Beer Baron

I actually hate apple stuff. well maybe hate is too strong a word but I've never really been a fan. I did get an iphone 3g when it came out and then upgraded to the 3gs when it came out (it's what the 3g should have been originally). I just bought the iphone as I thought at the time they were the best phone around with good gps, good web browser (albiet without flash), good email app, and of course lots of good apps. but yeah the ipad is basically a big iphone but people say that like it's a bad thing. there's nothing wrong with it being a big iphone. it's easy to use and whilst not the most powerful device out there as a basic e-reader, email and web browser and app running tablet it's pretty cool. so come on, hit me with the good apps....

guilty. to be honest I haven't followed the lead up to the ipad release at all. but the day after release I was at a store with the gf, had a little play with one and they had one left in stock so we impulse bought one. first impression is that it's a pretty basic piece of gear but it does offer pretty good stuff for the money. I was about to buy a kindle ebook reader but since the ipad has a kindle app and ibook app and a borders app it's a much more versatile ebook reader in that respect. of course there are lots of awesome apps too and having N wifi means it gets good net speed on the couch with my N router at home. so who else has one and what are your top apps?

yes but not being a native english speaker is the problem. it's not your japanese they are interested in. they will always choose a native english speaker over you which unfortunately something you can't ever change.

dude, it's missing the stereo.....

lol. too funny. sadly probably not far off the mark either. exactly. my hope now is that mark can hang on this year at RBR and take a WDC and negotiate a good deal for next year with another team. ferrari would be good. they are down at the moment but sure to bounce back sooner or later. mark has given a lot to RBR and was with them when they were shithouse and helped develop the success they enjoy now. he has surely had a big part in bringing the little turd that rear ended him in japan along too. I think the real problem is this. RBR gave their drivers a coded message which was "switch places at the front, we want vettel to take the win" dressed up as "vettel, you have one more lap of optimum engine mapping need to use it. mark: please turn your engine down we need to conserve fuel... hint hint" understandably mark probably felt that was a bit shit since so far this season he's had more wins and more poles than his team mate and at that point was leading the championship and on equal points with vettel. so he quite reasonably thinks why should the team conspire to put mark behind vettel? I mean mark took the bloody pole in qualy (despite vettel dicking around with their order), mark held off hamilton when the maclaren was really threatening so why should he even be worried about his team mate passing him. so like I say RBR are blaming webber not because he was at fault in the crash (he clearly wasn't) they are blaming him because they issued team orders (supposedly banned in F1) and mark refused to follow them. that's why vettel made the "WTF" gesture as he was expecting webber to not only leave him a gap but probably to move right out of his way and lift off the throttle too. this is why they are dirty, mark got the 'move over mate' call and refused to take it instead deciding if vettel was going to pass he'd have to do it properly (which of course vettel couldn't).

I dunno who this mystery 'mate' is but I bet he's good looking as hell and hung like a donkey.

so very angry. watching the race nearly all the overtaking moves were done at that spot of the track with the overtaking car going down the right hand side of the track (ie outside for the left hander then claiming the inside for the right hander immediately after it). if you watched hamilton following webber whenever he was close he would dart to the left and get absolutely no where as the track was dirty there and also quite bumpy in the braking zone. the best line was the right hand line where mark was. vettel is so used to pulling cheeky moves and having webber be the one to finally call it off for the sake of the team and every time he does vettel stabs him in the back. I think he's sick of being a doormat for a punk who may be younger but is arguably no more talented than mark. mark did 100% the right thing. vettel is a little twat who is never happy unless he's the centre of attention or winning. he cannot stand webber beating him and his attitude is basically let me through or we crash... I don't know what is more disappointing. vettels causing the incident or the behaviour of the RBR team afterwards? I felt sick watching all the guys on the pit wall commiserating with vettel like he was hard done by. they should have been berating him and he should have been on his knees apologising to the team and to mark for taking a guaranteed 1/2 finish and turning it into a single 3rd plate with their closest rivals getting 1/2. they clearly seem to think webber should roll over a be a number 2 driver like DC at maclaren or anyone at ferrari in the schumacher days. why? webber is easily vettel's equal. and I think mentally tougher and physically fitter too. how about actually practising what they keep preaching and actually treating their drivers equally. I was hoping webber would cut sick in the conference but I was very proud to see how professionally he handed it. even when given very leading questions he managed to avoid really saying anything bad about what happened and stayed very calm. true professional. all that's left is for webber to take the 2010 WDC and maybe give vettel a good kicking on and off the track.

yeah all the pro guys I spoke to would have liked more sessions available to them. if the cars are running they will have them on the track. I promise any time a pro car missed a session it was due to problems, not just waiting it out or sandbagging etc. with the big gap on saturday from session 2 to session 3 it made it hard to get the car really dialled in for that last gasp attempt. 1 more session would have been nice. it's a pretty minor criticism though and one that's easily fixed if need be. apart from that the event was awesome.

yeah. I do think we need more time for pro class cars though. they are what the crowd want to see and having just 3 short session on the saturday means really only 3 hot laps per car. if you fark one then you are really under the gun. you need a bit more running to fine tune things etc. here is why the cyber car is so fast..... one day I'd love to have a pic like that with berry's 34 in it....

for those wondering how cyber evo and the like are so fast like a few guys have mentioned it's mainly in the aero. they have beautiful voltex made aero which gives them masses of downforce which gives that car amazing corner speed. I made some good friends in the cyber team and they were very open with info. amazingly their car is a fair whack slower in terminal speed than mark's R34 down the straight but has much higher apex speed at turn 1. comparing the two cars it's easy to see where the time is. the weight difference is not huge, though the 34 is heavier. the 34 has more power but the evo has some very trick aero and of course has been developed over many years. they are the two areas. aero and development time. the 34 is still a very new car and really only ironing out teething problems up to this point. from now the real development can begin! the evo also has much wider track than the 34 (not for long though!!!). don't worry though Russ and I have already talked about options for serious aero development for the 34. like he said though it's super costly but at this point everything is! I am still shocked by how fast the Cyber car ended up going. 1:30 is crazy fast at eastern creek. a big credit to their team.

bit of a late post from me I've been out of action for a week. firstly, well done to Ian and the guys. great event and like Russ said every bit as good as the Hyper Rev events in Japan. maybe even better? A huge thankyou to all the international guys that came. it's a huge effort for the guys from the states and from japan to come and compete in a foreign country and they did themselves proud. Congrats to Cyber Evo, Sierra Sierra and Tomei/Cusco on grabbing the top 3 outright places. their times were just amazing. Well done to everyone who competed everyone I saw was well behaved and did our country proud. I'm of course very proud of Mark and Russ and all the RGM/Hi Octane/Advan guys. We had so many dramas and spent days getting parts and rebuilding stuff and it was a miricale we got to Saturday with 2 workings cars and even more amazing that both ran Personal best times and we got the target time of 1:34 in the 34. Great work. Russ in the 32 kicked ass too in a car that was using my borrowed suspension, no aero and having just suffered a big crash and engine failure in the weeks leading up to the event. well done mate. a couple of points to clear up: the tomei cusco car is around that, the cyber evo makes a fair whack more. a few small corrections (you are forgiven as you are probably still hungover!). I helped cyber evo with tuning their car on friday night (put the car on the trailer for them and translated between their tuner and the dyno operator). like you said the track is huge! when I was putting it onto mark's black trailer I was shocked at how much wider it is than either the 32 or the 34. it took us about 6 goes to get it on and there was half a bees dick each side... the car make 475hp at all 4 wheels on 2 bar boost (not 1.2) and they usually run anything up to 2.7 bar on HKS Drag Fuel (they were running elf which was limiting how much boost they could run). on saturday they wound it up to 2.4 bar. I've no idea what it makes at 2.4bar but I'd say at least 550hp at all 4. they said on the dynapack hub dyno they use in japan it makes "over 600ps" at all 4 hubs at 2.7bar boost. the downforce thing is pretty right. talking to their engineer (akaike) he told me that at Fuji Speedway the car hits 290km/h. Voltex (who make the aero) have measured the downforce and at 290km/h it produces more downforce than the cars weight (weight is 1140kg) over 1200kg of downforce so like he said you could drive it upside down if you wanted. pretty cool. as above I'm not sure where you got that info from. I was there when the car was tuned and run on the dyno and spoke to the tuner and engineer of the Cyber Evo team and it was making over 115hp less than usual at that point but no one was suggesting it was due to the head. they seemed to think that for the boost it was running the power was about on par with before. obviously it was way down on usual power mainly due to the fuel type and the boost level they ran. 100% agree with that. My main criticism of the event was not enough on track time for pro-class. the thing is people come to see the pro cars run and they invest the most money to be there they deserve more track time. especially since the nature of the cars and the tyres mean they can only do 1 or 2 hot laps per 15min session. I would have liked to see the drift time cut way down and have at least 1 or 2 more pro class sessions on the saturday. maybe 1 more session and 1 'shoot-out'. russ has a good handle on the brakes now and a few tips learnt on trying to eliminate the pad knock off problems that GTRs with big brakes are notorious for. and yeah the PPG is gone, the 32 now has sequential hollinger same as the 34. and yes you are right, the Cyber Evo runs standard mitsubishi EVO brembo calipers! pretty amazing. it also runs a standard radiator and it has a H pattern PPG box... not so much pressures, more on how to manage the 'grip window' that the super soft tyres offer and making the most of it to get that quick lap.

nothing new from these gentleman. they pull this kind of stuff all the time. they love nothing more than constantly moving goalposts. all we can do is deal with it or turn to mushroom farming instead.

fair enough he made mistakes, but it's precisely because of poor car performance that drivers get tempted to make the silly moves or that they get frustration. on the whole webber has coped pretty well with sub-par cars and has at times been able to drive them far beyond their potential. evidence of that is that having now had some time in a car that IS performing well those silly mistakes just don't appear any more. I don't think you can say a "good driver" wouldn't have made those mistakes as webber is most definitely a good driver. he's finally putting vettel to the sword who people seem to regard as the second coming. it's a bit harsh to put the bloke down because he qualified the best and then won the race without having to pass people. and for that matter no one else rose from 2nd/3rd/4th to jump up and take the win either. his win last year where he copped a drive through and still won the race was pretty special. yeah I think it shows that mark has big involvement in the car development and direction and lots of feedback in the car set-up. like you say vettel has struggled before until getting the gun set-up info from webber. maybe webber has learnt his lesson and is keeping some of his sweeter set-up tips to himself now and vettel is struggling for that last bit of pace without them? dunno but webber has always been good at setting up a car to it's potential and seems to do well in getting the engineers and mechanics behind him. he spends lots of time at the factory etc and is always first to thank the guys who build and set-up the car for any success he has.

yep, Vspec and Vspec II have the active diff. only the non-vspec R34 GTR diff is suitable for this kit. and just confirming of course it's not suitable for any GTST diffs, they are all viscous or some models have the active diff same as the Vspec GTRs do. 33 GTR Vspec is active diff too. basically any of the plain jane mechanical 2 way GTR diffs are suitable, 32/33/34. anything else is not. yeah the pro circuit link nismo kits are quite good (albeit a bit mild). that's the same thing we do to get circuit spec alignment. shorten the castor rod (obviously for circuit we usually got a bit further than those arms), lengthen the lower control arm a little which helps with camber, shorten the upper arms for the same reason. they also provide that inner upper control arm mount which moves the angle of the upper control arm so it's not getting twisted so much as it does when you are running more castor. from memory it also mounts a little higher too to help correct geometry for lowered cars. unfortunately you can't get that re-designed mount on it's own you have to buy the kit with the mount, castor rod and lower control arm which sucks if you already have adjustable castor rods and lower arms. oh, and you're welcome! (^_^) always happy to help a fellow traveller. it's what we do here. it's what this forum is for. we share a lot of knowledge and ideas here and you've certainly shared plenty with the development of your own car.

drag racing is a tougher one. for some reason DOTARS don't see drag racing as motorsport. they pretty much consider tarmac rally and some national level circuit racing as acceptable motorsport. It certainly can be done though. but again, it's not the end of the world to import a 32 GTR and comply it. all the other costs (freight, broker, taxes, duties) are all the same regardles of whether it's a race import or a regular road use import. so the only cost saving in bringing it in as race use is compliance cost. once complied of course you can choose not to register it and just keep it as your race car, but the good thing is down the road if you decide to sell it or to drive it on the road it's a simple matter of just getting it registered. if it's race only import that option is forever closed. in short, you can turn a complied car into a race car (and back again) but you can never turn a race/rally imported car into a complied (road) car.

great pics dom. good to see you enjoying the R35.

strictly speaking yes you can import a race only vehicle and register it as a rally car and under that registration it can be driven to and from workshops and to and from events (be them circuit events or tarmac rally events like targa tasmania). if you think however you are getting a cheap road car and plan to use it as you please then think again, the rules are very strict on how you can and cannot use such a car. also to import one you will need a cams NR or NC (national rally or national circuit) licence, some competition history and a clear plan of competition for the car you aim to import. to be honest given that R32 GTRs are quite cheap to comply and the only cost difference between importing a race/rally car and a road car is compliance and rego I would just comply and register it. it will do wonders for the re-sale value of the car, and then you can drive it on the road whenever you please. to consider buying a race only vehicle you'd want to be pretty serious about your motorsport as it's a lot of money for a car you can really only drive on the circuit or in events and you will NEVER be able to fully register the car as with a race/rally import approval it will never be able to be complied and no you cannot change than once the car is here.

yeah I think there is no question schumacher did 100% the right thing. the safety car was IN and racing resumes once you hit that lane as per the rules. he passed alonso just after they went over the line therefore the move was 100% made under 'race conditions' and in that context completely legal. at no point did race control state "we are brining the safety car in at the end of the final lap so mark can hoon over the line but in actual fact this will be considered a safety car finish even though it clearly isn't so please, no body pass anybody".... had they explained that situation things would have been different but as a driver when you see you are on lap 78/78, the safety car lights go out, you know the SC pits in before the start finish line and there is a control line after which you are racing you would then be thinking, well we are racing from that line to the start finish line. anything goes in that few hundred meters as per normal race conditions. it's pretty shit actually. MS deserved that 6th place finish, just like dirty sanchez deserved his 7th place.

I thought he said: "what the hell? it's not even half race distance!". edit, we are both right: Hamilton replied: “Am I not even halfway through the race yet? “What the hell! Do you want me to race these guys or look after the car?”

good result mate. should be hard to toss come SL this weekend. 1:40s for such a well mannered and mostly standard road car is very impressive. 35 GTRs are far quicker than they should be. they truly are much more than the sum of their parts (or the sum of their stats). so close to running in the 30s which is just un heard of really for a big fat road car. at this pace it might be worth thinking about a roll cage. I know the 35 is a very safe car but the corner speeds it's capable of now and the straight line speed is just scary fast for a car without cage.

glad to hear it. much better than sitting in your hotel room with only me on the phone to keep you entertained! agree with everything else too. there has definitely been a bit of an attitude shift in mark and with recent results in mind it's not hurting his performance that's for sure. on current form red bull would be nuts to let him go. and I can see why ferrari might want him as a team mate for dirty sanchez.

that is f**king bullshit that schumacher got a penalty. according to the rules that was 100% legit. he passed an out of control dirty sanchez after the saftey car control line. very cheeky but 100% legal. damon hill you old bitter f**ker. get over it. yes schuey is a dirty bastard and he shafted you nicely many times, but I don't remember old damon being completely blameless either.... get over it. he did nothing wrong. yeah I've always thought seb was a little tool. I still hate him for taking out webber under safety car in japan. webbr might forgive but I don't. that was going to be webbers first win for sure. and vettel "f**ked it up". anyway, great, great drive by webber. do we now dare to dream of an aussie WDC? it's a long way off but it seems possible. god I wish koob had gotten a decent start and kept vettel in P3. cause it would be so much nicer if webber was clear at the top of the charts instead of sharing the points lead wit vettel. damn you koob and your wheelspinning renault.

I know!! I was so pleased baird commented on them. they were fkcing shocking. me too. I was shitting my pants for pretty much the whole thing. I couldn't believe it when there was a crash meters in front of mark 3 laps from the end! He was just unstoppable today. his usual bad luck would have seen those 2 cars completely block his path and cause him to stall it and then see seb fly past somehow. but not on this day.

ah, I got on him on Saturday morning before qualy and he was paying 5:1 at the TAB. thanks TAB, my faith in the web-meister has been justly rewarded. I learnt my lesson after backing him last race at 2:1 I thought bugger it, this time I'll get on him before he qualifies it. I mean it doesn't take a genius to know he's good at monaco, he stuck that crappy old JAG on the front row for crying out loud. there was no way he would be anywhere other than pole in the RBR. So I figured if I'm going to bet on him anyway may as well get in early and get some good odds. after qualifying he was 1.65:1. lol.

yeah they are massive compared to standard turbos. I can't really think of any aftermarket turbo that has the same response as standard simply because they are all bigger and capable of more power. BB cores do bugger all. if you had 2 turbos of exactly the same compressor AR, same size and same wheel size and wheel trims and one was BB and one plain bearing you would struggle to pick any response difference between them. when running the plain bearing is running on a thin film of oil and they actually spin very freely with good oil flow. the key to response is in the size/trim of the turbo. -5s are what 350hp each? that's 700hp worth of airflow, of course it's going to be laggy!