Auto Racing & Performance

OK I am addicted to iRacing, but I still dont have the time to do it.  I am just about to end my season and upgrade my license.

I just joined iRacing.  I have only been using it for a few days , so this is just a quick blurb,  more to come after a full month.  I can say it is really unlike any other Sim.  The Track details and Force feedback are amazing.  The point system really does seem to Keep people honest and on good behavior.

The bad:  The cost.  it is pricy,  you are stuck in the beginner cars and tracks unless you want to buy more.
Time:  Becuse you are scared of the point system you want to be good,  you can only be good with practice,  This eats alot of time.  I will not be able to play thing game during the real race season because I wont have the time.

The New York Times Reports Scott Speed will race with Red Bull in the Nascar series full time next year. The team will change the Toyota to No. 82 from No. 84 to accommodate Speed, who has been training for Nascar since his release from Red Bull’s Formula One team in the summer of 2007. Jimmy Elledge will be his crew chief.

Now that the race season is officially over for me, I have plenty of things to do to get ready for next season. This I have decided to try to keep my skills up and learn new tracks with Sim Racing or by using Racing Simulators. I picked up a copy of RACE07 at BestBuy for $9.99 and was using a CH flight yoke and pedals to control it.

I was up and driving a BMW around Bran’s Hatch within a few minutes. It was great, but I know nothing about Bran’s Hatch and learning a track in a SIM is hard for me. I wanted a track I was familiar with, but RACE07 does not feature any US tracks. Enter the modding community. With in Minutes I had Lime Rock Park (from 2007) loaded. This is a track I am familiar with and have driven a real race car on. As soon as I finished my first lap I was hooked. A real set of racing wheels and pedals were in order.

The Logitech G25 Wheel and Pedals are “THE” set to own, but they cost $300 bucks, but a search on eBay landed me an almost new set up for less than $200 delivered. Add to that the game rFactor, and some more US tracks and I have a whole season of racing just waiting in my home office.

My only problem is that many of the Tracks that I want are not available on one game, so multiple games are required. My next step will be to try iRacing.com. This Sim is $20 bucks a month, but is like an entire second virtual racing world, with their own ladder system and you have to buy more cars and track if you want to use them.
Only next year will I be able to tell if my off season sim racing has helped my racing, but I am still having fun.

ABC news reported today that the Heads of the BIG 3 auto makers went to DC to plead for money. All three arrived in separate private jets, a trip in a private jet from Detroit to DC costs about $20,000 dollars. An economy ticket would have been $288. One of the CEO also made over 25 million dollars last year.

Now they are pleading that the Government Bail them out and give them 25 billion dollars. As a CEO you probably deserve a reasonable salary, but if the ship you are leading is about to sink to the bottom of the sea, my tax dollars should not be there to throw you a life line. If the CEOs are not feeling the pain, then my Tax dollars need not be used to heal the wounds.

RallyScott over at RallyBuzz has a great post about WRC superstar Sebastien Loeb testing in an F1 car.

I can’t even imagine the difficulty making a transition to that type of car. For those that don’t know World Rally cars supped up versions of compact street car. They are then driven on closed roads that are made up of dirt, gravel, tarmac or all combined. Car travel down these stages one at a time to see who can set the best time.

F1 cars are like complicated space ships with wheels. They race on smooth tarmac but they race wheel to wheel with other spaceships at the same time.

Loeb is used to driving a car at it’s limit and in time I think he will be able to adapt drive the an F1 car at it limit. He is going to have to reach deep and quickly learn to drive wheel to wheel in his space ship F1 car. Some drivers can drive a great lap on a track by them selves, but it takes a great driver to pt down a great lap thru traffic.

I tend to stay away of political issues, but this time I must speak up.

I understand the desire to help GM and keep all the jobs that they create. To loose GM now would be a huge blow to the economy. That said, GM has been a failing company for quite a long time. We can prop them up now, but we will just be delaying the inevitable.

Serious change is going to be needed for GM to succeed. They are burdened with huge labor unions, huge pensions, many over paid union workers, many poor products, too many factories and more. Either way, as hard as it is to say it, they will need to cut some of the work force. GM does not have the market share it once did, and I think it has failed to realize that.

I don’t understand the big 3’s choice in building the new cars they do. As a car guy I love the fast and hugely powerful cars that they come out with, but they are not practical. GM Saturn line is a good start in the right direction and that is because they are all imported from Europe. Small, efficient, but still fun to drive cars that have a pretty good build quality. The only downside is that they come from Europe and that makes them somewhat expensive.

Remember that filing for bankruptcy protection does not mean the company is going to shutdown and go away. It will hopefully give them a moment to breathe. Going in to bankruptcy protection might actually help the company. It will give it some room to maneuver and shed some of its burdens. GM needs to become a lean, mean, flexible, fighting machine. It needs to build cars people love, cars that are built better than the imports and car that hold their value.

Have you ever thought about getting your car on a race track?  Do you think it is impossible or just too expensive? Well you’re sadly mistaken.  It is quite easy and for a little as $50.The National Auto Sort Association or NASA holds High Performance Driving Events or HPDEs all around the country.  Though they may be had to find in the winter, they are normally easy to find in the summer.  Head on over to nasaproracing.com and look for your region’s event calendar for a date and time near you.  HPDEs are normally and all day affair and run you up to $300, but if you don’t have the time or the money you can sign up for a Hyperdrive.

A hyperdrive is normally $50 and gets you a classroom session and 20 mins on track with an instructor.  On the track you can go as fast as you or your car can handle safely.  I will warn you that your first 20 mins on the track will only feel like 5 mins.  You will want more time and HPDEs will get you an hour on the track.

Here is a Video of one wet lap from this weekend HPDE.

Technorati Profile

Lewis Hamilton has a flare for the dramatic and it is intoxicating.  Hamilton won the F1 world championship by just one point.  If that wasn’t close enough, he only managed to get that one point because of a miraculous pass of Toyota’s Timo Glock in the last seconds of the race. In a coincidence, Hamilton lost last year’s world championship by just one point.

Lewis Hamilton is now the highest paid person in sports across the world.  He will bring in a total of 160 million dollars this year.  Tiger woods come in second with about 120 million. Hamilton states that he would race for free and the money is just a bonus on top of doing the hobby that he loves.  Hopefully his boss doesn’t find out.  Only time will tell if there is ever a contract fight for him.  Will he stay with his mentor team at McLaren.

      The athletes themselves along with their fans claim that car racers are the fittest and healthiest on earth. How can this be when the only thing they do is grip the stick and steering wheel?

In a race, the driver must stay composed and focused. There should be a continuous contact with technical team while in control of the race car driving around the track. On top of that, the driver has with him dozen of competitors that with unwise decision, he can collide and lost life with. And who on earth can manage decision-making in split of seconds on a speed of 300 kilometers per hour? Only guys at the peak of their physical and mental stability can do that.

Car racers spend a lot of time in the gym. They know better when it comes to taking care of themselves; physical health including the heart, neck, and diet, and the mental health.

Normal heart rate of a human being is 60 beats per minute, rising to more than 100 depending on the activity he is doing. A car racer’s heartbeat could reach more than 150 per minute during a race, the same of that of runners on field. Mental stress causes the difference. Car racing requires extreme concentration, pumping tremendous amount of adrenalin, same way the physical stress causes the high heartbeat rate.

To be able to deal with such extremities, drivers should indulge to intense cardiovascular workout for up to few hours a day. Doing so helps in weight maintenance as well.

Car racing is one of the sports that greatly demands neck strength. The neck has to support a head with helmet heavier than regular, combined with G-Force during a race: a total of more than 20 kilograms, making it the most important muscle in a driver.

Large elastic bands are used to simulate the demands of high G-Force during training. Drivers also incorporate resistance work into their exercise regime – rowing and weight lifting. But since Formula One cockpits are very small, no racer is allowed to weigh like a lifter.

Like track and field athletes, F1 drivers should carefully regulate their carbohydrate and protein intake. Pasta and bread are what they eat, for carbohydrates.

Before the race and throughout, drivers absorb huge amounts of water. This prevents driver to dehydrate. Heat in F1 cockpit is enough to make someone sweat off few pounds of body weight during course of a race.

Physical health stability alone is not enough for car racers. Mental health as well is very important, too. Teams usually have sports psychologists to make sure that a driver is capable of mind control during a race. They make the driver review track maps, visualize a route and a lap, so that he would feel familiarized as though he has driven the course already.

Breathing technique is a plus factor. Drivers do need to stay calm at crucial moments. He needs not to be distracted by the people around him: medical team, technical staff, and screaming fans and members of the press.