if you want to talk boring, that car all but turned Group A into a one make race series. Everyone had them - even Brock. Nissan were about the only ones who genuinely challenged them with the R30 and 31 Skylines before they got serious and revived the GT-R brand with a lot of innovative thinking for the time. It could just as easily have bitten them in the arse if they didn't get it right - more complicated things tend to be less reliable, as a rule. So it was a big gamble by Nissan to build the GT-R. Ford only built 5,500 Sierras with the Cosworth motor in total. Nissan, by comparison, built about 44,000 RB26 engined GT-Rs!!! GT-R only cost twice as much as a Commodore here because Nissan only brought in 100 of the damn things, not confident of being able to sell them here. The price in Japan was 4,450,000Y - roughly equivalent to $44,500 at 1990 exchange rates. VL Walkinshaws sold for $47,000. How many countries did they sell them in? lol They could barely sell their homologation runs in time here. And how many countries did they sell those 5,500 Sierra's in??? And how much would one of them have cost to buy here!!!

Merc spent more development tokens than Ferrari in the off season actually. And Merc were reported to have about 50bhp more than last year.

Ferrari went from slower than Renault engine last year to almost on par with Mercedes engines this year and still have development tokens left. The development token system is not why Renault suck. They just suck.

yes, but Hamilton never asked them if the other guys had pitted... He had already made his mind up about that coz he's so clever looking at the big screens... He had it in his head the others had stopped and that's why he wanted to stop as well. That's where this mistake stems from. Mercedes original call: "stay out" was 100% correct. Hamilton second guessed them based on an incorrect assumption forcing the rushed maths about the pit stop which ballsed it all up. Root cause: a) incorrect assumption from Hamilton, b) Hamilton not asking if the others had pitted, and finally c) incorrect last minute change of mind RE the pit call.

meh, maybe you'll believe Hamilton himself? It was obviously a stuff up on Mercedes part too, but their first call was correct - stay out. They only changed it because Hamilton thought he knew better...

Yep, Homo's panic caused the pit stop. Team told him to stay out, but he questioned them. Mistake 1. He had it in his head that Nico and Vettel had stopped and he would be on worn out tyres... he didn't ask the team if they'd stopped, he assumed that himself from looking at TV screens. Mistake 2. In the heat of the moment the team were under pressure now to make a call. They changed their minds and brought him in because he was worried about his tyres lasting. Mistake 3. 2 of the 3 mistakes were Hamiltons, and they were the mistakes that pressured the team into making the snap decision to bring him in. Hamilton thought he was too smart, watching the TVs to find out what's going on, but in the end it was the dumbest way to loose a GP ever.

bit of a strange result from Lakeside yesterday. Powerhouse 120Y with old school SOHC L20B from an 83 Bluebird with a carby turbo setup running 7psi, so it's no powerhouse. Has S13 front discs (and lovely stock 120Y rear drums lol) and definitely brakes alot harder than it accelerates! I marked the tyres to see what would happen and the only tyre that moved at all was the left rear. The fronts, which I figured would be most likely to move didn't budge one iota. Just the left rear, and it moved quite a bit. And it has bugger all power! Tyres were just fitted the day before. Used lube but a very small amount and only on the base of the outer bead

The only issue Mercedes had when Vettel beat them in Malaysia was not being fast enough in those conditions on that track. Same in Bahrain. Kimi had the most ever fastest laps in a single race since Michael Schumacher. Something the dominant Mercs did not do last year. He was faster on the medium tyre than either Mercedes on the Softs all through that stint, and absolutely demolished their lead in the final stint when the tyres were reversed. The Mercedes only developed the brake problem in the last couple of laps. It does not account for the pace advantage Kimi showed in the Ferrari. He'd have beaten Nico without the brake problem I reckon. And the Mercs would not have had the brake problem if they weren't pushed so hard to the end by the Ferrari's sheer pace. Toto Wolff has come out and said that their brake problems were caused by the setup changes they made to try and counter Ferrari's long run pace. Mercedes made changes to try and improve their tyre usage, and some of those changes made brake cooling marginal. It's totally down the Ferrari's performance and the pressure they are putting on Mercedes. Not an unlucky mechanical issue Mercedes suffered out of the blue.

Ferrari pitted Kimi a couple of laps too late by the looks of it. Lost heaps of time on those last couple of laps of that stint and looked like another lap or two might really have upset the Merc party with Lewis unable to defend with braking issues... Good race too. It's nice to see a team close to Mercedes performance and who aren't afraid to lead on strategy calls to try and beat them or keep pressure on. That was totally missing from Williams last year when they were close enough in races to challenge.

Hamilton definitely sooks more than Rosberg over the course of a season. And when the team tells you to stop being a dick and speed up, you know there's something to it... He was definitely going slower than was necessary to make the tyres last the stint. You don't normally see people going 1-1.5sec a lap faster in their last couple of laps of a tyre stint - that shows just how easy he was taking it to back Rosberg into Vettel to ensure he had the fresher tyres at the end.

Let's not forget RBR also lost their 2 lead aerodynamicists at the end of 2013 to Honduh McLaren. Last years Red Bull would have basically been designed by him and was good apart from the engine, but not this year's... And coincidentally, by all accounts this year's McLaren is pretty good in the corners... yeah that's one of the things that really shits me about pay TV. If I'm paying for TV in the first place, it should damn well be HD! Not an extra $120 a year on top!

I used 32-33psi hot in mine. C5 compound 275 on a 9.5" wheel. 1530kg Soarer. Good even wear pattern.

bugger - I might have to bite the bullet and get Fox then. The highlights package was bad enough, but those commentators tip it over the edge...

If a team that were nowhere last year is now passing the Mercedes works cars up the straights, I think the others just need to lift their game. Clearly, it is possible to develop a winning engine, even if you had one of the slowest engines last year... Williams have just been stagnant by the looks of it, and if you do that you go backwards. The other big players have actually gone backwards witht htier development. Clearly RedBull has bigger issues than just the engine when the budget STR's with rookie drivers are giving the big team a touch up on the track with the same donk! Renault were right. Great to see Ferrari taking the fight to Mercedes! And also great to hear Hamilton sooking on the radio again hehe I might fkn have to get Fox.. Those commentators were hopeless though - are they Fox or Sky? What happened to Brundle? Coulthard is a hopeless commentator by comparison. But he's miles better than the other joker. No technical insights. No discussion of strategy that might be unfolding. Maybe the highlights package missed some of that. but it seemed they were simply describing what they see on the screens in front of them. And not very well most of the time either. They clearly don't know how the stewards judge incidents.