djr81

Would be good to see him have a go. Pedro was nowhere in Japan.

Fair point, but you can't really site fatigue as a factor in the 14 lapper support races, surely? Is it just a case of "Got sideways & ran out of talent?" The Porkers didn't seem to suffer quite so badly.

Actually I have a half serious question. From watching the Konica & even the main game races - half the cars ended up it the wall (Or it appeared to be about that many). Are the V8's a particularly difficult thing to drive on the limit. I understand they (like most cars) need to be set up to be taily to get good lap speed, but even so. I have a suspicion that the dirty secret of the formula is that they are actually not very pleasant cars to drive.

C'mon there was only nine of them on the weekend. Lasting about seventy two hours.

Watching the Porkers across the top of the hill at Bathurst tells you an awful lot about where their c of g is compared with the V8's & then the old Group A cars.

Baron, Can't help much with the sponsorship, but I do know some people who may want some small packages brought back from South America. How is your gag reflex?

I agree 100% with the above. From what I have seen a car used for the occassional track day gets very well looked after. Personally there is no way I head out to track days unless the car is tip top, ie all the brakes/suspension/drivetrain/engine is good. I have seen people try with cars that are less than well prepared & inevitably they go home early with a busted car. They wear items are pretty obvious: Brakes. Suspension bushes. Engine. In other words things that can easily be checked.

HRD hr30 -please don't get upset, no one is trying to decry the technical or racing achievements of Gibson motorsport or is having a go at you. I was simply pointing out the following: That the GIO car was a well funded privateer effort who's major constraint was said to tbe that Dunlop wouldn't give them the very best of their tyres for fear of info leaking across to Yokohama - atleast that was what was said at the time. Mark Gibbs was a good steerer, maybe not at Richo's level, but good all the same. When the word privateer is used people tend to think of a busted arse outfit operating a VL Commodore out of the back of a trailer. Or Gary Wilmington. Or similar. Yep, sorry a typo. The weight as you said was 1260kg. I was just trying to point out that the weight penalty wasn't as bad as the change from 1260kg homologation (Was that current in 91, because I thought it had already been changed by then?) & the 1500kg listed. 1500kg is a lard arse track car, whichever way you look at it. The weight/rev/boost/tyre changes were a parity adjustment. But as ever someone will always whinge when such things are done. A good example of this was the way Allan Moffat used to operate in the old group C days. The point I was trying to make with regard to articles written at the time & those written years later is that people tend to mellow & be a bit more truthful in their old age. Some of Freddos confessions in the Zoom interview make for interesting reading. Alot of people refer to Auto Action as Auto Fiction, me included. But I still buy it every week.

Bob Forbes GIO privateer car was built by Freddie Gibson's team. So it was technically a privateer, but other than running on Dunlops not Yokohamas there wasn't much difference between the cars. The GT-R NEVER made its homologation weight. So the adjustment wasn't from 1185 kg to 1500kg. From memory it was much, much less. The Sierra's had to run weight & rev restrictions as well. In fact all the cars had restrictions placed on them. Larry Perkins had a big dummy spit when they cut his revs down. People only focus on the GT-R but that wasn't the whole story. They didn't lose 1 lb boost by going to higher altitudes at Bathurst. The boost limiter still ran at whatever CAMS (Actually whatever Freddie Gibson) set it at. Have a look at the interview in Zoom magazine & you will get Freddo confessing that the settings on the boost restrictor were not all that they seemed. Besides they always low balled the claimed power outputs in the press. An RB26 full of the very best of parts will put out more than the silly numbers quoted in the press. To get a sense of perspective a stock motor on 1 bar boost on the street will still put out 400hp. I don't have the times handy, but Crompton was closing DJ down by something like 10 seconds a lap. There is a good writeup in the 1992 edition of the Great Race annual. Barring catastrophe, Crompton & his Swedish mate would have won that year had the race continued. Oh and don't believe everything your read in Auto Fiction....

Well how about Frank Williams, or Ron Dennis. Just that the Stone Brothers came to mind because of the race on the weekend.

Yeah, fair point. Maybe that is why I have any amount of respect for the likes of Ross & Jim Stone. Brilliant, but humble. And scrupulously fair.

But doesn't that just cheapen the victory? To the point of making it not worth while?

I don't understand something. How can people want Schumacher to win by punting his opponent off the road? If he wins he wins fair enough & good on him. But by doing that?

What, is he trying to take off or something?

Ahh, finally some truth in journalism.

www.takumasato.com for all your Takuma updates, info & forums. Don't forget he did win the 2001 British F3 championship, with 12 out of a possible 13 wins. So he can drive.

See - kiwi's can fly. The bit that really wigged me out was the footage of the front left tyre on Lowndes car.

Yeah it was pretty dull. Far too many pace cars & too little actual racing. How would you have liked to have been the photographer standing behind the wall that Radisich centre punched?

Lucky they don't put all that on his car. The aerodynamic drag alone would make him slower than his team mate... Reminds me of a driver at Bathurst from 1984. He had an absurdly long & pretentious name. Something Like Prince Leopold von blah blah blah. A German bloke, obviously & driving a Group A 6 series BMW for Frank Gardner in JPS colours. He stuck the thing into the wall on the top of the hill & someone helpfully inscribed (next to the skid & impact marks) Prince von Wanker was here. Nice work.

Dead set, is that his full name?

I guess that would be for the best. I mean, he turned in on Hill at Adelaide. Then he dive bombed up the inside of Villeneuve on the sub continent. So I gues if he simply "forgot" to turn the corner with alonso on the outside that would pretty much complete the trifecta. F1 is a sport, but only on Sunday afternoons. All the rest of the time it is commerce.

A couple of points: 1. What forced me to bin the rotors was not the fine surfaces crazing, but the cracks forming in & propogating from the small return slots that DBA put in their 4000 series rotors. Have a look at the photo up the top post, you can see the large crack in the rear rotor & the smaller one in the fron rotor. 2. The surface crazing can be removed by machining the rotors, but I have found that inspecting them is a cheaper option. The crazing on the rotor surface does not seem to cause crack propogation. I hang shit ont he DBA4000's simply because of these small return slots. I would much rather they not be there as I think they cause problems, ie cracks. They certainly have for me. In terms of caliper design there are a few things to note: Different piston sizes (as used on the Brembo's) allow for better (more uniform) pad wear. Larger pads will reduce the peak temperature as seen by the pad, but will not in itself contribute much to the braking torque over a smaller pad (Assuming a uniform mu value vs temperature, which you can't really assume)

I believe protocol calls for Schumacher to do that particular job himself.

The KCA336 front kit does both, ie adjusts camber about +/- one degree. You cannot fit two front kits as the inner & outer bush sets are different.

The three thermo paint colours change colour at 460, 550 & 630 degrees. So if you are getting fade at less than 460 degrees & can't get above that temp I would suggest there is something fundamentally wrong. Also, running semi slicks doesn't necessarilly work the brakes harder than running roadies on the track.