Superlap 2010 Ramblings

[Roy]

Did the tuff little MR2 in the build section of SAU make an appearance?

[FineLine]

Did the tuff little MR2 in the build section of SAU make an appearance?

yeah, was as slow as xmas.

[R32 Stuart]

Congrats to all that ran superlap and who came along and supported - Didn't get to chat to many.

We were happy with our time 1.40.3890, new PB for us - know next time to remove a bit more trim etc, just for that bit extra. Like to thank Bill from Gordon Leven Tyres and Mark Berry for some tyres for the last 2 runs - sorry I didn't go any faster!

Anyways, we headed to Kempsey (Mt Cooperbung) to do State Hillclimb Saturday arve - first time there 3rd run Sunday broke the fastest tintop record by 3/4sec ending up with a time 27.23 on a pretty average track.

Cheers and thanks again.

[gtstcruiser67]

I managed a shot at the underside of the Cyber EVO on the Saturday night.

Basically the diffuser starts at the drivers feet then runs all the way to the rear of the car.

ITs all rose jointed but I dont know if the linkage system has been upgraded as I dont know what they had orginally.

The owner did say the car is 8yrs old with a dry weight of 1120kg if I remember right. It is 150mm from the underside of the car with 100mm+ of underbody work.

Its looks almost basic in comparisonto the Sierra Sierra EVO but cleary a well developed car.

[TheTunersGroup]

There was a bunch of us at turn 12 talking about the r34's bad luck especially given all it's testing days and other events where it seems to have had zero engine issues.

What can be done though to close the gap to the jap teams for the next superlap?

In addition to the points made by Marlin about potential improvements for Mark's R34 ...

The Aeromotions rear wing on Mark's R34 was run in static mode on Saturday, without computer control of the wing angle.

If you look carefully at the photo above of the rear of the car taken on Saturday, you can see that the actuator rods were replaced with solid adjusters, and there are no cables running down the uprights to the wing angle actuators like are there when the wing is run in active mode.

With the active control of the rear wing angle enabled, there is quite a bit of potential there for lower drag on the straights, full downforce under brakes, and customised tuning of the wing angles in high speed and low speed corners. We can't wait to test this further on Mark's car.

The lap time improvements with active wing control are well documented by the many teams who have posted up their results.

The data from Aeromotion's testing of their wing in active mode and static mode is:

Back to back testing at Thunderhiill Raceway on an E36 BMW produced the following lap time results:

- Without Aeromotions Wing: 2 minutes 10.1 seconds

- With Aeromotions Static Wing: 2 minutes 9.2 seconds

- With Aeromotions Dynamic Wing: 2 Minutes 8.4 seconds

- With Aeromotions Dynamic Wing With Centre Fence: 2 minutes 7.7 seconds.

So on that data, running the Aeromotions Wing in active mode improved the lap time set with the Aeromotions Static Wing by 0.8 second and adding the centre fence to the active wing improved the lap time set with the Aeromotions Static Wing by 1.5 seconds.

In terms of Eastern Creek, as mentioned here, Duncan Forrest recently set a new Class 4D lap record at Eastern Creek running an Aeromotions R2 Wing.

Duncan destroyed the old lap record by a massive 1.323 seconds, posting a time of 1 min 41.087 seconds. The old lap record had stood since 2005.

So we are very excited to do further testing with active control of the Aeromotions wing on Mark's R34.

It must be said the 34 could have gone quicker if we hadn't effectively lost two full days (Thursday and Friday) due to the engine issue. No excuses made or needed though, Mark and the crew did a great job I think.

Absolutely !

It's worth noting I've been told recently from a current F1 aero engineer, that there is simply no one and nowhere in Australia that knows enough about vehicle aero to warrant going much farther down that path. Zoom mag style streamers and smoke don't really cut it.

That's an interesting comment

Via our network of contacts we have access to some of the top aerodynamicists in the world.

The Aeromotions Dynamic Wing was born in the wind tunnel at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), arguably the world's leading engineering research university.

MIT is a participating institution in the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, which is administered by NASA.

The reputation and engineering expertise at MIT is so advanced that a large percentage of research carried out at MIT is funded by NASA, the US Department of Defence, the US Department of Energy, and the US National Science Foundation.

There is more info about MIT research here ... http://web.mit.edu/facts/research.html

The great thing these days is that data can be collected locally then sent to cutting edge experts overseas who can analyse the data etc ... experts who are just a phone call or email away

In addition ...

MEET OUR SUPERCOMPUTER CLUSTER

A few key people know about this already, but as the question has been asked of "What can be done though to close the gap to the jap teams for the next superlap?", this may be very helpful ...

The Tuners Group recently took delivery of our own supercomputer cluster, consisting of a number of Apple xServes, which are housed in a 45U server rack that is 2.2 metres high. Housed at a local datacenter in Sydney with reinforced concrete floors, huge cooling system etc, with secure remote access to it from our office, it will potentially be very useful in further development of Mark's R34.

The xServes are clustered together into a supercomputer cluster with optic fibre networking connecting each node of the cluster to create a virtual wind tunnel setup and for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis.

Here is a photo of one of NASA's xServe clusters ...

http://bp.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/rio_g5_install1.jpg

We can expand our cluster as required by adding additional xServe nodes to the cluster. I have already spoken to Mark Berry about potentially using our supercomputer cluster to help develop Mark's R34.

The Tuners Group have also recently been speccing a scale wind tunnel and are talking to various suppliers this week about the high speed fans etc that we need to build it.

USING CFD AND VIRTUAL WIND TUNNELS FOR AERO DEVELOPMENT

As mentioned in a recent article in Racecar Engineering, virtual wind tunnels / CFD applications have become so advanced in the last few years that now it is a very real possibility to develop aero virtually without using a physical real world wind tunnel.

An article about the Virgin VR-01 F1 car at http://www.racecar-engineering.com/article...rgin-vr-01.html reads ...

"All the design work on the VR-01 will be carried out by Nick Wirth's team, who remarkably are not intending to do any wind tunnel work whatsoever. The aerodynamic design will all be done using CFD. Whilst this is unique in Formula 1 Wirth did exactly that when developing the Acura ARX-02 which won the American Le Mans Series in 2009. Thus The VR-01 is the first of a new breed of race car designed entirely in the digital domain using CFD."

AUSTRALIAN INNOVATION IN GENERAL

While we don't claim in any way to be at the level of F1 aerodynamicists, as many people in Australia like Mark Berry have proven, Australians are amongst the most innovative people in the world, and there is no lack of intelligent people in Australia.

You only have to look at the results and innovation that Ben Lexcen achieved in the America's Cup with Australia II to see that when a group of innovative Australians put their minds to something, Australians can indeed take on the best in the world.

Combine that spirit of Australian innovation with such an exciting platform as Mark's R34, Mark's team, associated engineers and aero experts, and development in aero and other areas of the car, and you have all the ingredients for some very exciting further development.

- The Tuners Group

Edited May 24, 2010 by TheTunersGroup

[Rowdyr32]

well areo works but it seems most aussie people profer a million horse power before putting a wing on. Thats not in anyway directed towards people at SL more so drawing from my own circuit experiences.

Most don't know suspension basics so aero is out..... More power, big brakes, soft tyres... Can't drive round corners so keep it flat on the straights.

I haven't seen a car at any of the trackdays I've been to that has had any real aero tested/developed on it in vic.

I've been doing heaps of reading atm about areo but don't have the time to fab something up. A mate at his work has just fitted a sprintcar out with load cells on the wing and pyro's? on the suspension to data log the car to optimise everything. Said nobody has done it before in sprintcars. Makes sense.

Awesome World Time Attack is now being talked about on Top Gear Oz!

Yeah. Talked about on the worst scripted show ever. Sorry I just can't stand it!! The hosts are lame.

Russman .. Awesome work. You would be doing pretty much the same time as the 300kw gtr's when we went up there a while ago. Really surpised at that time for what you have. Bang for buck your car would have smashed them all!!!! I'll lend you the wing for next year. It has to do something.

The monash wind tunnel can only be run flat out in certain times of day and months due the the amount of power it draws out of the grid. Pretty sure somebody told me it was around $10k an hour to hire it. Truth I don't know.

Little upset I didn't bum a lift up there now Nearly all of those times have really stepped it up for anyone from now on wanting some cred.

[Chris-06R]

Some more happy snaps featuring thread contributors...

[Russman]

Thanks mate.

Wonder who kicked that dust up? haha

My slightly wide exit of turn 1

[Chris-06R]

Thanks mate.

Wonder who kicked that dust up? haha

My slightly wide exit of turn 1

Haha, yeah, I was going to mention that. Note the dirt on your rear tyre/guard lol

[SRS13]

If they hold another event like this, do you think it will attract the big teams to come back or other big teams to come along?

Would they possibly hold it overseas to get more o/s interest?

That blue 180 is a very well developed car. It sticks to the road amazingly well. Have heard the owner has been developing it for years.

BUT I think he has us all fooled. Did anyone see the engine bay? It had bloody glitter paint on the plenum and rocker cover - he's a ricer

[TheTunersGroup]

ahhh well the national and some of the state sports sedans guys would use it, and so would the Formula SAE, and so would holden and ford. And together that would book it out for about 1 month and then it would go broke

Right now I understand the only tunnel here is the half size one at Monash.

Hi Duncan,

I spoke to a guy the other who said that he used to work at a company that made roof tiles, and that they had a huge wind tunnel in Sydney where they could build a section of roof in a big tunnel and then test the effects of wind and rain on the roof structure.

Unfortunately he told me that it was dismantled a while ago

- The Tuners Group

[giant]

hey guys

what a cool event that was!!

from the experience we had in japan, superlap 2010 was better than that and best of all it was in our back yard! the feedback from the overseas drivers and crew also backed this up.

i want to thank the guys that helped us out with everything at the event and pre event as we couldnt have been there without you.

It was fantastic to see the front cars we have been raving about for three years come up with the goods and produce some astounding times! simply amazing stuff

so happy mark managed to get to the goal time we set of a 1.34 sec, we also know some of the things we need to do but we need a planned approach and also the the next steps are very costly , so we will have to see how things go .

also so glad to see the 4wd issues behind us!!!

and r32 was just an absolute ball to drive, great to be back in it!

cheers russ

[Roy]

Jesus, looks like someone is going quick! Those Teins are the by of the century, the car looks pretty settled and the times show they must be working ok...even with the Jap springs still in them

So no pics of Russ Sr in the GTR. I am told it has grown a big wang!

[DJRIFT]

First line of a Google search

No Google in Tassie yet or ya sister using it?

http://www.advanwheels.com.au/racing/car.aspx?id=27

every time i try to seach for somthing cool it just come up with a pic of Benny Woo...... must get that fixed.

thanks thats the kinda thing i was after.

oh and did anyone notice the coolest thing about glennies EMO..... it has r34 GTR wheels.

[Simonster]

Had a bit of a chat to him. Like Noel said it was a 220,000 km stock SR with cams and a Tomei arms turbo and was pushing around 250rwkw. It is quite stripped out and weighs in at 1080kg. suspension i beleive is usual bolt on stuff but i didnt get into detail with that because his group got called up and he had to run!

That's all correct, except the suspension isn't just bolt on stuff, its decent stuff that's not made in the usual places.

Exceptional effort from Wayne

[NZM.031]

Well don't ask the SAU Members that were sitting on the turn 2 hill to assist with anything aero, we had enough trouble just setting up the tent.....

ZOMG!!!! hahahaha... thats me... oh wow... im in a photo.... ive never been in a photo before... woooo i feel so priviliged... even if it is just my back in my red t shirt... im still the closest one to the camera, which means the photo is of me... oh goodie.

p.s. i did nothing in the helping or the hindering of the tent putter-upper-ing... i merely stood there and looked like i was helping... much to the suprise of everyone around me who had no idea who i was or what i was doing... mwhahaha... i love being unknown.. its like being a super hero... oh wait... dammit..

wheres my damn coffee...

[MRSAMO]

Thanks mate.

Wonder who kicked that dust up? haha

My slightly wide exit of turn 1

Russman you make us Victorians proud

[giant]

By the way lofty awsome job mate! And good to finally get to meet you properly

[Angus Smart]

thanks thats the kinda thing i was after.

oh and did anyone notice the coolest thing about glennies EMO..... it has r34 GTR wheels.

I was going to mention that before, pretty good since all who are infront of him have super wide tyres and hes still on a 9.5 inch rim..

cant wait to see what Paul does to it next year..

[BOZ22N]

Congrats to all that ran superlap and who came along and supported - Didn't get to chat to many.

We were happy with our time 1.40.3890, new PB for us - know next time to remove a bit more trim etc, just for that bit extra. Like to thank Bill from Gordon Leven Tyres and Mark Berry for some tyres for the last 2 runs - sorry I didn't go any faster!

Anyways, we headed to Kempsey (Mt Cooperbung) to do State Hillclimb Saturday arve - first time there 3rd run Sunday broke the fastest tintop record by 3/4sec ending up with a time 27.23 on a pretty average track.

Cheers and thanks again.

Good work Stuart, shame i didn't see you in the pits and get to see the R33, now you have been in the set a little while how does it compare to the R32? I was following you north up the F3 on my way home and was wondering where you where going. BTW the new car looks good, i love the wheels.