62 Search Results for "porsche"

• Mark Fox

  • Views: 5
  • Since: 4 hours ago

• Westin Fengler

  • Views: 56
  • Since: 1 year ago

• Sara Black

  • Views: 252
  • Since: 1 year ago

• Magnus Hagström

  • Views: 24
  • Since: 1 year ago

• George Mastrokostas

  • Views: 39
  • Since: 1 year ago

• Lime Rock Park - iRacing Tour Lime Rock Park - iRacing Tour Update - Memorial Day

  • From: Sean Siff
  • Description:

    Greetings Fellow iRacers,

    The iRacing tour spent last weekend at Lime Rock Park, getting to visit with race fans that came out to watch the Grand Am Koni ST and GS races, along with two awesome Historic Grand Prix races.  Historic Grand Prix was awesome to watch, and we got to see a lot of the cars as we were paddocked with our trailer right next to the almost 20 vintage F1 cars from the 1960s to the early 1980s.  iRacing’s own Divina Galica expertly piloted both a rare Brabham and Hesketh to two top 10 finishes… and considering the competition, this was a great achievement.  In case you didn’t know, Divina actually drove an F1 car in the early 1970s.  This is quite an excellent accomplishment, especially in the 1970s.  Watching Duncan Dayton’s John Player Special Lotus 79 got us all pretty excited for the launch of our iRacing version. 

    In support of the event, we hosted a fast lap competition so that some of the fans could try their iRacing skills against a few pro drivers.  Spencer Pumpelly, from the Koni GS Porsche TRG team posted the weekend’s quickest time in the Star Mazda of 47.9 seconds around Lime Rock Park in the Lime Rock Basic setup.  Good friends of ours Adam Burrows and Trevor Hopwood of the ST-classed RSR Camping World Mini Cooper S came by to put in some fast laps as well. 

    I guess news of our tour has traveled well as we were bombarded by fellow iRacing members who came by to check out our trailer and simulators.  I was pleasantly surprised to meet all of you and definitely enjoyed getting to talk to you.  The following members came by to visit us:  Jared Vaughan, Bob Brodeur, Harry White, Charles Stout, John Nelson, Peter Gustafson, Jeffrey M. Strong, Brian Oritz, John Capello and Dan Montanaro.  Thanks for your continued support!

    For all of you members who have not had a chance to see us on the road, you should know that we have had the privilege of working with some excellent iRacing driver coaches along the way.  Elivan Goulart and Duncan Burke both from the Sport Car Drivers Association worked with us this past weekend and helped coach the public through many demos of our software.  Big Thanks!

    As of right now, we are in Milwaukee for the IRL race.  If you are in the area, definitely come by and see us.  Back in the office we have been hard at work in the wake of the NASCAR announcement planning out the rest of the year. 

    In answer to some of your questions, we will be continuing the tour into the summer.  We have not yet finalized any dates after June, but when we do, I will be sure to share them with you through this blog or through the online event calendar.  See you on the road!

    SCHEDULE UPDATE:

    June 4-7:  Watkins Glen NY:  Grand Am 6 Hour

    June 9:  Fenway Park, Boston MA:  Red Sox Tour Stop

    June 12-14:  Watkins Glen NY:  Historic Sports Car Racing

    June 18-21:  Road America, Elkhard Lake, WI:  SCCA June Sprints

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 510

• Living The Life of a Data Dick Living The Life of a Data Dick - Part 5

  • From: Chris Hall
  • Description:

    What a difference a month makes!

    It's been a little while since my last blog post, and it'll be a while for my next one. Over th past couple of months has been going through some financial and political struggles, a result of which has seen the team manager and myself part company with RSS Performance.

    Following our Thruxton, single car entry race, we headed to Donington to test ahead of the next rounds of the carrera cup (see Part 4). The test went well and we were looking set to give Karl Leonard his first race in a Pro Am 1 997. A week before the meeting, the team manager calls me and asks me if the team owe me any money ' I respond with a yes and he advises me to get it as soon as I can - the shit is about to hit the fan. Over the next 3-4 days I'm getting a couple of calls each day saying yes we are going to donington, then a call saying no we're not. By the beginning of the week ahead of the donington rounds, the phone had fallen silent.

    On the thursday (when we normally have arrived at the track) I call my team manager, and he let's me know he has left the team, and I'm pretty much out of it as well (no one else bothered to tell me I'd been laid off). The politics as always seem stupid from afar. The team owner also had a building business that is currently suffering in the economic downturn. Despite the race team making a profit or at worst breaking even, he felt he couldn't be seen to be owning a race team whilst he was having to lay people off in his building business. In the meantime, the owner had also been really bad at PR with the drivers who were paying us to run their cars, hardly saying a word to them, not turning up at the track and fart arsing around with paperwork, so they weren't happy either. 

    Fully aware of the situation, my manager (and also good friend) kept me posted on what was going on (not all the details, just the stuff I needed heads up on), and prior to the split I had told him my loyalty was with him rather than the team. As bad as that sounds that I'm not a team player, I am, but we (manager and I) had given ourselves the nickname of 'Pikey Racing' because of how tight the owner was; and it was always a hassle getting wages (they still owe me £400 and give me loads of excuses). We worked our nuts off to bring RSS up to a respectable level, which was refelected in their eventual donington appearance, using a single easy up gazebo in the paddock instead of putting the full truck awning out; I'm sure Porsche were really happy with that!

    I must admit, it was painful to watch the RSS car out there, as I missed not 'racing'.

    So looking like I'm out of motorsport, my old manager calls me and tells me that there he is getting involved in putting a brand new team together and that I'm onboard :) So a new team called Rees Sport Racing is currently in the inception process. We've designed the livery (we will initially run 997 GT3 and Clio Cup cars) and look set to make a real attack of our first ever race. If all goes to plan, our inaugral event will be the 6 hour britcar race at Spa; we are hoping to put together 2-3 very good drivers; looks like we have one set already.

    The difference to this team is the business model, before we set out on a fully fledged season we are hoping to close a massive sponsorship deal and launch a trackdays/corporate service. The trackdays will be full on packages for novices to pros, with driver leaving the day with data, video, photo's, assessment reports; we'll also have a unique slant to it (can't reveal until we fully launch I'm afraid). We'll run a variety of cars, probably the 2008 Championship Winning Clio Cup car, BMW M3's and maybe an AMG Merc.

    So whilst I'm not actually getting involved in racing now I've parted with RSS, the futur looks very optimistic with the creation of a new team; if we can close the sponsorship talks in our favour then the team will become a serious contender in Carrera Cup and maybe even Super Cup; our ambitions are high, we were even considering an entry into the Supercup at Silverstone at the F1 meeting, but time is tight - we'd rather show up looking like pro's next year and miss it, than show up looking like complete amatuers..

    Catch when we get some cars on track... :)

    ---

    Postscript: A little extra story. During our Donington test, we noticed that Karl was being really hard on his blips and downshifts. My manager had called me and asked me to check the data ahead of us getting to donington for the actual racing. We had some major over-revs, se we planned to brief Karl when we got to the circuit. With all the politics that went on, neither of us were at the race meeting, so never briefed him, and by the end of the weekend, Karl had mangled a gearbox! That's £10K worth of damage, which could have been saved if we'd been there..... 

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 383

• Living The Life of A Data Dick Living The Life of A Data Dick - Part 4

  • From: Chris Hall
  • Description:

    It's been a while since my last blog, and I can't promise this one will be too long and exceiting, but after prompting it was about time I gave out some news. Since my last writing, we've has various races and tests over the past few weeks, with mixed results. We've also had a late driver change, in the form of our team manager, Matt Kelly stepping into the hot seat for the last 2 rounds of the carrera cup.

     

    First off, the racing. Rounds 1 & 2 of the Carrera Cup were from Brands Hatch (Indy). We were scheduled to run 3 cars: (ProAm1)John Quatermaine, (ProAm 1)Graeme Mundy & (ProAm2)Karl Leonard; however, Graeme didn't race. The official line was he had an ear infection, but the real reason was he'd just split with his long term partner and his head wasn't in the game; this was coupled with recent financial worries for the team, so although at the track, GM chose not to race.

     

    This was going to be Karls first competitive outing at Brands in a Porsche (he'd raced a few years back in a punto there), although we had tested there twice in the past few months, with fellow iRacer and Porsche Supercar racer Sean Edwards giving Karl some training and helping setup the car (Sean is a great laugh BTW, and we always talk about online racing when we see each other). For JohnQ, I'll be the first to admit that the transition to Porsches has not been easy for him, though I have recently found out, that he has had keyhole surgery to his shoulder in February, which is having a major effect on how he can handle the car. JQ had collected great results at Brands in his Formula Ford career, so was feeling confident ahaead of our first sessions, but after being a two seconds off the pace, he was carrying the weight of the team on his shoulders (no pun intended). We studied a lot of JQ's data and found his main problem is he just doesn't carry enough speed through the turns - he lacks confidence on where the limit of grip is with the porker and michellin tires. He needs one of 2 things - a session on a skid pan to find out how many lateral G's the car can really handle, or to have a spin in a corner by going too fast, that way I can show him that he has a lot further to go to reach the limit.

     

    Karl had no problems with the BRands circuit - in fact in a car that is 20BHP less than the PROAM1 & Pro cars, he was mixing it up with the big boys during the practice and qualy sessions - fastest in class and fatser than a lot of the Pro Am 1'a. KL has this attitude, even if I'm in a slower car, I'm not good enough unless I'm at the front. This is a double edged sword, as qualy proved.

     

    With 4 minutes of qualifying left, Karl brought his car in (in class pole), got out of the car (unhappy because he wasn't on race pole!), and without saying a word to anyone, wandered off down pit lane. The session ended and as we were about to move the car, we were surronded by race officials: the only person allowed to drive the car to Parc Ferme was Karl, and he'd done a disappearing act. I then went on a wild goose chase (on a golf buggy) around Brands to find our driver (afte director of porsche racing lent me his buggy and had a go at me about our team being unprofessional). I found KL at our awning, and after a few choice words took him back to the car.

     

    With our qualy faux pas out of the way, we headed into race day with a clean slate. He's a very brief summary of what happened -

     

    Race 1: JQ was off the pace, but kept laps clean and consistent. He gained a few places as a result finishing in the top 12

     

    KL was his normal racey self :) Got off to a good start, and was racing it out with the more powerful cars, and beating them! However, this was to be hs downfall, as he had a collision on the entry to paddock hill bend, which ended up bringing out the red flag, and giing karl 3 points on his license and a £300 fine. Thankfully the car wasn't in too much of a mess, a new door, wing and something else was all that needed doing. Becajuse KL caused the red flag, he was dq'd from result (he was leading class)

    Race 2: It was action packed.

     

    JQ - Was trying too hard, which was reflected in incosistent lap times. At one point, the safety car came out, he didn't notice the board and passed 5 cars across the S/F line :D much to the hilarity of the commentators. He ended up finishing a lap down in about 14th spot

     

    KL - Alien to the phrase 'take it easy' Karl was mixing it up with the big boys again. He was running in the top 10 when the safety car came out; at this point, all the drivers seemed to forget the rule change this year to no racing back. Karl was alongside Glynn Geddie in the Apex car as they went throgh Graham Hill Bend, Geddie clipped the kerb, jumped sideways and side slammed Karl. KL rallycrossed it along the grass and miracously kept it straight and got back on track; post race Karl said to me 'I thought that was going to be a big one, I was bracing myself, I didn't think I was going to save it'. After the safety car, he was mixing it up again, but coming out of clearways, got a wheel on the grass and spun - it was a miracle he didn't hit pit wall, and got going again. A few laps later, he collected the class win (shows you the lead he had if he span and recovered) when the red flag came out. The Toy Gillam car got turned around coming onto the front straight and had a big hit with pit wall. I was signalling at the time, I heard the screech, turnd around and got a face full of marbles and gravel - it was a reminder to me, that even with fencing, pit wall is dangerous!

     

    Before we got to our next races at Thruxton, we headed to Donington for a test of out Clio Cup car. I was finally able to get the data systems working on the car, and get valuable info. However, it was only towards the end of the day we actually got data analysis, so was  unable to offer much help to the driver (little time to make changes). Shame really, if I'd had it earlier, we might have saed a clutch - as soon as I looked at his data I saw he was left foot braking and not clutching on down-changes, but this was after we'd had to fit a new one just an hour earlier. Off special note was the weather - it was horrible - cold, wind and rain - it's horrid to work in

     

    THruxton. Got a visit from fellow iRacer Andrew Knight, always great to meet fellow sim-racers (I never forget my roots :) ). In honesty, I can't stand Thruxton. The traack maybe the fastest in the UK, but the guy that owns it is an asshole - it's the only circuit I know that charges people £10 to get into the paddock (and infield) - dam rip off; just profiteering, because the paddock is the worst I've seen - we couldnt even setup a flat patch because the awnig areas are gravel, not even tarmac... I can't say it enough.. assholes. asshole. assholes. I don't care if we never race there again (I'll be back there for the British GT's, but I'll be kicking up a stink when I do)

     

    As a result of our 'unprofessionalism' at Brands, Porsche decided to give us the worst possible location in the paddock - it' seems to be an unwritten rule - do well and get a sweet location, piss them off and they'll put you in a terrible location (example last year - we performed great at Brands, so they gave us a Sweet location at the next race from Oulton). Graeme still didn't have his head in the game, so we were due to run just the one car, John Quatermaines. But JQ had enflamed his key hole surgery recovery on his shoulder, so offered the drive to our team manager Matt Kelly. Matt had never raced a Porker before and only drove one for the first time, when he borrwed a GT3 RS to drive to the circuit. Qualifying was to be his first ever outing. In honesty I was nervous as hell. Matt is a very good friend of mine and to return to racing after 7-8 years at Thruxton, in a car never raced before was like an episode of challenge anneka (you oldies will get that :D )

     

    So qauly was his first test of the car and after 10-12 laps he was 2 seconds off the pace. Now this is where he came into his element and for me made it a great great pleasure to work with and do my job. Matt comes from uscans, MGF's BTCC and WTCC - he's a full on professional driver; so when we call up the date, and go through it, he gives me huge amounts of feedback on what the car is doing. We decide on two corners to work on for the first race.

     

    Race 1: This is Matt' chance to test and learn from others braking points. It's also he time to make the changes to his driving after reading the data. For the first 4 laps he is flying, getting faster and faster, but at the final chicane, rips the splitter off the front of his car; he dives into pits and we fit a new one. after a few more laps, a short shift up to third on the exit of the chicane doesn't execute, the wheels spin up and sends him off towards pit wall. He saves it and gets running again. At the end of the race we take a look at the data and the first thing I spot is he hasn't changed his technique for one of the corners, he explains he has to brake there (we agreed he shouldn't), otherwise the car wouldn't turn, so for race 2 we dialed the ride height up at the rear by 1 turn, to looser things up. It was at this time, I had to make my first ever call on race fuel. With Matt being driver, we had taken responsibilty of management away from him for the weekend - after checking data and then making own calculations I had to make the shout on how much fuel to use (53 litres was the amount we went with) - thankfully it was right; I did learn from it, you need motec data and real data from the mechanics to get an accurate reading on how much is used.

     

    Race 2: Follwing the setup changes, Matt was a lot smoother and setting his fastest laps of the day - although still 6-7 tenths off the pace, you could tell that if he had a little more time in the car he'd be mixing it up at the sharp end. Which reminds me. Tim Harvey had been going through gears and lines with Matt pre-qualy. He told him 6th gear through church, but after reading data it was definately 5th gear; we both pulled Harvey up with an Oi! it's 5th gear, and he just gave a wry smile - a sign if how he knew Matt would be a challenge if in the series regularly (they did race against each other years ago). Matt finished the race in 14th, but when he brought it down pit lane, we looked more like a team celebrating our first win; for everyone in the team it  was a special drive, special to see Matt back in a race car too. It was also Matt's first ever race since his dad died earlier in the year, who had been instrumental through out his career. We're not sure if Matt will race again, depends on what JQ has planned.

     

    Finally we had a test at Donington again. This time with Karl Leonard in our ProAm1 car. He'll be driving this at our next rounds of the Carrera Cup. Also there were a huge range of classif F1 cars, including Damon Hills, Nigel Mansells, The Arrows, Schumachers Benneton - and these were sharing the teack with us! 

     

    Attched I've included some incar footage of KL around Donington. The first is Karl spinning on his first outing in the wet. The second is from the afternoon, when things had dried out and he tussled with a couple of other porsches (Glynn Geddie in white/black 997, Michael Leonard (his Bro) in white/yellow 997). There's also a link to image gallery of some of the great cars running that day.

     

    Until next time graph reading fans :)

     

    The first is our driver going out on his first lap in the rain and... spinning it! 

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjoj1z0Yk7o&feature=channel

    He made up for it later, in the afternoon, we got this great footage of him battling with 2 other porkers (one was his brother) whilst sifting through traffic, including classic F1 cars!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoaD_16Rsj4&feature=channel_page

    Here's an image gallery of the cars out there, including Hills F1 car, Mansells F1 car, the Benneton F1 car

    http://www.xynamic.com/index.php?option=com_joomgallery&func=detail&id=2721&Itemid=27#joomimg

     

     

     

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 356
  • Not yet rated

• Jonathan Franklin

  • Views: 58
  • Since: 1 year ago

• Long Beach - iRacing Tour upda Long Beach - iRacing Tour update

  • From: Sean Siff
  • Description:

    Greetings from the road fellow iRacers!

    I write to you all from old US Route 66/Interstate 40.  Fellow iRacing road warrior, James, and I are on our way to our next event at the beautiful and expansive Virginia International Raceway in Danville VA.  If you are in the area, come out and see us this weekend.  We will be in the Pavilion at VIR, eager to see some great sports car racing including the Volkswagen TDI cup and the Grand Am Rolex and Koni series. 

    Let me bring you up to speed on what an excellent iRacing tour we have had so far. On behalf of our entire staff, it has been really great to meet you all out here on the road.  Let me send a quick hello to all our current members who came out to see our display at the Long Beach Grand Prix Expo:  Adam Kolesar, Barry Blocker, John Burgess, Steve Paradise, Nick Johnston, Darin Henderson, Brent Jacobson, Henry Hancock, Bobby Kelley and Mark Webber.  Again, thank you all for coming out to see us on tour!

    I am not sure if it was because we were in close proximity to Hollywood, but we had a lot of professional drivers come to test drive our simulator.  It was certainly a star-studded weekend.  And guess what?  The pro drivers who try iRacing are figuring out what you all already know… iRacing is a lot of fun AND you can use our software as a training tool to familiarize yourself with the racetracks on our service.  The list of pro drivers to follow is basically a “who’s who” of pro sports car racing today.  Here is who stopped by:  Pro SCCA Speed World Challenge drivers Eric Curran, Brandon Davis, Jason Daskalos and Mike Davis.  American Le Mans Series drivers Scott Sharp, Simon Pagenaud, Butch Leitzinger, and Boris Said.  IRL drivers Justin Wilson, Ed Carpenter and Bryan Herta came by as well.  Also, a lot of Indy Lites drivers came by too, including; Nelson Mason, Stefan Wilson, Sergey Mokshantsev, Martin Plowman, Ali Jackson, James Davison, Sean Guthrie, Gustavo Yacaman, Ana Beatriz, Mario Romancini, Rodrigo Barbosa, Dan Herrington, Richard Phillipe, Jonathan Summerton and Michelle Bumgarner.  Also, Formula Mazda driver Kristy Kester tried her actual suspension set up on our software using the Formula Mazda in our system and came within less than one second of her actual lap times! 

    It was great to have the pro drivers come visit us, but this software was built for us all and we had a great time introducing iRacing to literally hundreds of Long Beach racing enthusiasts who drove with us for the first time! 

    Thank you for your help in making this event another success.  Remember; come see us at VIR starting on Thursday April 23^rd – Sunday April 26^th.   

    Here is our iRacing US Spring Tour 2009 Schedule for the next few weeks:

    April 27th -2 30th: Virginia International Raceway - Skip Barber Racing Series & Performance School

    May 1st - May 3rd:  Richmond International Raceway - NASCAR Sprint Cup & Nationwide Series Racing

    May 14th - May 17th:  Lowes Motor Speedway - NASCAR All-Star Race Weekend

    May 19^th – 20^th: New Hampshire Motor Speedway – Porsche Club of America HPDE

    May 21^st – 25^th: Lime Rock Park – Grand Am Koni Challenge Series & Historic Racing

    May 29^th – 31^st: The Milwaukee Mile – IRL & Indy Lites Racing

    See you on the road!

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 271

• Jonathan Auger

  • Views: 88
  • Since: 1 year ago

• Living The Life of a Data Dick Living The Life of a Data Dick - Part 3.5

  • From: Chris Hall
  • Description:

    A small update (partly due to popular demand).

    Firstly, let's talk about books. Not long ago I bought the ROss Bently book, 'speed secrets'. I thought it was a good read and really helped with my sim-racing. So I showed it to my teeam manager, who susequently pulled major parts of the book to pieces and told me never to bring the book to a race meeting :D Despite my best protest, I couldn't put up much of an argument - but I still believe it's a good book for someone just starting out and looking for racing technique.

    A couple of weeks ago, I ordered Jorge Segers book 'Analysis Techniques for Racecar Data Acquisition' - it's not cheap (including shipping to the UK about £75), but there isn't really anything else out there; Buddy Fey wrote a book in the 80's which is out of print and sells for about £300 a copy!. My new book arrived the day before our testing at Brands Hatch, so had little time to get through. What I have read I am really impressed with and has given me loads of new techyniques and I'm only a 1/4 through. The most interesting aspect I have found and I'm trying to tackle is the reading of torque and horsepower at the wheels using basic telemtry and some bloody clever maths. I'm still getting my head around the formula, but I spoke to a Le Mans engineer about it and he says it should be nearly as good as a rolling road reading (though can't read flywheel). I need some more info before I can test the maths (I need tyre data from michellin), but I'm hoping to start looking at this data from this weekend, at our first races from Brands Hatch. BTW, Jorge helped with simbin and their manual, so you may already recognise his name from GTR.

    

    Which leads me nicely into testing. Friday we took 3 of our cars to an open test at Brands Hatch, running the indy circuit. Of note were the trucks that were also testing there, which was great fun to watch. It was the first time I'd seen them in the flesh - they are smelly, oily and noisy, but great to watch - I should imagine with inclement weather ATM, the weekends truck racing will be good. The weather for us was not great, with a bitter cold wind blowing around kent, and the odd shower showing raining down on the circuit (luckily we jused missed wet track time)

    

    The 3 cars we took were 1 of our 2008 997's, a 2006 997 (so runs different class in series) and clio cup car. Our clio cup driver is new to racing (only just passed his ARDS), but he's already got a grip on the car and dynamics of car control and by the end of the day was putting in some blistering laps, and consistently - he's looking forward to his first race next week.

    In the 2006 car, we had Karl Leonard. This was his first outing in the car since it was rebuilt, it was also his first time around Brands in a Porsche, having only turned laps in a punto many years earlier. By the end of the day, Karl was within half a second the other experienced Carrera Cup teams running, in the 48's (apart from Tim Harvey who set a 47.4 on fresh rubber), but they were running 08 cars, with 20 bhp more (he also beat our 08 car by a second by end of day)! I think Karl will be grabbing a good few Pro Am 2 podiums this year - he has a spirit that says if I'm not first, then it's not good enough; this can be annoying at times (when we're happy to have collected a 2nd, he's saying it was all crap :D), but most of the time it makes him faster. It's also very easy to go through data with Karl. He'll tell me where he thinks he was slow, I'll tell him if I agree; we then examine the areas where we find the time loss and discuss the technique for the corner. Karl then goes back out, tries the technique and we check the data to see if it worked; once we have that part pinned, we move onto the next one (whilst we'll look to improve on all slower sections after looking at data, we'll select one area to put the most focus onto - otherwise we'd be sitting in the garage looking at the PC all day). By end of Friday we'd got Paddock Hill and clearways sussed, two of the toughest corners at indy.

    

    John Quartermaine, was in a 2008 997. JQ has a background of single seater racing, and had turned many laps in the past in formula fords around Brands Hatch; he had high hopes for the day, which came as a double edged sword. This is John's first season in a Porsche so he's still finding the limit and confidence in the car. At the start of the day JQ was hitting the 51's, with him losing a lot of speed from Graham Hill to the end of the lap. We poured over a lot of data to help JQ get some confidence and were able to get him down to a 49's. But despite the gains, John seemed to take the weight of being not as quick as Karl as a heavy burden. At the end of the day I tried to make my debrief to him as encouraging as possible, showing him how we'd taken major steps through graham hill and surtees bend. I hope he took those positives away with him, becuase he only needs to suss out one or two places and he'll be on the pace - just never enough tracktime.

    

    Next weekend is our first racing of the season, when we return to Brands Hatch to support the British Touring Car Series. We have 2 races, one on the saturday, one on the sunday. The sunday race will be broadcast live on ITV4 as part of their BTCC coverage. You'll also be able to catch highlights on MotorsportUK (ITV4) in a few weeks time. We'll have 3 cars running 2 x Pro Am1 and 1 x Pro Am 2.

    

    Finally, as a little bonus, here's a few onboard laps of our 2008 997 around Silverstone driven by Graeme Mundy - this was the cars first outing for us :)

    Until next time sportscar fans!

  • Video blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 464

• Living the Life of a Data Dick Living the Life of a Data Dick - Part 3

  • From: Chris Hall
  • Description:

    Testing & Media Day

    Our first test and subsequent showcase of the year took place last weekend. Friday was spent at Silverstone private testing our 2x2008 997's and ournew Clio Cup Car, whilst monday at the same venue, we tested and launched to the press at the Carrera Cup GB Media day.

    THe friday test was the first get-together of the team at a circuit in 2009, and all 3 cars were new. The 2008 GT3's are an upgrade from our previous 06 & 07 models we ran last year (an extra 20bhp we have now) and the Clio Cup car is/was an entirely new adventure for us.

    On arriving Friday morning, I'm introduced to our 'guest' chief engineer for the day. I can be a bit nieve when it comes to knowing the who's who of motorsport, so I asked Steve Waudby about his work in racing. He went on to tell me he was currently running a team in the Carrera Cup Asia, and had a history in engineering from Le Mans, WTCC and a plethora of different cars/makes; I also go told by the Team Manager, that he was a bit of a peddler in his time himself. I immediately hit it off with Steve, and tapped him for info and advice throughout the day - it was brilliant to work with him, and I learnt so much just from the few hours of working with him - I told him I want to make him my new mentor :D

    ON the actual test, conditions were tricky, it was damp, then dry, then wet, then damp again during the entire day. This made it difficult to offer much analysis to the drivers and the technique and setup had to change nearly everytime they went out. We were however able to help our new driver John Quartermaine get more speed through the becketts hairpin on the national circuit, which was to help on monday. There was a little moment on track. JQ's 997 and the Clio Cup car we were testing had a coming together (how's the luck heh?), the damage was mainly superficial, though the 997 passenger door did need a remount.

    Our 2nd Porsche didn't fair well on Friday. After putting in a handful of laps, our driver rought the car in reporting the clutch was failing. This flumexed the mechanics at first, but after a further strip down they identified the problem to be more major, with the engine failing at the fly-wheel. This put the car out for the day and gave the mechanics a busy weekend of a rebuild in time for monday. 

    The Clio Cup car was a nightmare for me. Running a Magnet Marelli dash system (something I've never worked with before), I had been forwarned that the system was generally crap, cumbersum and a mish-mash. Taking about 30 mins just to configure the laptop and install the software (no less than 3 pieces of software required to make it work.... 'work' is the theoretical best case scenario), it was impossible to collect data from the car. It would find the dashboard, then not find it. Then find it again, then when connecting, shows zero values, then fails. It was such a headache, I gave up in the end and have now got to schedule a day with the car the the workshop to get the dam thing worked out.

    Despite our small setbacks, the team manager actually said it was the best test session he'd been to in a long time (and it was his car that failed!). Everyone, even some new people just slipped into the roles and got on with their jobs; there was too much 'overseeing' in the past and our 'new' team manager has changed the regime. For me personally, it felt great; apart from the clio, everything went smoothly, and we really did feel like a great team - I had to pinch myself driving home from silverstone, because I felt so lucky to be an integral part of something (I consider myself extremely lucky to have a job that I come home from always smiling and reflecting on the day, not trying to forget it)

    

    One of the RSS 997's, with me grabbing data from it (and trying not to frazzle dash :D)

    
    

    Monday was the Big media day -  and it didn't start off well. Despite leaving home at 6:30am, a big accident on the M1 meant I was delayed for an hour and arrived at the circuit just past 9. I'd called the team manager as I progressed through the jam, and he was very calm about it - even though our engineer for the day was in the same jam, somewhwere behind me (about 30 mins behind). As I walked into the garage, I saw our 2 porsches were just leaving their pit boxes. With barely a hello to anyone, I leapt into action and got all the lap tops and and screens setup in just a few minutes. The cars came back in fromwhat had been a sighter lap, which gave me enough time to config the cars, and setup the incar camera (only 1 car though). From then, the day flew by; eveytime a car came in, I' grab data and analysis with the team manager, engineer and driver, and then give them pointers to work on. I loved it. For the first time I felt confident in what I was telling the drivers and the engineer (mentioned above), validated 95% of what I was saying. I even found a gear tehnique in the data that was wrong, that gave JQ a few tenths. By the end of the day, both porsches were a second+ better than the start of the day. Most of that comes down to tires, but I'm certain some of it also comes down to the feedback we all gave the drivers.

    At the end of the day, we were in the top ten (Bridgman put in an ALIEN lap, and set a new track record for the Porsche on Silverstone National with a 56.4!!!) - but the main thing was, we were consistent and improving. The team also gel'd together even more and had a better flow to it - despite late arrivals.

    I almost forgot - we had the Mcclaren F1 garage for the media day test, which has refelctive marble floor (see pic below). Sean Edwards 'sometimes' iRacer and Porsche Super Cup driver was there too. He came joined us for an hour or so and we went through a lot of data together. I also got on his case about getting back on iR (can you believe the lad uses rFactor!), told him I wanted to give him a whipping in the Riley's - his ears did pricked a little at the Riley, but not sure if it was quite enough - the boy is a slacker :D (I'm trying goading now to get him back on :D).

    So our firt race weekend is April 7th, when we go to Brand Hatch Indy, my local track and just 15 minutes away from my home :) I always love it there, and I'm sure I'll have a few teamies sleeping at mine so they can get some iRacing time in :D (they love it!)

     

    Until next time race fans!

     

    The second RSS 997

    

     

    We will be 3 running cars/drivers this year in the Carrera Cup:

    Graeme Mundy
    

     

    Karl Leonard (on the left)
    

     

    John Quartermaine
    

     

     

     

     

     

    Mclaren reflective floor

    

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 339
  • Not yet rated

• The JQ 997 GT3 The JQ 997 GT3

  • From: Chris Hall
  • Description:
    One of our new 997's driven by John Quatermaine. That's myself on the left grabbing data from the car
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 114
  • Not yet rated

• Living the Life of a Data Dick Living the Life of a Data Dick - Part 2

  • From: Chris Hall
  • Description:

    As we tip-toe into March, the nervous anticipation is starting to settle in, with our first outing of the season in less than 2 weeks. Whilst we have a private test day at Silverstone, followed by a day on the track for the media launch, it's a short intense period of track time, and we have a new car and driver in the mix as well. So we'll be running 3 cars over 2 days, which is making me nervous as I've only handled pairs before. This week, I also had the news broke to me, that the team have accuired a Renault Clio, and plan to run in the Clio Cup this season as well (it supports the Carrera Cup), that means I'll have to handle the data for 4 cars and one of them a front wheel drive motor. Those of you in the UK can see our advert in this weeks edition of Autosport (alonso cover).

    With so much on my plate, I've had to look at how to administrate collecting the data on the cars and de-briefing drivers. I'm currently looking at testing a new system (using publicly available IT), that will allow the transfer of data from the cars wirelessly. Currently, I have to visit each car, connect a cable to car and laptop, then download data and clear the dash, then reconfigure it, the whole time with mechanics rushing around the car. The plan is to 'dongle' the cars when they come back to the garage and then extract he data whilst inside the truck; if this works, I wouldn't be surprised to see other teams cotton on by the end of the season.

    Being new to the team and the job last year, a lot of what I was doing was analysing how the operation was run, where I fitted in and how things could be improved through my input (which is what I was brought in for anyhow). Before I got there, the team kept no records of data, had no one IT proficient and one of the mechanics would keep setup info in his 'black book' and was always secretive about it. Well that mechanics gone, and it's a lot of crucial info that's gone with them. 

    Having seen this, I've devised a new setup sheet and logging system that is then securly stored when not needed. Coulped with that is is a debrief sheet, with a trackmap, that the driver must complete after each session. The map gets them to assess in simple terms, how the car handled in the different sections (i.e turn in, apex, turn out).

    It's now a question of getting myself prepared for the season ahead. This involves planning best practice for data collection and processing at meetings. Reassessing Motec layouts and plans, making improvements and changes. I also been studying slip angles and traction circles over the winter, and and I'm now seeing how we can map these effectively. THe final part of my 'refresher' is reading data, I'll go through last seasons over and over; it's not to brief a driver or the team, it's to sharpen my eye in what to look for in the data.

    So in about 2 weeks time, I'll either be filled with glee with how it's gone, or slapping myself in the face for getting it wrong. Whilst the ultimate goal is to win, my personal goal is always to do a good job and not screw anything up - I don't want to ever be the one that caused a car's race to end - whilst it's only testing, I always treat like it's a full race weekend, like a full dress rehearsal.

    Until next time data fans!

     

    Chris

     

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 278

• Living the Life of A Data Dick Living the Life of A Data Dick

  • From: Chris Hall
  • Description:

    With the 2009 racing seasons approaching, I thought it'd be good to keep a blog on my year in motorsport as a data engineer. I work for a team called RSS Performance, that run in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB, and I'e been saddled with the nickname 'Data Dick' by the team. Being the newest member of the team, I often have to get my hands dirty cleaning wheels, cleaning cars, fitting stickers and making tea, but it's all part and parel of working ones way the heiracy (one day someone else will be making the tea).

    Before I start on 2009 and the season so far (not much happening really), here's a brief history on the team and how I eded up with RSS.

    RSS Performance were formerly a British GT team, that won the championship (GTC Class) in 2007. During that time, I was reporting for The-Paddock.net, but ironically, never got to know the team or properly met them. However, I did get to know and make friends with a few drivers and team managers, with one Barwell manager becoming a very good mate. He'd seen my interest in sim-racing (in the form of rF), knew I ran a small IT company and had seen my MoTeC work using the rF plugin; so when he moved to RSS last year as team manager, he called me in to be the teams motec analsyer, which eventually expanded to all data functions such as: testing and running incar camera's; lap timing; driver briefing; time management; IT support - A nightmare, you try giving wifi access at knockhill! 

    Moving up from the British GT, RSS made a move into Carrera Cup, the GT Cup, and in addition the occasional Britcar appearance. 2008 Was our first real year of attack and a major learning curve for everyone. We had some great highlights, such as racing in front of 40,000 fans at Brands Hatch as part of the A1GP weekend, collecting wins in the GTCUP and challengin the ProAm2 title in the carrera cup until the penultimate race of the weekend. It also had it's tough times, like one of your cars smash into the barriers running in 3rd in the last 5 laps of a six hour race at Spa, due to brake failure. Or taking to the grid at knockhill to have the clutch fail before the green flag even waves. It also has it's comedy too, such as during a driver change, one of our drivers climbs out the car, pushes over one of the pit crew and takes over from him, because he felt he could do the job better and quicker!

    So 2009 is now apon us and a new season approaches. It's always quite this time of year, as we head to the various series launch dates, in our case March 14th. On our last briefing, we were hoping to run 3 cars, 2 of our own and one of another driver's. We're also in the process or buying an M3 which we'll use for driver training and trackdays (for those without racing licenses who would like professional instruction), which is very exciting, as I may actually have a chance to take it out and put my sim racing experience to the test. 

    Our transporter, which becomes the hub of a team, especially when racing abroad, is undergoing a refit. After much nagging, the team are hopefully going to take some of my design points for the cabin area, where we run the IT systems and the team 'hangs out'. 

    As mentioned before, there is little to report this early year. Due to unforseen circumstances, our shakedown at Gaudix in Spain was cancelled, so we are looking to find some track time before mid-march, when we launch to the press. Regarding the press day,  we will be having a film crew follow us about for it, which will then be released on the RSS website.

    Until next time Porsche fans!

     

    Chris D Hall

  • Blog post
  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 404

• John Dashey

  • Views: 99
  • Since: 1 year ago

• Toby Bushnell

  • Views: 348
  • Since: 1 year ago

• Frank Schwartz

  • Views: 102
  • Since: 1 year ago

• 5 Decades of the Porsche 911 5 Decades of the Porsche 911

  • From: Jonathan Young
  • Description:

    I went to the Autosport International Racing Car show at the NEC in Birmingham (Sunday 11th Jan 2009). What a great show.. so much to do and see. All sorts of racing cars on show, from the most obscure grass roots levels motorsports categories to Forumla One Cars (all the F1 cars from the 08 season were there).

    There was also a great Live Action Arena .. 50 minutes of watching all sorts of different race cars compete in an indoor arena. Temendous fun!

  • 1 year ago
  • Views: 97
  • Not yet rated