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.

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.

In the US, racing in circles (Ovals) is far more popular than racing a simulated road environment.   So much so, that amateur road racing is free to watch.Why is this so?  I ran across a good answer to this in one of the Auto Racing Forums.

Small Local Circle tracks can be found in most states in the US. The tracks are easily lit for night time racing, and there is generally not bad seat in the house.  Simple rules and quick, easy, fun Friday night events for the whole family.  This is what makes it attractive.

Road Racing tracks are harder to find and are generally in remote locations.  Very rarely is the track set up for spectators to easily watch the action.  Most tracks do not have lights so night racing is not an option.  This leaves the racing to about middle of the day on a Saturday or Sunday.  While this should be a good time, most spectators can not commit an hour drive to the track, and hour or two of watching the race and an hour drive home in the middle of their busy Saturday.

If a spectator were to come to the track to see what it is all about there is very little chance that they would come back.  On track the spectator would see a dizzying array of cars, each running their own class and own rules.  The spectator would only see one car take the checkered, but there could be 5 or more different winners.  With all that is going the Spectator can not get involved in the story and struggles that is going on.  This makes for less than perfect entertainment.

Many non-race fans that I talk to agree that Road Racing is more interesting that driving in circles, but can’t find a reason to watch or don’t understand what is going on.  If we could manage someway to have a fun, relaxing, simple race that people can take their kids to after work, grass roots road racing may have a chance.

Many race fans know of the big races on TV, some even know of the smaller dirt track or circle track races that can be found in their state, but there is some great racing that you may never know goes on. I am headed to one of these races this weekend.

What is going on?
This weekend is NASA Northeast’s (Part of NASA Pro Racing ) racing and driver school event at Pocono Raceway

The Track
Pocono, The same place used by NASCAR, but they will only be using part of the oval. Many NSACAR fans don’t realize it but by using the center of the raceway Pocono can become 3 race tracks. This weekend they will combine part of oval with a section from the infield to make a form an outstanding road race course.

Who is racing and when?
During Saturday and Sunday Practice starts slightly before 11am. By the time you’re ready to bite in to the burger at noon; it is qualifying time. Around 1:30 is when the action is really going to happen and it is going to be a lot of action.

Each day there are 2 races, but within each race there are up to 14 smaller races going on.
One race will have classes SU, GTS5, GTS4, GTS3, HC1, ST1, ST2, American Iron, PTA, PTB, and FCC
The other race will have 944 Cup, HC2, HC3, HC4, HC5, GTS2, GTS1, Spec Miata, Spec Miata 2, Spec E30, PTC, PTD, PTE classes

How to see a race for free?
Most people do not know about these races unless they are participating in them or are related to the people participating in them. NASA is not really looking for spectators for these races so they don’t charge to see them. Many of the tracks are not expecting that many spectators and do not feel that is worth the cost of hiring someone to sell and collect tickets so entrance is normally free. Even better is that you can easily go in to the pits and talk to these guys, maybe you can even sign up for the next driving school.