motoring projects

track test – lambos & porsches

2010-07-18T10:37:00.001+02:00

Superleggera, Kettles and Turbos…
by Pierre Martins

They hosted another Supercar school at Kyalami a few Sundays ago. I was fortunate to get an invite to play instructor and was privileged to pilot a variety of cool machines at a decent pace around the track.

Lambo 1

Yellow one. Nice car. Did two sessions in this car with ample opportunity to hoof it. Very, very nice car. Planted and composed, everywhere. It's the one with shorter ratios and more HP than the entry level jobby I drove last time.

A mate of mine flew up from Durban with his daughter for the day. A passenger ride in a Lamborghini was a dream come true for her and she thoroughly enjoyed herself, as you can see from the huge smile in the photo. (click on the pic) Nice birthday present for her.

PS - Did I mention it was a nice car...?

993 C4 Turbo

There are very few pleasures in life equal to the sensation of a good-handling powerful turbo Porsche on full boost around a nice track like Kyalami. Manage the boost, time it to come in at the right places and you slingshot like a sunnafabitch out of Nashua corner, click the next slot up the shifter and hang on for the ride, hit the clamps briefly and peel into Sunset bend…

Feed the power back on and calculate the boost with your right foot so it hits you hard in the back as you exit Sunset. Catch that little tail slide and you know you are foooking off at a rate of knots. And believe you me, you kinda shit yourself a little when you realize your approach speed into Clubhouse corner as you hit the clamps...

Fantastic car!

996 C4S kettle

A kettle. Yes, a kettle. A thing that boils water…

Let's face it, all water-cooled nine-elevens are kettles. For old-school farts like me, the last honest-to-goodness true old school air-cooled jobby was the 993. After that they became kettles. Push a 996 hard on a track, wet sump and whatnot, long high speed sweeping corners and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out you might get oil starvation and we all know what's gonna happen when that happens.

But this particular car was nice to drive. Stock suspension was surprisingly adequate. I punted this puppy at a fairly decent pace, but kept a nervous eye on the oil pressure. Pop one of these engines and you throw the block away. Very, very costly exercise...

It's hard to have fun with that on your mind, especially when you're behind the wheel of another man's pride and joy.

993 C4S

The Porsche 4WD thing works well on the 911 C4 Turbo, but normally aspirated 911? Well let's just a say I really didn't like it. It oscillates like a mofo and you never really get a proper feel from the front end.

Not my cup of tea. Gimme a 993 RWD or C4 turbo any day please.

MKII GT3

Wow! Yeah it's a kettle, but a different kettle of fish altogether, this one. It’s raw, yet refined. Very fast, very capable and does exactly what you ask from it, anywhere and everywhere.

All bullshit aside, if you want a proper driver's car for the street and track, this is it. Plenschhhh powah and then some, in fact, to put it mildly, it goes like stink in a straight line. And I gotta say the handling is superb. Front end goes where you point it. Hang the ass out coming out of Nashua, the Bowl and the Pit Corner…

Showboat where you want to. Drift it at will, muck around or go for serious lap times, this car will do exactly what you ask from it with a fairly good sense of precision. Nothing more, nothing less. That's what I love about it.

Black Lambo Superlegggeggegerra

Another big WOW!

Massive improvement over the 'stock' Gallardos, methinks. On the track you feel the 80-odd kg's they shaved off with all the pretty carbon fibre bits & pieces. I'm no Lambo expert, but I tonked this thing properly for a good few laps and I gotta say it really IS all they've made it out to be. On a race track it really is a remarkable improvement.

Serious machine, this one. And the extra power puts this car into the 'rolling-your-foreskin-back' league of acceleration. On the down-side I found it too "new school". There is way too much electronic interference in this car. It's just too idiot-proof. Hell, I'm sure this thing would calculate and plot better racing lines for you if asked it to. But don't get me wrong, it's a serious track tool, I just don't like all them nanny aids in a track car...

But then, what do I know? I'm just one of those old farts who still believe you should first learn how to go around corners on your own ability as a driver before you start depending on all these modern day driver's aids and gimmicks.

Red MKII GT3, again

Got to drive this car again during the final session. If I had to pick a car on personal preference to drive all day long on a day like this, there would be no contest - I'd pick the GT3 every time. Come to think of it, with Superleggera money you can buy two MKII GT3’s - one for the street and one for the track and you’d still have enough change left to run both for a year…

Anyway, hope you enjoyed that.
Cheers,
Pierre.

group 4 rsr preview

2010-04-04T18:52:00.001+02:00

The latest on my mate The Flying Doctor’s RSR…
by Pierre Martins

Every time I think this car has reached the end of the road as far as development goes, Dave’s pockets turn out deeper than I thought. He's just taken it to full Group 4 spec care of Jimmy Hendricks bodywork & wheels…

Click on the pics to view larger versions and use your browser’s ‘back’ button to return.

This car has all the right stuff under the skin, Smart Racing stabilizers and whatnot. I'll be testing it in the next week or so, yet again. It will be interesting to see how it all comes together. Man, my ass is really itching to get behind the wheel of this thing.

Report to follow…

Cheers,
Pierre.

shelby can-am race report – march 2010

2010-03-24T13:03:00.001+02:00

Sideways in a Shelby…
by Pierre Martins

Nestled in the Andaman Sea on Thailand's Indian Ocean coastline about 850km south of Bangkok is a little tropical paradise island known as ’Phuket’. It has next to nothing to do with this race meet or motorsport in general, but if you deliberately miss-pronounce the name ‘Phuket’ in the English lingo it takes on an alternative meaning which perfectly describes what went through my mind when I heard a sudden clunking noise coming from the engine just as I reached the table top section at Zwartkops Raceway five or six laps into first practice on Friday morning.

I just knew it was terminal, knocked the thing into neutral, hit the kill switch and coasted back to the pits where we got the rear end of the car up in the air for a look-see. A short process of elimination later and the cause of said clunking noise manifested itself in the shape of a broken crankshaft, but before I could slip into my finest Phuketian accent again the Shelby Can-Am guys whipped out a replacement engine and started stripping the broken crank engine from the chassis…

But perhaps I should first tell you how it came about that I found myself behind the wheel of a Shelby Can-Am car for the March 2010 Zwartkops round of the Pro-Tour Series. They say the best things in life are unplanned and I can vouch that it certainly was the case on this occasion. Rocket Rod Cole Edwards called me barely a week before the race asking whether I would like to do an arrive-and-drive thing for this event, I said Yes of course, one thing lead to another and I was entered as a guest driver in Rudi Patour’s car with the car being race-prepped courtesy of GT1 Workshop.

And just in case you’re not familiar with Shelby Can-Am cars, I can tell you in a nutshell that what you have here is an 850kg space-frame sports-prototype car with 330hp and 410nm torque on tap from a near-stock NISSAN 350Z V6 engine coupled to a 4-speed crash-box with locked diff, double wishbones with adjustable anti-roll bars front and rear with locally made SAX shocks, coil-overs and four-pod Willwood clamps on double vented discs, running on 13-inch-wide rear and 10-inch-wide front Good-Year full slicks, making it a pretty nifty and quick package.

But let’s get back to Phuket and the broken crank. Apparently this was not the first time a crank cried enough in the Nissan 350Z engines as used in these cars. The SCA association did take the problem up with NISSAN South Africa who said that they’ve experienced no such problems with road-going 350Z cars where they use rubber engine mounts as opposed to solid mounts in the Shelbys, so the problem was attributed to harmonic vibration or whatnot in the engine that caused occasional crankshaft failure. So I was just unlucky that it happened to me - I’ve always said my luck is of such a nature that if I had to fall into a barrel of boobs I’d probably come up sucking my thumb…

Anyway, I missed the subsequent practice sessions of course, but the SCA guys went out of their way to get me back on track with Gerald and his crew from GT1 Workshop working their asses off to replace the engine in time for the Friday afternoon qualifying session, which was pretty much one of those times where you just have to put two and two together real quick and do the best you can.

Zwartkops is basically a two part track with fast sweeping corners and reasonably long straights between turn 2 and 5 where it’s crucial to keep momentum. I refer to that section as the drag race sector. The rest of the track is pretty much a kart circuit with short straights and tight corners from turn 5 to the final corner, turn 8. The car was very loose and tail-happy everywhere and I struggled to get the power down through the fast sweepers in the drag race sector, as well as coming out of tight corners in the kart sector, but I did manage to slide the thing to a semi-respectable high 1’05”-something during qualifying, not bad for a first-timer considering I missed most of practice.

The rear end felt looser than a Bangkok prostitute… Okay, I don’t really know what a Bangkok prossy feels like, but you watch the video clip below you’ll see what I mean. I’m the clown in the yellow car. Not the best lines through corners and all, just playing with the power of the car, but you can see a mile away that I enjoyed driving the thing…

Power-sliding fun (date stamp on this vid is wrong)

I was less than happy with grip from the tyres, but beggars can’t be choosers so I just did the best I could for the rest of the weekend. We did make some setup changes in an effort to settle the rear end down, dialled in more wing angle for the fast sweepers, softened the rear stabiliser bar and reduced ride height in the rear for better traction on the exit of tight corners, but trying to dial out shagged tyres is like spelling the word racecar backwards. You still end up with racecar.

This is a highly competitive class where all the cars are virtually identical and If you’re just a little off on setup or grip in a Shelby Can-Am race you’re nowhere really, so I did what I do when a good finish is out of the question – Enjoy the drive, which is exactly what this opportunity was intended to be anyway, and Phuket man, did I have a blast…!

Finished 8th overall and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the Shelby Can-Am experience, so thanks Jannet, for getting my entry in and whatnot, Rudi for making his car available, Rocket Rod for nominating me for this drive, Rui Campos for affording me this opportunity, Alan Eve for the spare engine, all the drivers for your tips and advice, I have immense respect for the way you guys pedal, and last but not least, Gerald and his crew from GT1 workshop for keeping the car on the track.

Geesh, that sounded like a speech at the Oscars, he-he-he...

Cheers,
Pierre.

2010 calendar

2010-03-16T19:21:00.001+02:00

Dates to remember…
by Pierre Martins

The calendar below is more for my own use than anything else. See, I got tired of looking up calendars for all the classes I follow from different websites, so I put together my own integrated jobby. It’s by no means complete, but it makes it easier to plan already.

Mar	20	Pro-Tour ------------------ Round 2	Zwartkops
Mar	27	MRC bike race day ------- regional event	Zwartkops
Mar	28	F1 ------------------------- Australian GP	Albert Park
		World Superbikes –------- Portugal	Portimão
		Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops
Apr	4	F1 –------------------------- Malaysian GP	Sepang
Apr	10	Wesbank Super Series -- Round 3	Phakisa
		Inland Cars & Bikes ------ regional event	Zwartkops
Apr	11	MotoGP –------------------ Qatar night race	Doha/Losail
		World Superbikes –------- Spain - to be confirmed	Valencia
Apr	17	Pro-Tour ------------------ Round 3	Killarney
Apr	18	F1 –------------------------- Chinese GP	Shanghai
APR	24	ZOC Hill-down ------------ club event	Zwartkops
Apr	25	MotoGP –------------------- Japan	Motegi
		World Superbikes –------- Holland - Saturday race	Assen
		Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops
May	1	Wesbank Super Series -- Round 4	Aldo Scribante
May	2	MotoGP –------------------- Spain	Jerez
May	8	Supercar Track Day ------ open day for road cars	Zwartkops
May	9	F1 –------------------------- Spanish GP	Cataluña
		World Superbikes –------- Italy	Monza
May	16	F1 –------------------------- Monaco GP	Monte-Carlo
		World Superbikes --------- South Africa	Kyalami
		Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops
May	22	Pro-Tour ------------------- Round 4	Phakisa
May	23	MotoGP –------------------- France	Le Mans
May	29	Inland Cars & Bikes ------ regional event	Zwartkops
May	30	F1 –------------------------- Turkish GP	Istanbul Park
May	31	World Superbikes –------- USA - Monday race	Salt Lake City
Jun	5	Wesbank Super Series -- Round 5	Kyalami
Jun	6	MotoGP –------------------- Italy	Mugello
Jun	13	F1 –------------------------- Canadian GP	Montreal
Jun	19	MRC bike race day ------- regional event	Zwartkops
Jun	20	MotoGP -------------------- Great Britain	Silverstone
		Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops
Jun	26	MotoGP –------------------- Holland - Saturday race	Assen
		Pro-Tour ------------------- Round 5	Zwartkops
Jun	27	F1 –------------------------- European GP	Valencia
		World Superbikes -------- San Marino	Misano
Jul	3	ZOC 4 Stage -------------- club event	Zwartkops
Jul	4	MotoGP –------------------- Spain	Cataluña
Jul	11	F1 –------------------------- British GP	Silverstone
		World Superbikes -------- Czech Republic.	Brno
Jul	17	MS2000 bike race day --- regional event	Zwartkops
Jul	18	MotoGP –------------------- Germany	Sachsenring
		Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops
Jul	24	Inland Cars & Bikes ------ regional event	Zwartkops
Jul	25	F1 –------------------------- German GP	Hockenheim
		MotoGP –------------------- USA - only MotoGP bikes	Laguna Seca
Jul	31	Pro-Tour ------------------- Round 6	Kyalami
Aug	1	F1 –------------------------- Hungarian GP	Hungaroring
		World Superbikes –------- Great Britain	Donington Park
Aug	7	ZOC Wiggle Woggle ----- club event	Zwartkops
Aug	8	Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops
Aug	9	Woman’s Day ------------ track day for the ladies	Zwartkops
Aug	15	MotoGP -------------------- Czech Republic	Brno
Aug	21	Pro-Tour ------------------- Round 7	Zwartkops
Aug	29	F1 –------------------------ Belgian GP	Spa-Francorchamps
		MotoGP –------------------ USA	Indianapolis
Sep	5	MotoGP ------------------- San Marino	Misano
		World Superbikes –------- Germany	Nürburgring
Sep	11	Wesbank Super Series -- Round 6	Zwartkops
Sep	12	F1 –------------------------- Italian GP	Monza
Sep	18	Supercar Track Day ------ open day for road cars	Zwartkops
Sep	19	MotoGP –------------------ Hungary	Balatonring
		Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops
Sep	25	Inland Cars & Bikes ------ regional event	Zwartkops
Sep	26	F1 –------------------------ Singapore GP	Singapore
		World Superbikes –------- Italy	Imola
Oct	2	Wesbank Super Series -- Round 7	Killarney
Oct	3	World Superbikes –------- France	Magny-Cours
Oct	9	Pro-Tour ------------------ Round 8	Phakisa
		ZOC Hillclimb ------------- club event	Zwartkops
Oct	10	F1 –------------------------ Japanese GP	Suzuka
		MotoGP –------------------ Malaysia	Sepang
		Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops
Oct	16	Inland Cars & Bikes ------ regional event	Zwartkops
Oct	17	MotoGP –------------------ Australia	Phillip Island
Oct	24	F1 –------------------------ Korean GP - TBC	Jeonnam
Oct	30	Wesbank Super Series -- Round 8	East London
		MS2000 bike race day --- regional event	Zwartkops
Oct	31	MotoGP –------------------ Portugal	Estoril
Nov	6	SCC All Tar Rally --------- club event	Zwartkops
Nov	7	F1 –------------------------ Brazilian GP	Interlagos
		MotoGP –------------------ Spain	Valencia
		Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops
Nov	13	Pro-Tour ------------------ Round 9	Kyalami
Nov	14	F1 –------------------------ Abu Dhabi GP	Yas Island
Nov	20	World Int. Sports & Hatch regional car races	Zwartkops
Nov	27	Wesbank Super Series -- Round 9	Kyalami
Dec	5	Super Trax Day ----------- open day for road cars	Zwartkops

johnny bravo and the texas files

2010-03-14T19:24:00.001+02:00

A senseless short story…
by Pierre Martins

I’m fairly good at remembering faces, but about as inept as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest when it comes to remembering names.

It’s a character deficiency that’s caused me some real embarrassing moments at times, but then one day I read something somewhere along the lines that you’re more likely to remember names if you memorise them with humorous connotations and I must say I’ve actually enjoyed a fair amount of success with this system ever since. As a matter of fact I can still remember my first subject, a loudmouthed asshole with an ego the size of Texas. I promptly filed him as ‘Johnny Bravo’ in the back of my mind ‘cause he fitted the mould just right, both in looks and character. See, Johnny was a bodybuilder type that looked like he had contracted polio or something as a child, causing his lower body to stop growing at around the age of about 12 so he ended up looking a bit awkward with this huge muscle-bound upper body balancing precariously on tiny hips and pecker legs just like the cartoon character. There could not have been a more appropriate nickname for him other than - ‘Johnny Bravo’.

Did I mention that Johnny had an ego the size of Texas?

Sure I did. Mind you, I have an entire imaginary filing cabinet in the back of my mind dedicated to all the egotistical assholes I’ve met in my forty-something years on this here God’s green earth. I call them the “Texas Files”. But please don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the fine people of the great state of Texas, it’s merely the size of Texas I’m referring to, okay? So ya’ll can holster them pistols naw, ya hear?

Anyway, ole Johnny Bravo earned an honorary place amongst the best of the best in the Texas Files right from the day our paths first crossed many moons ago at a local bike shop one sunny Saturday morning when I was having a new rear tyre fitted to my Kawasaki ZX7RR… He certainly knew how to talk the talk, this Johnny dude, telling me and about half a dozen other bikers about his track exploits, how intense riding a bike on a race track was compared to doing breakfast runs and emphasizing that a race track was the only place where you really learned to corner and ride properly and whatnot. Now, I hardly ever pay attention to his type so I wasn’t really listening and kinda drifted in and out of his ego trip until someone suggested something about doing a track day that Sunday. That got my attention so I put my name down against my better judgement. I figured what the hell, it was bound to be good fun and I may as well get one over on ole Johnny in front of his band of ignorant protégés whilst I’m at it, you know, just for shits and giggles…

The only remote problem was that up until then I had never ridden a bike on a race track, ever. I did have a few advanced driving courses in Audi’s and BMW’s under the belt though, and lots of people commented very favourably on my driving. In fact, on one occasion I was actually quicker than the instructor, so in my mind I was fairly proficient behind the wheel of a car on a race track and saw no reason why things shouldn’t be the same on a bike. Besides, I had been riding bikes for donkey’s years with plenty canyon-carving miles under the belt and my buddies regarded me as the best rider in our group ‘cause on breakfast runs I was always the quickest dude and I knew how to pop decent wheelies.

So track riding should be a walk in the park, yes? Well, let’s just say I was quietly confident in my abilities as a rider, the proverbial dark horse, so to speak…

And so it came to pass that I found myself at a local race track that Sunday morning projecting my best ‘strong-but-quiet type’ pose. As expected Johnny Bravo was quite the opposite, the quintessential loudmouthed Texas Files role model, full-of-himself, strutting around the pits like a perky peacock preaching the basic commandments of piloting a superbike around a race track at a semi-decent pace like he was some kind of authority on the subject or something. Next thing I knew we were out on track on the warm-up lap, weaving from side to side to get heat into the tyres like seasoned racers. Mind you, I’ve often wondered about the weaving thing to get heat into your tyres… Some people say it doesn’t really work, but my logic tells me that weaving produces lateral forces which in turn generates friction between the contact patches of the tyres and the track surface and I remember in grade-A they taught me that friction generated heat, so surely some of that heat must be retained in the tyres? Besides, F1 drivers do it, so there’s gotta be something to it…

Well whatever. On this occasion everyone else was doing the weaving thing, so I just followed suit. Johnny Bravo and his band of protégés looked like characters from a superhero comic book in their pristine bright coloured leathers with the best riding boots money could buy and top quality helmets with blacked-out visors to hide the look of fear in their eyes. I must have looked quite stupid and out of place in jeans and my trusty old riding jacket that I’ve had so long my sweat stink had become permanently impregnated in the lining, generic riding boots that weren’t really intended for track use and my faithful old Foggy replica helmet that I got for a bargain at a stock clearance sale at a local bike shop.

Foggy.., remember him? Now there’s a guy who fitted the Texas Files mould like a glove. I never really liked him. Egotistical prick, but in the same sentence I’d be the first to admit that he was probably one of the most worthy Superbike champions of all time and an excellent rider to boot. The man certainly possessed the tenacity of a honey-badger, no questions about that. Remember the golden years of SBK? Man that was such a special era - Back in the day when Keith Huewen and Julian Ryder were commentators for Sky Sports. Those two certainly knew how to capture an audience and keep you nailed to the edge of your seat with your eyes glued to the screen! Hell, I wish we could get that kind of quality commentary over here in South African motorsport. Sometimes we really do have some piss-poor commentary that’s about as exciting as listening to a bunch of monotonous geriatric old farts in a doctor’s waiting room, but that’s a rant for another time…

Where was I…? Oh yeah, I was telling you about my warm-up lap with Johnny Bravo. My strategy was sweet and simple – Spend a lap or two getting my tyres up to operating temperatures and proceed to make assholes out of everyone by passing the lot of them, Johnny Bravo included, in one foul sweep and clearing off in the distance, easy peezy… Yeah right. Even if the tyres gripped like three day old dog shit gone hard in a soft wool blanket it would have been of no consequence. I never got anywhere near the limits of traction. I never got anywhere near Johnny Bravo either. He was riding up front doing the ‘let-me-show-you-the-lines’ thing for the first couple of laps but got bored with the ultra slow pace and cleared off at his own pace leaving me with the rest of the sorry assholes tip-toeing around the track, shitting ourselves every inch of the way…

Strange new experience that was, to say the least. Very different to what I expected. In a car you’re surrounded by steel and you’re strapped in feeling cosy and safe at speed. It feels almost ‘natural’ to go fast in a car, but on a bike your body surrounds the steel and you’re out there in the open, the sensation of speed is multiplied exponentially and believe you me, it’s a helluva lot more intense than it looks on TV, I shit you not…!

And of course, back in the pits Johnny Bravo strutted his stuff with that ‘I-told-you-so’ smirking grin on his dial. I felt like kicking him right in the family jewels, but fortunately I was humbled enough by the experience to know that I was out of my depth by a country mile. It was one of those profound moments in life when you find that you actually sucked at something you thought you’d be good at and what grated my guts more than anything is the fact Johnny Bravo managed to lap me not once, but twice during that initial thirty minute session. He made it look like I was looking for parking and if that wasn’t enough a bunch of snot-noses on pisswilly little 125cc two-strokes came along to rub salt in my wounded ego by passing me around the outside in the hairpin at the end of the back straight…

And that was that. My confidence took a massive dive into the depths of despair and I really felt like finding a private corner somewhere where I could sit quietly and wank myself into a coma, but sometimes you just have to put your pride in your back pocket and be man enough to admit defeat, so I told Johnny Bravo how impressed I was with his riding skills, but to stop being such a schmuck and help me, which is something I didn’t really like doing because I hate asking people I don’t like for help or advice. Actually, I don’t think ole Johnny was liked by most of his so-called protégés either, as most of them upped and ducked after that initial session citing family commitments and a whole host of other bullshit excuses as to why they shouldn’t and/or couldn’t continue riding on the track for the rest of the day. Methinks the real reason they left was because Johnny insinuated that they were just a bunch of posers who preferred swanking with their top-dollar latest and greatest Superbikes on breakfast runs to the local News Cafe every other Sunday and that they were not real riders… But that’s besides the point.

I stayed on though, along with one or two other hardcore enthusiasts and surprise-surprise, ole Johnny suddenly changed his tune and turned out to be pretty helpful by providing some very good grassroots coaching throughout the rest of the day, starting with basic issues like looking through the corners instead of at the corners and planning your lines through the corners before you actually go out on the track and whatnot. For me it certainly was an insightful day, a day that got me started on an obsessive quest to hone and refine my track riding skills to a razor sharp margin over the next six months, up to a point where I was ready to cut my teeth in our local regional Superbike Championship.

By then I had progressed to become a much better and quicker track rider than Johnny Bravo ever was and gave him a clean pair of heels on numerous occasions, yet I struggled to make it into the top ten in regional Superbike races and I don’t think I would have ever made it to the podium without some degree of divine intervention that caused most of the faster riders ahead of me to crash out or succumb to that other act of God by running out of fuel on the last lap. See, this is how the hierarchy works in this sport - Most of your local track day heroes might be blisteringly quick amongst their Texas Files peers in the novice and intermediate classes at track days and Superbike schools, but they would generally struggle their asses off to run midfield in regional races and in turn most regional racers would probably not even smell the pace of experienced riders at national level. To compete at international level you would probably need superhuman skills and I’m sorry to hint at the cold hard facts here, but I wonder how many of our famed national riders would even qualify for a MotoGP race where they have those freaks of nature like Valentino Rossi setting the pace? By the way, when last did we have a MotoGP hopeful? Or better yet, is there one in the making? Man, I would love to see a South African in MotoGP…!

But why am I telling you all this nonsense? Well actually, I don’t really know. I was bored and just felt like writing some shit to see where it would take me, but since you’re still here reading this I guess I’d better invent a moral for this story now, eh?

Hmm sorry, I’m fresh out of ideas so leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you when I come up with an ending, he-he-he…

Cheers,
Pierre.

a guide for track day virgins

2010-03-13T21:19:00.001+02:00

Unparalleled fun if you get it right…
by Pierre Martins

I’ve received a couple of emails recently asking for tips and advice for people who want to do track days, so I've decided to put this little guide together. What follows here is not intended to teach anyone how to drive fast, but more how to get through your first track day without making an ass of yourself.

Track driving is vastly different to driving on the street, and believe you me, if you do it right, you will be in awe over what you’ve been missing. But do it wrong and it could turn out to be a horrible experience. You don’t want that, you want to enjoy yourself and drive your car home afterwards, in one piece.

On a track you can hone your skills to a razor sharp margin, but to get there will take more than just one session, or one track day for that matter. Hopefully this little little guide will set you off on the right path and enable you to enjoy your first track day, without winding up the seasoned track drivers.

Prepping your car beforehand…

There are usually different classes at organised track days - novice, intermediate and advanced. Simply enter in the novice class and take it from there. It doesn’t really matter what car you have. What matters is how you drive and conduct yourself on the track, so don’t worry if your car is not a track orientated car. However, your car is bound to take massive punishment, so there are a few things you should prepare for beforehand…

Your brakes will generally suffer most, so make sure they are in good nick.

You should have at least 50% material left on all your brake pads. Heavy cars will eat pads. Track compound brake pads are advisable and chamfering the pads around the outer edges will assist cooling. Change brake fluid to synthetic dot-5.1 or better. Lots of heavy braking will generate loads of heat in the whole braking system and there is a definite possibility that your brakes will overheat and fail. Brake fade is a serious and very real concern on the track. more >>

Tyres must obviously be in reasonable condition with decent sidewalls. They can be toward the end of their life, but should have at least 5000km worth of tread left. You’d be amazed at how much punishment the tyres take and how fast they wear on a race track, so if you turn up at a track day on tyres with barely any tread left and expect to run the full day and drive home again, forget it. Generally speaking, the lighter and more track orientated your car is, the less tyre wear you can expect. A Lotus 7 will go a long way on a set of tyres, but drive a two ton luxo-barge around a track at a semi-decent pace and you’ll trash your tyres in no time.

Make sure you have sufficient oil in the engine, gearbox & diff. Sounds obvious, but it’s amazing to see how many people head for home after their first session because they didn’t check these things. It’s vital to check the engine oil level, especially with older engines. Some people recommend that you slightly overfill your engine before a track day, but this can cause problems if your car has a catalytic converter. Too much oil can damage the cat.

Make sure you have no coolant leaks, check if the battery is secure and clean the car inside and out whilst your at it, especially the windows.

Fuel. Although not a requirement, but if you wanna run race fuel, keep in mind that the car’s OBC will need time to adjust, especially in cars with self adjusting timing.

Prepping the nut behind the wheel – You!

Yes, track days are meant to be fun, but be forewarned, track driving is vastly different from driving on the street. So whether you’re doing this for shits and giggles, or whether you’re thinking about taking it up as a serious hobby, my advice to you is to at least familiarise yourself with the basics of track driving prior to your first track day. Learning to drive on a track is not about going balls to the wall from the word go. The odds are stacked against you and I’m willing to take a bet that you’re gonna be blown away by the experience. You will probably be nervous and slow during your first session, but don’t worry about that and don’t feel intimidated - we all have to start somewhere. You will soon get quicker, just take your time and don’t become impatient. Learning to drive on a race track depends on how good you are at interpreting what happens whilst you’re driving. You have to learn how to turn motion into thought, and then to translate those thoughts back into motion again. more >>

You will probably become increasingly nervous as your first track day draws closer. Welcome to the party. Stress is good, it keeps you alert. Seasoned racers will tell you that the sick feeling before a race never really goes away. We all get a bit frazzled before the race. It’s the nature of the beast and there is no cookie-cutter plan to calm your nerves, but there are a few things that will help…

Do everything you can the day before. If you need to buy fuel, do it the day before and not on your way to the track in the morning. Pack the car with everything you need the night before. Lay off the booze and anything that contains caffeine and try to get a good night’s rest.

Things to take with to the track…

Basic tools. Tyre pressure gauge and pump. Trolley jack, wheel spanner and at least one trestle in case you need to remove a wheel to check something. Some rags and hand cleaner.

Spare engine oil & brake fluid for top ups. It’s not a bad idea to take some anti-freeze and a five litre container of water with in case your car suffers overheating problems.

Spare alternator belt. Don’t ask me why I know this, just take the damn thing with! He-he-he…

A roll of duct tape and zip ties. Where would motorsport be without these two invaluable commodities?

Driving gear. Helmet, gloves and driving shoes with thin soles. Some tracks require you to wear a long sleeve shirt.

Your fuel consumption is going to increase drastically on the track. Don’t be surprised if it doubles!

It’s really embarrassing to run out of fuel on the race track, not to mention the sheer waste of track time you will lose by schlepping around to get more fuel. So best you take extra fuel and a siphoning hose.

Appropriate clothing for the weather. Warm clothing in winter, obviously. A cap and sunglasses is a must in summer. You’re gonna roast in the sun.

Refreshments. Drinks and snacks. You’re going to get hungry and thirsty. Some tracks have canteens or snack shops, but they’re not always open.

Medical aid kit, including sunscreen, eye drops and lip balm. Make sure you take headache tablets. It’s not uncommon to develop a headache at the track, and that can really spoil the day for you.

Take one or two camping chairs with for obvious reasons.

Documentation, entry forms, etc. An arieal photo or map of the track, pen and paper will come in handy.

And last but not least, don’t forget to take money!

What to do when you arrive at the track…

Get the red tape out the way first. - Complete documentation, indemnities, registration and whatnot.

Make sure you attend driver’s briefing and familiarise yourself with the modus operandi of the track. Pay special attention to the rules of overtaking. You don’t want to plant your car in the wall after spinning out on someone else’s oil just because you didn’t know what that yellow flag with the red stripes meant, do you? – Well, make a point of memorising the flag signals. more >>

Check tyre pressures. Tire pressures always increase as the tyres warm up, so don’t inflate them to the maximum pressure, but you will need more pressure than the lowest recommended pressure initially. Although there are many exceptions to the rule, it is generally accepted that road tyres should be slightly over-inflated for track use. +/- Point-3 to point-5-bar higher than the pressures you normally run on the road should suffice, but remember to check and adjust pressures between sessions.

Torque all wheel nuts. Wheel nuts tend to work loose on the track and you don’t wanna lose a wheel when you’re travelling at speed.

Remove all accessories and loose items from the car, including the spare wheel and jack. Remove the loose mat from the driver’s foot-well and make sure there are no empty beer cans under the driver’s seat! He-he-he…

Hey, pssst - There are lots of people hanging around at race tracks with cameras, snapping away at will. If you’re using your regular road car, tape up your number plates, licence disc and VIN number for obvious reasons.

If you’d like coaching, get some from an experienced driver, but only after you’ve had a few laps on your own. The speed and technique of good driver is completely alien to a newcomer. It will blow your mind and you won’t learn much at all. However, get some instruction early on and you will have the rest of the day to work on your driving.

Finally, study the track map and memorise the track layout just before you go out for your first session.

First session…

Traction control, DSC, ABS, DTC and all them nanny crap… Personally I would turn all the driver’s aids off, or at least set them to minimum interference, but the choice is yours. Go with whatever you’re comfortable with.

Warm up. Wanna kill your engine? – Rev it sky high when it’s still cold. You've seen these guys in the pits, as soon as the engine starts they rev the hell out of it. What for? Warming up the engine? Yeah right. There’s absolutely no reason to rev an engine like this, so please don’t fool yourself, heat comes from load and there is no load when you’re parked, in neutral. Just start the bloody car and leave it at idle while you’re in the pits.

Warm-up happens on, you guessed it.., the warm-up lap. The engine will warm up automatically whilst you’re warming up the tyres and brakes. Take it easy at first. Don’t keep your foot on the brake pedal continuously to warm the brakes up, you will glaze the pads. Short stabs on the brake pedal will suffice. Pick up the pace gradually, the tyres will warm up accordingly. Keep your eye on the temp gauge and don’t send it before the engine is up to its normal operating temperature.

Drive beyond your experience you won’t learn much. All you’ll get from pretending to be Michael Schumacher is a dented ego and a dented car. Drive as fast as you’re comfortable and work yourself in. Try and give yourself space ahead of you. Don’t be tempted to follow the car in front too closely, you’re likely to fixate and concentrate on him instead of the track. The trick is to look as far ahead as possible…

Look through the corners, not at them. The common sense with regard to ‘looking-through-corners’ on a race track is set in the fact that the further you look ahead, the more time you allow your brain to process things that are hurtling towards you when you’re travelling at speed. more >>

Don’t go brain-dead on the straights. Get used to checking your mirrors before and after each corner, you will be amazed how quickly the faster cars will catch you if you are a track novice. Be courteous and follow track etiquette. You’re not racing against the other cars. Try not to hold up faster cars coming up from behind, you’ll only piss them off. Most track day rules require that you stay on the racing line in corners in order for the faster drivers to predict which way you’re going, but on the straights you should move over and point the faster guys by.

Make it a habit to check your gauges on the straights. Make sure the car is happy, keep your eye on the temp & oil pressure gauges. Also watch your fuel gauge, it will drop quicker than you anticipate. If you feel a power loss coming out of a tight corner, back off. It’s probably the first sign of fuel starvation. This can happen when the gauge still shows a quarter tank or more. If you keep it planted you’re risking detonation due to a weak mixture. Return to the pits and refuel.

Give your brakes a breather every five laps or so. Slow down gradually and take a lap at 50 percent pace. Try not to use the brakes. Move off the racing line and monitor your mirrors for fast traffic.

As for you, the nut behind the wheel, you may also need a breather every now and again. Don’t continue at full pace when you feel you’re losing concentration. Breathe naturally and don’t tense up. You can expect to perspire considerably, but don’t keep driving ‘till you wanna pass out.

Do a slow-down lap at the end of each session at fifty percent pace and try not to use the brakes. Again, monitor your mirrors. There might be some asshole still on a flying lap coming up behind you… Signal that you’re about to exit the track and enter the pit real slow. Keep an eye out for kids and spectators, they may not hear you coming.

Park the car and leave it in gear. Do not use the park brake, or sit with your foot on the brake pedal. Heat build-up between the pads and discs will warp the discs. It’s advisable to move the car a few inches every few minutes to ensure the discs cool down evenly.

Turbo cars – Remember to let the car run for a few minutes after stopping, as usual!

Between sessions…

Give the car time to cool and check all fluid levels. You may never use oil on the road, but you are almost guaranteed to do so during a track day. Checking your oil regularly at the track is vital, especially with older engines.

Check the brake pads for wear, at least once. You will be amazed how quickly they get used up, especially with heavy cars.

Check tyre pressures after each session and release some air if the pressure build-up is excessive. Also check your tyres for excessive wear, especially around the outer edges where the tread meets the sidewall.

Re-torque all wheel nuts between sessions. This is very, very important. Wheel nuts tend to work loose on the track and you don’t wanna lose a wheel at speed, do you? Remember to do this again after the final session.

Upgrade to a faster group if you encounter too much slow traffic, but don’t get too brave or overly confident. With confidence comes complacency and there’s no room on a race track for complacency.

Beware of fatigue. Drink plenty of water, keep yourself hydrated. It’s a long day and the track will take it out of you, especially on hot days. You do need to look after yourself.

Afterwards…

Still in one piece? Good. Award yourself a beer whilst the car tick itself cold. Rave about what a fantastic day it was and talk smack with the other track junkies, re-torque all wheel nuts and let the tyre pressures down for normal road use, load up, clean up your pit area and head for home.

You’re gonna sleep like a rock tonight and tomorrow we’ll embark on that slippery slope of suspension and brake mods, or maybe buying a dedicated track car…?

Welcome to the club! You’re in for the best times and worst times of your life…

Cheers,
Pierre.

become a thinking driver

2010-03-12T15:50:00.001+02:00

Fail to plan, and you plan to fail.
by Pierre Martins

They say there are three kinds of entrepreneurs - Those who make things happen, those who wait for things to happen and those who wonder what the hell happened.

Well, the same is true in racing. Top drivers make things happen. They are always fast and at the sharp end of the field. They make it look so easy, yet they always strive to do better.

Top drivers understand that it’s an ongoing process to remain the fastest of the fastest out there.

Secondly there are those weekend racers who substitute their shortcomings as drivers by throwing more and more money at their cars in an attempt to go faster, instead of investing time and effort developing their driving skills.

Fast cars and fast drivers are not always synonymous.

But how do you develop your driving skills? By spending more time on track? Not necessarily. See, you also get those drivers whom I call ‘Track Zombies’. You know, the ones who don’t work on their driving at all, the ones who will do hundreds upon hundreds of laps and still end up mediocre drivers and none the wiser…

So how do you develop your driving?

Things happen very fast when you’re out there on the race track. There is really no time for thinking and you have to drive on instinct. The thinking part you have to do in the pits, between sessions. In other words, the actual driving part is the net result of your thinking.

To become a ‘Thinking Driver’ you need to learn how translate your thinking into your driving. In other words, learn how to put your thoughts into motion on the track. But wait, there’s more! You also need to learn how to translate your on-track experiences into thought, how to analyse those thoughts and then translate them back into your driving…

Okay humour me here. Let’s assume you arrive at the track for a test day. Your car well-prepped and ready. Everything is cool and you’re hoping to do well. Your objective for today is to drop your lap times by 2 seconds faster than you’ve lapped in previous races at this track. However, enthusiasm and ability are two entirely different concepts. How will you reduce your lap times? Where will you find those two seconds and how will you go about doing it? Balls to the wall driving does not necessarily make you any faster and pushing yourself beyond your limits usually means making mistakes more often. You know that’s counter-productive, so you’re gonna do things a bit differently this time. You’re gonna work with a plan…

There are two parts to a Driving Plan - thinking and driving.

Thinking happens in the pits before you go out for your first session. It’s about studying the track map and your notes from previous race meetings at this track. If you don’t have any track notes, now will be a good time to start writing things down. We’re talking about a shitload of information here, so unless you are a superbly talented driver blessed with a photographic memory, the best way to memorise things is to write them down…

Look at the track map and plan the ideal lap. Start with turn 1 and make notes on how you would like to drive the track, corner by corner. Think about the braking zones before each corner and write down where you need to start braking, how much braking is required, and where you get off the brakes for each corner. Make notes of your lines and turn-in points for each corner. Getting a corner right starts with how you position the car on the approach to that corner, so remember, if you’re on a good lap and you screw up the entry to just one corner, you’ve probably screwed up the rest of that corner and your lap time for that matter.

A nifty little trick is to use an imaginary block of one square meter, right next to the curb, or even on the curb, to aim for as turn-in points on the entry to each corner.

If it’s a right-hander you should hit your turn in block with your left front wheel, and vice versa.

Also note down-shifts and what gear you have to be in for each corner, where you aim to apex and exit on track out, where to feed the power on, up-shifts, bumps, known track conditions, the whole shooti'n’ match…! If you haven’t made detailed notes of this track before you’ll probably have some info missing about some areas of the track, as well as vague areas where you’re not 100% sure what you do on that part of the track. That alone is ample proof why you need a driving plan with comprehensive track notes in the first place. But not to worry, this is essentially what testing is for – To gather and translate info.

It’s advisable to walk the track beforehand, or ride it with a pit bike or bicycle. You’d be amazed how much you pick up by doing this.

Make a note to gather info about those areas of the track you’re unsure of. You will need to pay special attention to them when you’re out on track during your first session, especially if you’re slow in those areas.

Your Driving Plan	Make Notes!
Think first!	thought happens in the pits, before driving
Use a track map	walk the track beforehand, if possible.
Plan the ideal lap	turn by turn make ample notes
Track lay-out & conditions	identify known conditions difficult corners banked corners off-camber corners combination corners fast sweepers camber changes radius changes surface changes undulations bumps
Braking zones (brake markers)	threshold braking braking force braking distances brake release
Gearing	down-shifts, gear selection per corner
Racing line	turn-in points apex point track out
Missing links	identify missing and/or vague areas
Study	memorise your track notes over and over

First session

Time to turn your thoughts into driving with the preliminary driving plan you now have, but remember, the driving plan also requires you to turn your driving into thinking.

You not only need to implement your thoughts as per your driving plan, you also need to experience and record the track conditions, as well as your car’s performance and handling.

It is advisable to use the first session as an ‘orientation’ session to familiarise yourself with things. Pay attention to what happens when you’re out on the track, think about it as making a movie in your mind, a documentary of the events as they unfold whilst you’re driving. This is easier said than done, but the better you become at recording things, the better chance you’ll have at translating your driving into thought when you’re back in the pits again. Accurate recordings will give you much needed information. This is where modern day technology helps a lot in the way of onboard video footage, data loggers and telemetry, but you cannot depend solely on these things to improve your driving, because quite frankly, all these fancy gimmicks won’t do the actual driving on your behalf.

But please don’t get me wrong. I'm not against data loggers, but I've seen drivers misinterpret these things and I've also seen drivers become mentally lazy because they become overly dependent on data loggers. Some say data loggers are effective for newbies and people with limited time to go testing. That may be true, but your ability as a driver ultimately depends on how good you are at interpreting what happens whilst you’re driving. You have to learn how to turn motion into thought and then to translate those thoughts back into motion again. That’s the only way to improve your driving.

So, to recap, your objectives during the first session is to record what happens on track, what the track conditions are and what your car’s handling and performance are like. You need to experience and pay attention to grip levels, what the brakes are like, gearing, engine performance and handling. Do you experience any over-steer and/or under-steer and if so, in which corners and where in those corners? On entry or exit? And you need to do all that whilst implementing your preliminary driving plan, as well as making mental notes of those areas of the track that you’re unsure of, the areas with missing and/or vague information, as well as areas of the track where there’s obvious room for improvement.

Can you see that there is no point in going hell for leather during first practice if it means you’re gonna miss out on all the important stuff you need to take cognisance of?

Interpretation and expression

Back in the pits after your first session. Things will be freshest in your memory during the first five to ten minutes, so use this time constructively. The main objective now is to interpret what you’ve just experienced out on track. The car comes first. Think about issues with the car - traction, gearing, braking and handling. Under-steer and over-steer. You need to give your mechanic feedback on what the car is doing in order for him to improve the setup as necessary. And you need to do this first, so he can get started on the car whilst you get back to your notes and working on your driving plan.

For a mechanic there is nothing worse than a driver who can’t give feedback. How can you expect him to make positive setup changes if you can’t tell him what the car is doing in the first place?

The relationship between driver and mechanic is crucial and you need to express yourself in a way your mechanic understands. The two of you need to talk the same handling and setup language. He needs your input to understand what the car is doing, and you need to understand how the setup changes will affect the handling of the car.

Data loggers and onboard footage are handy tools at this stage, but be careful not to fall into the trap of blaming the car for shortcomings in your driving plan, especially not after the first session. Maybe I’m just old-school, but I believe you should not become overly dependent on technology to tell you what the cause of your problems are. I prefer using onboard footage and data logs to second guess myself. In other words, I like to identify problems myself, and then use technology to confirm whether I’m right or wrong about something.

That’s how you gain solid experience, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Working the Driving Plan…

Right, now that the mechanic knows what setup changes to make, you can get back to your driving plan. Get your track notes and track map and get ready to make more notes.

In aviation they have a saying - ‘Identify, verify and rectify’.

Think about the laps you’ve just completed and identify the areas on the track where you can go faster. Ask yourself which corners posed problems for you? Where did you brake too early, too hard, or too long? Where did you turn in too soon? Where did you struggle to find drive on the exit? Make notes, write things down.

Ask yourself why and how you made those mistakes. Try to find the answers in your mind first, and then view your onboard footage and data logs. It’s important to second guess yourself in order to make sure you’re right about your facts. If you don’t have a data logger or onboard camera in your car, you can always ask other people who were watching you what they saw. Ask the driver who was coming up behind you in the area of the track where you were slower. What did he see?

Another handy tip - Appoint spotters. Get a friend or member of your crew to watch your driving in the corner where you struggle. Ask them to observe what you’re doing in that corner and what the competition is doing in the same corner. Where do the faster guys brake, turn in, apex, etc?

Think about your mistakes. Why did you make them and how? It’s very important to know this. The more you know about your mistakes, even the silly ones, the more obvious the solutions will become…

Okay, now that you know what your mistakes were and where on the track you made them, you can start thinking about possible solutions. What can you do about it?

To go faster you have three basic choices –

Change something, add something, or remove something.

Your driving plan is not written in stone. You can change things. Remember those imaginary square meter blocks you aim for as your turn-in points? Well, they can be moved around if you decide to change your turn-in point for any corner. You can also change your line through a corner, your brake markers, your apex points, whatever. You can also add and remove things. Modulate the pressure you apply to the brake pedal for more braking force or less braking force, and so on. You know what I mean. It’s perfectly okay to change your driving plan, as long as you think things through.

For example, what will the implications be if you change your line in a certain corner? What if you add more throttle? What if you brake less? In fact, there are countless ‘what if’ scenarios you could run through your mind for each corner on the track. Some will improve your lap times and others may bite you on the ass, but in the end everything boils down to your ability to translate your driving into thought…

The more experience you gain the easier it will become, but you know what they say about experience – It usually gives you the test first and the lesson afterwards…

Let’s use an example. You struggle in a certain corner and you’re always slow on track out. The other competitors get better drive there and you get passed there often. So what are you going to do about it? If you’re thinking about simply carrying more corner speed through that corner, you’ve lost the plot already. But if you plan to change your line by going in deeper and getting off the brakes a tad sooner, squaring off that corner so you can get back on the power sooner and harder, well, then you’ve got a plan that may actually work!

You can’t knock square pegs into round holes.
Your plan must fit the corner.

It’s senseless having a plan that doesn’t work. You gotta think things through. Think about the consequences when you change something, when you add or remove something. What will the implications be further down the track? How will it effect your speed and ultimately, your lap times? In the end you have to be sure that your plan for a corner actually fits the corner.

Every driver has a ‘favourite corner’. Think about your favourite corner on this track. It’s the corner you enjoy the most, probably because you have a good working plan for that corner and you’re pretty quick through there. So what’s stopping you from developing good working plans for the corners you hate?

Working Your Driving Plan	Make Improvements!
Corner by corner use track map and make notes	find better markers entry Line threshold braking brake pressure braking distance release brakes down changes turn-in point apex point power on track out marker
Identify	room for improvement where were you slow?
Verify	why were you slow? what did you do wrong? consult data logs, footage talk to others
Rectify	change something add something remove something
define changes	think things through consequences & implications plan must fit the corner
Memorise your driving plan	think in the pits drive on instinct

Taking it to the next level…

Right, you’ve now got a car with the necessary setup changes, so it should perform better. You’ve formulated and memorised your updated driving plan, pit-lane opens and away you go! But hang on a minute, before you get cracking there is something very important that you should consider -

The trick is not to drive the car, or the track for that matter, the trick is to DRIVE YOUR PLAN.., bada bing, bada boom!

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that you stand a better chance of improving your driving with a well thought through and well rehearsed driving plan, instead of just going out there and trying as hard as you can in a ‘come-what-may’ fashion. It’s a no-brainer, really.

And as always, the faster you go, the more difficult things will become. For starters, things will happen quicker, your reactions will have to be quicker and you’ll have to be quicker at recording things at speed. There won’t be any time for thinking, which is all the more reason why you should become accustomed to driving on instinct. The more proficient you become at executing a proper driving plan, the quicker you’ll become. You’ve heard top drivers talk about that ‘zone’ you get into when everything seems to happen in slow motion. You become ‘detached’, yet you always remain one step ahead. Well, that can only happen if you are able to drive on instinct.

Think about your favourite corner again. Things are easy in that corner because you’ve got a well-rehearsed plan for that corner. You’re obviously driving that corner on instinct. Now think of the other corners you like. There should be quite a few of them, because you like racing, don’t you? You like those corners because you have semi-decent plans for them. What you need to do throughout the rest of the day’s testing is rehearse and fine-tune your driving plan in those corners…

Racing is a test of skill and race tracks are designed to be challenging by nature. All the corners are not supposed to be easy.

You only hate a difficult corner because you’re not comfortable in that corner. Be honest with yourself - Chances are your plan doesn’t fit that corner, or you have no plan at all.

So what are your options? You can’t ignore the bloody corner, or the fact that your plan ain’t working for that corner, so change it! You can see where I’m going with this, right? – The idea is to use the time in the pits between sessions to develop well thought through plans for each and every corner, connect the dots, memorise them and rehearse them during practice.

Enough for now…

I sincerely hope this little guide will be helpful to you. At the very least I hope it gets you started on your way to becoming a thinking driver and ultimately, a better all-round driver. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and you have to refine your driving plan continually to remain on top of your game. You have to keep working at it, over and over and over in an endless quest to reach a level where your driving becomes instinct, second nature…

With confidence comes complacency and there’s no room for complacency in racing…

Remember, it’s an ongoing process. Your ability as a driver ultimately depends on how good you are at interpreting what happens whilst you’re driving. You have to learn how to turn motion into thought, and then to translate those thoughts back into motion again. That’s the only way to improve your driving.

Good Luck!

Cheers,
Pierre.

brian beckman’s physics of racing series

2010-03-08T23:36:00.001+02:00

Reproduced here, with permission.
by Pierre Martins

The how’s and why's of punting a car around a track.

The entire Physics of Racing Series (PhoRS) by Brian Beckman, PhD, reproduced here with permission.

The articles are available in both Adobe® Acrobat® (PDF) form, suitable for printing and HTML suitable for viewing online.

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Intro

Introduction to the Physics of Racing

Part 1

Weight Transfer

904k

Part 2

Keeping Your Tyres Stuck to the Ground

792k

Part 3

Basic Calculations

786k

Part 4

There Is No Such Thing as Centrifugal Force

898k

Part 5

Introduction to the Racing Line

953k

Part 6

Speed and Horsepower

903k

Part 7

The Traction Budget

1019k

Part 8

Simulating Car Dynamics with a Computer Program

815k

Part 9

Straights

996k

Part 10

Grip Angle

904k

Part 11

Braking

427k

Part 12

CyberCar, Every Racer's DWIM Car?

832k

Part 13

Transients (The missing episode)

943k

Part 14

Why Smoothness?

1099k

Part 15

Bumps In The Road

1229k

Part 16

RARS, A Simple Racing Simulator

1104k

Part 17

"Slow-in, Fast-out!" or, Advanced Analysis of the Racing Line

955k

Part 18

"Slow-in, Fast-out!" or, Advanced Analysis of the Racing Line, Continued

1031k

Part 19

Space, Time, and Rubber

635k

Part 20

Four-Point Statics

981k

Part 21

The Magic Formula: Longitudinal Version

1093k

Part 22

The Magic Formula: Lateral Version

1026k

Part 23

Trail Braking

856k

Part 24

Combination Slip

781k

Part 25

Combination Grip

1021k

Part 26

The Driving Wheel, Chapter I

1108k

Part 27

Four-Wheel Weight Transfer

973k

Part 28

Hazards of Integration

1152k

Part 29

A Magical Trick

1501k

Click on the left column to view online, or click on the right hand column to download printable pdf files.

Cheers,
Pierre.

track test – 250 superkart

2010-03-08T17:57:00.001+02:00

First drive…
by Pierre Martins

Back in 2005 I got an invite to test a 250 shifter kart for the first time. It was an experience I will never forget.

Here’s what I wrote back then -

I’ve always wanted to have a go in one of these little rockets, and when the opportunity presented itself when I was offered a test drive in one at Zwartkops Raceway, I grabbed the opportunity with a fat smile, dusted off my old leathers from my bike racing days, removed the knee sliders and squeezed myself into them…

The kart, well it was way different to anything I’ve ever driven before. Even getting into the thing is different, you stand in the seat, lean down on the sides of the seat and work your way down into the kart. The driving position is slightly off-centre, with the Rotax 2-stroke motor under your right arm and the fuel tank under your left arm.

You kinda ‘pop’ into the seat. It has to be very tight, there are no seat belts and even though the seat didn't fit me properly, I felt safe. You literally become part of the kart, even aerodynamically.

Time to start the sucker. Not an easy job. First of all, you need to be Arnold the governor of California to pull the clutch lever that is mounted on the steering rod. I had to use both hands to engage the clutch, then one hand to hold it in whilst hooking first gear. A short push from a pit helper, dump the clutch, fire it up, pull the clutch again and blip the throttle slowly and continually to warm up the motor.

Pit-lane opened and I was told to keep the revs up by slipping the clutch to get moving. If you dump the clutch and you're not in the power-band, it will just bog down and oil up the plugs, so you gotta keep the revs up on pull-off. The little 250cc Rotax twin revs easily right up to 12000rpm and beyond. In fact, it will keep revving 'till the motor pops, and this kart had no working rev-counter, so I had to judge the revs by ear.

Below the power-band it’s weaker than a 5bhp lawnmower and made a stupid prrrr, prrrrr, prrrrr sound, but when the power-band kicked in around 7000rpm it turned into a loud BWAAAAAAAP, change gear, BWAAAAAAP, that sort of thing. It revs helluva quick and you have to be wide awake with quick gear changes or you'll pop the motor.

The acceleration was absolutely freaking unbelievable!

This thing will do zero to 100kmh in less than 3 seconds, with a top speed of around 260kmh, so it ain’t no slouch, but with such a narrow power-band the G-forces will throw your head back and keep it there for as long as you keep your right foot flat. Kinda difficult looking down your nose whilst going flat-out, he-he-he…

There is only one way to drive a 250 kart - flat-out and balls to the wall.

That makes learning to drive the thing a tad difficult. If you go too slow, nothing works like it should. The motor falls out of the power-band, the tyres drop below operating temperatures and you lose down-force. I tried going into corners a gear higher and maintaining high mid-corner speed, like I would in a car, but I quickly ditched that plan because the motor would not pull from low revs. Gotta keep the revs up, gotta stay on the button!

There were other issues as well. With a two-stroke there is no engine braking and no feathering the throttle through sweepers. You will starve the motor from oil and it will seize, so it's balls to the wall and keep it there all the time. That's the only way to drive it. The driving technique is also way different to cars. You finish your braking, gear down quickly, zing, zing, zing and then you're back on the power, hard and way before the apex...

And the brakes, oh man, the brakes are out of this world. Remember what I said about the kart throwing your head back under acceleration? Well, hit the brakes and it's hello whiplash! Fortunately I didn't battle with left foot braking at all. And then there are the G-forces in the corners, my head wanted to fall off all the time.

To sum it up - It's freaking awesome and violent at the same time. I gotta admit I was a tad out of my depth though, with no points of reference to work from, none at all. I didn't know where to brake, turn in, feed the power on etc, but the thing I struggled with most was keeping my damn head straight, literally.

Most radical driving experience I’ve ever had, that’s for sure!

And that was just the beginning.

I was hooked. In fact, I bought the kart that very day and did a couple of Superkart races towards the end of 2005, learned to drive all over again and made a deal with myself that I’d keep at it for as long as it would take to become a consistent front runner in the local 250 Superkart Championship. That little endeavour took just over two years to accomplish.

So, if you ever get the opportunity to drive one of these mental little modified shopping trolleys, my advice to you is buy a neck brace, take some brave pills and go for it! You will never experience anything else quite like it.

A 250 Superkart really is the closest thing that average Joes like you and I can get to what an F1 car must feel like. Some say that 250 Superkarts are actually scarier than F1 cars. Mind you, David Coulthard once tested a 250 kart way back in ‘94 when he was still a test driver for McLaren and said that driving the kart was one of the scariest things he ever had to do…

Cheers,
Pierre.

2010 david piper invitational races

2010-02-12T22:04:00.001+02:00

Race report from Zwartkops & Killarney.
by Pierre Martins

If you like to see the wheels being driven off some of the best cars in history, the David Piper Invitational races at Zwartkops and Killarney are the tracks to visit during late January and early February every year. Billed as The Golden Age of Motoring, these events are probably the biggest spectacle on the local Historic Racing calendar…

But before I continue, I’d like to set the records straight. Some people think “Old Cars” and automatically deduce that the racing is bound to be slow and boring, because, they say, all you have is a bunch of old farts slowly pussyfooting around the race track, scared that harm will come to their classic race cars that are worth gazillions. Well, I can tell you emphatically that this is not the case. The lap times may be slightly off when compared to the latest and greatest technology-enriched modern race cars, but the actual racing is just as much a spectacle as the rest.

As a matter of fact, I’ve seen the majority of competitors driving with the same commitment and competitive spirit as I’ve seen in any other form of circuit racing in South Africa, barring some hotshot categories of course, where taking each other out deliberately has become the preferred race strategy of most contenders when they struggle to pass the car ahead. Be that as it may, in these last few Historic Car races alone I’ve seen cars being driven in anger, I’ve seen four-wheel-drifts and copious amounts of slip angle from most of the top runners in the fast sweepers like Sunset at Kyalami, T4 at Zwartkops and Malmesbury corner at Killarney. I saw guys have a go at each other in priceless and irreplaceable cars, wheel-to-wheel racing and out-braking manoeuvres galore, power-slides coming out of the hairpins, car control and race-craft like only seasoned and experienced racers can produce…

I also saw mishaps and drama. Hell, I’ve even seen tempers flaring and arguments in pit-lane. And I saw all these things as a spectator and from a competitor’s point of view, so please don’t tell me Historic Car Racing is boring if you weren’t there to witness the racing and/or competed firsthand. Sure, there are fewer kamikaze moves and big crashes, and yes, crashes are nice for the spectators to see, but not so nice when you’re a self-funded competitor fitting the bill to fix your own car. So think about that.

Okay, silly rant over. Let’s move on. With roughly ten thousand spectators and over 500 entries, Zwartkops sure was a busy place during the last weekend of January. They had so many categories racing that even the competitors struggled to make sense of the programme. Some of the races had to be moved to Friday afternoon and the majority of the ‘important’ races were crammed into a full day’s racing on Saturday’s schedule. All the classic bike races were held on Sunday, making it a ‘bike only’ day…

As for the drivers & cars I was involved with, I can tell you my mate Dave Fourie wasn’t allowed to enter any of the races that formed part of the Springbok Series due to the wheel sizes he’s running on his yellow IROC 911 RSR. He’s running 17” wheels, the original RSR’s ran 15”s and you’re only allowed one size bigger. Kinda daft rule if you ask me, because the overall diameters are the same if you take the tyre profiles into account. But they’re getting quite anal about small anomalies that don’t comply with FIA rules these days, and the rules are the rules, I guess. Pieter du Toid did accommodate Dave in one of the other classes though, so Dave got a few sprint races in on the day.

Keith Rose had no such problems. His white RSR complied with all the rules and he entered every single race he could and got more track time than he bargained for. He’s like the Duracell Bunny this one, there’s no end to his enthusiasm…

Me, I was gonna do the spectator thing and relax, but Keith asked me to do one of the twelve-lap sprints and the enduro with him. And you know me, you don’t have to ask me twice to hop in behind the wheel of a 911. Hell, I’d drive a motorised wheelbarrow if it was powered by a flat six Weissach engine pushing out over 300hp!

Mind you, track conditions were so bad the car actually felt like an over-steering wheelbarrow…

Some knucklehead blew an engine or something and sprayed oil all around the track like he was taking a piss in his own back yard. We sat on the grid for what felt like ages whilst the marshals tried their best to clean up the mess, but full-synthetic oil is a bitch to clean up. Cement does next to nothing to it and it just has to wear away with time, I guess.

The slippery conditions produced two interesting races though. In the twelve-lapper things were not too bad. Started next to Dave on the grid and messed around with him for a lap or two, but it was evident I had better pace, so I took him into the table top and cleared off on my own mission, only to be be caught out and losing it during the penultimate lap on the oil in T4 when Franz Pretorius in the 956 suddenly backed off just in front of me, but I rejoined quickly to finish just behind Dave. His toes must have been curling, he-he-he…

The enduro was even more fun. I dunno if the oil had just spread more, or if someone else had dropped more oil, but grip deteriorated to a level where it felt like you’re driving a top-fuel dragster on a skating rink. Keith only did three laps and pitted, thinking there was actually something wrong with the car.

The car was fine and I did the remainder of the race, well, the whole damn race for all intentional purposes, skating on thin ice. Hell, it was hard work. The entire race was a kinda prolonged state of monotonous concentration. Let your concentration slip for a split second and they’d be picking pieces of the car from the tyre wall...

The hairpin and table top sections were the most fun for everyone. Come in there as hard and fast as you dare and turn in… With no grip the car would immediately plough into a prolonged under-steer until you woke up and realize ‘hell, I can’t let this go on forever’. Back on the power hard to bring the ass around. Uncoil the steering wheel quickly to prevent going into a tank-slapper! Huge fun, but slow.

And that was that. Thank heavens it was over. I was delighted. So was Keith, but he must have breathed a sigh of relief when the chequered flag dropped with his pretty RSR still in one piece. I brought the White Puppy home in fifth spot without any mishaps. The White Puppy… See what I just did there? The car just got a name! It’s a cheeky little white fox-terrier!

And like true track junkies, the very next weekend we were at Killarney in full force with both the Duracell Bunny and the White Puppy in true form. Keith started way down the grid on Saturday and worked his way up to finish a very respectable third in the first race.

Unfortunately all the serious races where scheduled for Sunday and Mario and I had a date with a certain Lamborghini Gallardo at Kyalami that Sunday, so we had to fly back to Jo’burg on Saturday eve. The Gallardo drive was nice, but I wish we rather stayed and watched the Killarney races instead. From the feedback I got there is really only one way to describe it - Keith put in two exceptional drives in the sprint races, pulled off a second overall and beating some of the biggest names in SA motorsport in some of the races!

Hey Keeef, well done mate! I wish I could have done what you just did! - Not bad for an amateur weekend racer, methinks!

And that’s the end of this story. The ribbon in my tripe-writer is kaput and I need some sleep!

Cheers,
Pierre.

track test – lamborghini gallardo

2010-02-09T11:54:00.001+02:00

Kyalami, February 2010.
by Pierre Martins

Sunday morning and yet another day in the life of a track junkie. Up early, shit-shave-and-shower in the correct order, followed by two quick cups of strong coffee to get my mind in gear, grab helmet bag and stuff, head out to the track and cherish that early Sunday morning cruise when the highways are still relatively empty, when the air is still nice and cool and fresh, when taking an easy relaxed drive seems like the right thing to do. You know, the calm before the storm, when you take a moment to appreciate the lifestyle and look forward to the next few hours of track time…

On this occasion I probably drove all the way to the track with my face stuck in a silly grin of anticipation. I was excited about this opportunity. In fact, I had given up an invite from Keith Rose to drive his spunky white Porsche RSR in the David Piper endurance races down in Cape Town on the same day, and if you knew me personally you’d know that missing out on a race in favour of driving a standard road-going car around a race track was something way out of character for me, but my mouth was watering to sample a late model Lambo on a race track and it’s not every day the boss of Lamborghini South Africa invites you to drive a Gallardo at full tilt around Kyalami, so how could I not say ‘Yes, please!’..?

The Gallardo turned out to be a blue ‘06 jobby, 500hp, manual box on Pirelli P-something road rubber. I’m kinda old-school, so I was happy about the gearbox. E-gear and paddle shifts are not for me. I know how to heel & toe properly and I’ll do the blipping of the throttle myself, thank you.

As for ergonomics and stuff…, well, I can tell you the dash reminded me of the Golf 5 rental I drove in Cape Town the day before, typical VW genes. But you’re not gonna read about cup-holders and crap here. See, I don’t really care for frilly-frally creature comfort gimmicks in a sports car, so I can’t really tell you about all the Gallardo’s cool yuppie knobs, switches and buttons. All I cared about was that the car fitted my 1.75m / 85kg frame like a glove, with all the controls within easy reach. The Steering wheel, nice and thick Alcantara jobby, not too big or small, just the right size. Instrument cluster offered good positioning of all gauges and idiot lights. All-round vision turned out to be quite good from inside the cockpit, with the rear-view mirrors perhaps better than most other mid-engine tin tops I’ve driven on a race track, but I suspect reverse parking could be a tad tricky in everyday life until you get used to the car’s blind spots.

But let’s get to the actual driving. Riding shotgun with Marius Malherbe for a few laps gave me the opportunity to experience the car in the hands of someone who drives different Lamborghinis all day long, every day. The man can pedal, and he’s obviously quite at ease, as he should be, behind the wheel of a Gallardo. He stuck in a few good laps whilst I observed him and experienced what the car was doing.

First impressions – Very capable car in the hands of a capable driver, good power and balance with the entire package in perfect harmony, just as you’d expect from modern-day mid-engine geometry. And the sound emanating from that V10 at full tilt, oh man…! A Porsche has that low-pitch powerful roar like a lion. Ferraris scream like mosquitoes in the everglades, but this thing, oh man, it growls like a tiger in mating season. Intoxicating, to say the least!

Okay, my turn behind the wheel. The driver’s foot-well is a bit cramped, you kinda get the idea it wasn’t designed to accommodate the extra pedal necessitated by the manual box. Drivers with extra large feet will have a problem driving a Gallardo with manual setup, but you know they say a man’s shoe size is directly comparable to the size of his most valuable endowment, so I guess most Gallardo drivers won’t really have a problem at all… He-he-he.

My first lap impressions of the car – The controls were designed for women and limp-wristed hairdressers, not for real men. I found everything just too light, slick and way too easy to operate for my liking. A sports-car should have a heavy clutch. Hell, I grew up on heavy clutches. The Gallardo’s clutch is so light I barely felt it through the thin soles of my driving shoes. The brakes too. Hit the brakes like you would in any race car and the Gallardo would stand on its nose. In this thing the mere weight of your big toe on the brake pedal is more than adequate to slow it down. The steering wheel is light, the accelerator pedal is light, hell, even the shifter is light and just glides smoothly into the gates.

But you get used to it quickly and it becomes an absolute pleasure to drive, well actually, you don’t drive this car, you make passionate love to it. No need to muscle the thing about, just get the car into a comfort zone and dance with it. Easy peasy.

The handling is absolutely superb and the car gives adequate feedback even though the controls are so light. There was some mild under-steer engineered into the car as expected, but I found it easy to drive around that and the front-end never pushed like a plough, as some of the Audi performance models do when pushed hard on a race track. Power of this particular car felt good and power delivery smooth, with ample torque to pull you out of the corners, but I got the feeling the car could easily cope with another fifty to sixty ponies, which, I guess, was exactly what Lamborghini were thinking when they came up with the LP560.

Before I took the wheel I joked with Marius that I didn’t believe in all the nanny stuff like traction & stability control and ABS in sports cars and that I wanted all that shit switched off, but you know what? – I pushed the car hard for a few sessions and kept all the safety nets switched on. Traction control in the Gallardo is actually quite sweet. The car didn’t just die on me like a BMW would when miss nanny conservative stepped in, instead it moderated the car ever so slightly and let me have my way. I got good amounts of slip angle in some places around Kyalami, but never got out of shape even though I was hoofing it much better. Sure, the little yellow light on the dash flickered like it was on a Vegas acid trip, but I just ignored that.

I gotta say this is a sweet car. I thoroughly enjoyed driving it, but I’m used to driving on full slicks and lowering my expectations with regard to traction is not something I like doing. I’d love to try it on slicks, or R-rubber at least. Apart from that I can only say that there is no way in hell you can call yourself a true petrol-head if you don’t like this car…

This car is not just show – it’s got go!

Thanks for the opportunity Marius, you’ll be the first guy I call when I win the lottery. I just need to save up enough money to buy the ticket…

Cheers,
Pierre.

track test – porsche 930 turbo

2010-01-19T20:24:00.001+02:00

Zwartkops Raceway, January 2010.
by Pierre Martins

My ass was itching to get back on track after the December holidays, so getting into my friend Allan’s 930 turbo at an open track day at Zwartkops Raceway was a good start to 2010.

It kinda felt as if I was stepping back into a time capsule from 1981. The dash looked brand new, straight, no cracks. The seats showed no signs of wear and tear. The carpets looked the way they did when this car first rolled off the production line. In fact, the whole interior of this car was a trip down 930 memory lane, right down to the stock steering wheel shoved up so close against the instrument cluster it made me wonder how drivers with big hands could drive these things without getting their fingers jammed between the steering wheel and dash.

And another little trivial thing – With these old 911s, I always feel a tad more ‘at home’ in the left hand drive jobbies. In the right hand drive cars like Allan’s 930, the pedals don’t line up properly with the driver’s seat. They’re slightly off to the left, so you always have to take a moment to align yourself in the seat. But once you get going you kinda forget about it. So never mind, I dunno why I even bothered to mentioned that…

As for the exterior, I’ve always liked the timeless shape of the 911, and the wide fenders of the 930 turbo gave it that extra beefy look, you know - that think-twice-before-you-mess-with-me look of a night club bouncer from the eighties. But it’s now almost three decades later and just like those old eighties bouncers, most of the 930 turbos in South Africa have been modified and bastardised way past their prime, but there are still a few good ones around, like Allan’s pristine original 930 turbo, with stock Fuchs rims and all.

Yup, this is a particularly good example of what the 930 turbo once was. Engine, suspension and brakes on this car, stock standard of course. The one and only aftermarket thing on this car is the exhaust system, albeit an exact copy of the upgrade that was available form Porsche in the eighties. To sum it up, this is an unmolested ‘81 turbo that could easily be turned into a proper concourse car with a few hours of cleaning and detailing, but Allan, even though he’s incredibly fussy about his cars, ain’t the concourse type and his Porsches are definitely no garage queens.

He keeps them impeccable, but he loves to drive them as they were intended to be driven. You should see his special 993, the second last one from a limited run of just twelve cars (Seinfeld picked the last one), but that’s a story for another time.

Anyway, putting a well-kept classic like this on a race track is actually not the right thing to do, but the idea behind this test was to blow the cobwebs away and see what the car was capable of on a race track, for once.

I must admit that I was a tad sceptical myself as to whether I should really take a chance behind the wheel of this car. I remembered all those wild stories I’ve heard about the 930 turbo over the years, what a beast it was, how difficult it was to drive, that it would bite your head off when the boost came in, and so on and so forth, but you know what? - To hell with all of that, Allan asked me to drive the thing and I was gonna do just that.

Time to fire the thing up! The tell-tale blup-blup-blup-blup of the 3,3L flat six at idle sounded lovely, cute almost, but I was expecting a wolf in sheep’s clothing even though I was trying shake off all those preconceptions as I cruised out of pit lane…

Right, time to put two and two together real fast. Handling was exactly what I expected from a stock 911. Some body-roll, but it will basically go where you point it as long as you don’t do anything stupid like backing off in a corner. Brakes were no good for the first few laps, but got progressively better as I got heat into them.

As for the engine – Oh Man, what a hoot! Power delivery reminded me of a 250 Superkart. Very similar to a two-stroke. Nothing at first, and then everything at once. And once the boost came, it kept coming in bucket loads! At first I thought the power would taper off at higher revs with the tall ratios of the 4-speed box, but no, it kept pulling like a steam train right up and past 6000rpm. I never allowed it to go beyond 6300rpm, but I got the feeling this thing would rev until it went bang if I was stupid enough to let that happen.

That was the first session and the first time I experienced an all-original 930 turbo on a race track. I learned some new things. A 930 turbo is not a point-and-squirt car, it’s a momentum car. Boost management is crucial. You need to heel & toe properly, time your downshifts properly and get back on the power early to keep that snail in the ass spinning. And it’s surprisingly not really all that difficult to time your throttle input through corners to get the boost coming in just after you apex and getting the full wallop down on track-out.

Confident that I more or less got the knack of the car, I took Allan out for the next session and upped the pace a little without thrashing the car or taking unnecessary risks.

But don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t pussyfooting either. Did a couple of laps in the low 1’16”s, pretty quick for a 930 on hard compound street tyres around Zwartkops, but Allan started getting car sick after a few laps so we came in early. To say that he was little more than happy with the performance of his 930 is an understatement. Lemme put it like this – If I had to leave out all the crude expletives that came out of his mouth afterwards, well then, he didn’t actually say much. He-he-he…

The next session I went out with a 964 RS glued to my ass, so I decided to see what he’s got and upped the pace another notch or two, getting the 930 a tad loose in the right places and dipping into the mid 1’14”s on a few consecutive laps. I was really enjoying the car, and the guy in the 964 lacked the cahoonas and/or ability to stay with the 930, but I decided to call it a day before my luck ran out. This was Allan’s pride and joy after all.

And that was that. Allan’s 930 turbo, being stock standard, gave me the opportunity to sample what these cars felt like on street tyres, on a race track. I know a lot has been said and written about the 930 turbo in the past, but for now, for what it’s worth - I’m totally in love with the car and I don’t understand why the big fuss over its handling and performance characteristics? It’s not nearly as wild and unforgiving as I expected.

So, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a fantastic car. Sure, it’s not a car for the faint hearted and you need to be wide awake to pedal one of these things around a race track at a decent pace, but if you understand the 930 and get the hang of it, there is nothing else quite like it. Well, nothing in standard trim that was built 29 years ago anyway.

I can’t remember what other standard production cars were considered to be real opposition to the 930 way back then, but I’m sure it’s safe to say that none of them could possibly provide the thrills of the 930.

It’s certainly one of the most enjoyable standard road cars I’ve ever had the pleasure of driving on a race track, that’s for sure.

Thanks Allan.

Cheers,
Pierre.

about my random posts

2010-01-08T22:45:00.001+02:00

On this Blog…
by Pierre Martins

I can categorise most of the nonsense I write on this blog. Some are funny stories, others are race reports, tips, technical articles, track tests and whatnot, but there are some posts that can only be classified as ‘Random’. These posts don’t really conform to anything, but if you’re bored - they’re worth a read…

Group 4 RSR preview

Every time I think this car has reached the end of the road as far as development goes, Dave’s pockets turn out deeper than I thought. He's just taken it to full Group 4 spec care of Jimmy Hendricks bodywork & wheels…

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Porsche 911 Canyon Carving

The nice thing about Nelspruit from a petrol-head’s perspective is that it’s nestled smack bang in the middle of mountainous terrain that offers some of the best driving roads in Southern Africa…

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Chery 48-Hour Endurance Run

I got roped into this thing at the last minute by long-time Formula GTi racer Gerrit de la Rey.

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Drifting in South Africa

The other day I spent a cold and windy Sunday at Midvaal Raceway helping a friend with a little Porsche 924 improve his lines and lap times, but that's not what I wanna talk about…

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The Story of my TL1000

Sometimes you just can’t afford the best and you end up buying second best and turn it into something sweet as you go along…

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Porsche 944 – Rui’s Turbo Cup

Local Shelby Can-Am racer and 2008 national champion, Rui Campos, has owned this immaculate and original 944 Turbo Cup for a number of years now…

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Angela’s Picnic

Angela Heinz was a remarkable lady who’s interests included crop-sprayers, off-road motorcycles, Opera, Morgan cars, rifle shooting and Dobermans…

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Guzzi Trike

I have to admit, it wasn’t the type of vehicle that would normally get my attention, but there was something appealing in it’s uniqueness…

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I sincerely hope you enjoy some of these stories. If you do, leave some feedback, will ya?

Cheers,
Pierre.

race reports

2010-01-06T22:58:00.001+02:00

On this Blog.
by Pierre Martins

There are race reports and race reports. Some are boring as hell, written by outsiders and/or journo’s. I’d like to believe my race reports are different in the sense that I share them as I’ve experienced them. Sometimes I’ll even put you in the car with me.

Plus, I believe racing should be fun and you should always learn something new, that’s why I make a point of throwing in a good dose of humour and fortune cookie wisdom for good measure. I hope you enjoy these -

Little Porsche 924 fun & games

My friends have said I should write a book about all the funny shit we’ve experienced at race tracks over the years and this story would most certainly feature in that book if I ever decide to pull my finger out my ass and actually write it. Come to think of it, I’m certainly not short on funny characters, so let me introduce a couple of them and the stupid shit they (we) do…

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Shelby Can-Am – May 2010

Nestled in the Andaman Sea on Thailand's Indian Ocean coastline about 850km south of Bangkok is a little tropical paradise island known as ’Phuket’. It has next to nothing to do with this race meet or motorsport in general, but if you deliberately miss-pronounce the name ‘Phuket’ in the English lingo it takes on an alternative meaning…

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2010 David Piper Invitational races

The hairpin and table top sections were the most fun for everyone. Come in there as hard and fast as you dare and turn in… With no grip the car would immediately plough into a prolonged under-steer until you woke up and realize ‘hell, I can’t let this go on forever’. Back on the power hard to bring the ass around. Uncoil the steering wheel quickly to prevent going into a tank-slapper!

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2009 Kyalami Nine Hour Retro

One thing lead to another and I found myself behind the wheel of Keith Rose’s spunky ‘73 Porsche 911 RSR in a One-Hour endurance race at Kyalami…

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Altech GT Challenge 2009 – Round 1

I was somewhat un-prepared for for this season’s GT Challenge. Hell, I didn't even know whether I wanted to race in this series or not…

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Altech GT Challenge 2009 – Round 2

Well, this time there is not much to report on, except that I won both heats in my class by a country mile. The racing was utterly boring though, with two lonely races in a row.

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Altech GT Challenge 2009 – Round 3

Unlike the boring round I had at Zwartkops the actual racing turned out to be fantastic this time. Had a titanic battle with youngster Dillon Miller in a lightweight 2.9 911RS in class E…

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Altech GT Challenge 2009 – Round 4

This one turned into a heated battle right from the start with youngster Dillon Miller in the lightweight little 911 RS. It was like a continuation of the Kyalami races, with me piling the pressure on in bucket loads…

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Altech GT Challenge 2009 – Round 5 to 8

Okay at this point in the season I got lazy when it came to writing. I did put some notes down about the last four races of the local ‘09 GT Challenge series, but I can’t remember where I saved it on my computer. I should actually dig out and finish the reports for the sake of posterity, but don’t hold your breath.

Please check back later.

250 Superkarts 2007 – Round 1

In my wild teens I told people I’d never see twenty with the way I carried on with fast cars and bikes. I was an accident waiting to happen.

Then I turned twenty and changed my line somewhat. I said I’d probably crash and burn before the age of thirty. Fortunately I had to move the goalpost twice since then. Well, here we are in the year 2007…

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250 Superkarts 2007 – Round 2

Tadaaah! – New kart is ready! Brand new PVP chassis courtesy of Sean Moore who brought the chassis and other parts in from PVP in Denmark, at cost, plus I didn’t have to pay any freight. Hey Sean, thanks bud. I owe you a few beers…

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250 Superkarts 2007 – Round 3

Jeremy Burgess put Wayne Gardner, Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi through multiple world championships and he once said: “It is important what you learn from a race, regardless of your result. With a good result it’s important to know why you’ve done well, so you can repeat it again. With a bad result it’s equally important to know why, so you know what to fix for the next race.”

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250 Superkarts 2007 – Round 4

Don’t know where to begin, but how does qualifying on the front row and cleaning up in heat one sound for starters? If that's not enough, try icing the cake with an overall win for the day and the driver-of-the-day-trophy as the cherry on top... How sweet is that?

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250 Superkarts 2007 – Round 5

They say your first win in 250 Karts is always the most difficult, but I wonder how hard the second win is going to be? Yup, you guessed it, the bastards wouldn’t let me take another win this weekend, but I managed to scrape the barrel for the final spot on the podium…

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250 Superkarts 2007 – Round 6

Wheel-spin in fourth gear coming onto the back straight is something I experienced in the 900hp Porsche GT2 I drove at Zwartkops earlier this year. It’s certainly not something I expected from a puny little 250 kart, so let’s just say I was pleasantly surprised with power from the ‘new’ engine in the first session on old slicks and a slippery track.

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250 Superkarts 2007 – Round 7

I didn’t see the actual contact between Veron and Sean, so I can’t comment on what really happened there. All I can say is we need to put safety first. We don’t need intentional bumping and barging. That style of driving belongs in tin top racing, not open-wheelers and if we continue to allow unnecessary contact it is only a matter of time before someone hooks wheels and lands up seriously hurt or dead.

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250 Superkarts 2007 – Round 8

This story actually started two weeks prior to this race meet. Picture a Porsche 944 TurboCup going flat out down the back straight at Midvaal Raceway, with me in the passenger seat coaching a rookie driver. At the 100m mark this guy threw anchors and what happened? The brake pedal fell to the floor...

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250 Superkarts 2007 – Round 9

I never got around to writing this race report, even though it turned out to be a good day for me. – Two second places for the day and third overall in the championship… It’s still locked in my memory somewhere, so maybe one day I’ll write the report… Or maybe not.

Cheers,
Pierre.

the 2009 kyalami nine hour retro

2010-01-06T19:51:00.001+02:00

Another long day, another one for the books…
by Pierre Martins

One thing lead to another and I found myself behind the wheel of Keith Rose’s spunky ‘73 RSR in a One-Hour endurance race at Kyalami. Well actually, I’m not so sure whether one could really call a one hour race an ‘endurance race’, but that’s what the race organisers decided to call it, so who am I to argue?

Anyway, I love Historic Endurance racing and I must say I was particularly delighted when the local Historic Racing fraternity decided to revive the legendary Kyalami Nine-Hour endurance race a couple of years ago. Granted, it’s not the Nine-Hour of old when thousands upon thousands of spectators came from afar and camped out at the track for the entire weekend. Unfortunately motorsport in South Africa is not like that anymore and I doubt whether we’d ever see that level of enthusiasm from spectators again…

For competitors however, the new 9-Hour ‘Retro’ event gave every Souff Effrikan with an uncle who owned an eligible, and sometimes not-so-eligible classic race car, an opportunity to run their cars in the inaugural Nine-Hour-Retro event back in 2008. The event was split into a few 8-lap sprint races, a One-Hour Enduro and the feature race, a Three-Hour Enduro.

The Three Hour turned out to be a spectacle of note. David Piper and a few of his cronies even made the trip from Europe to join the fun. Grids were full and racing was fantastic. I was entered to share my mate Dave Fourie’s 911 RSR, but we had to sit out due to gearbox problems. Fate dealt us yet another unexpected uppercut this year. We tested Dave’s RSR at Midvaal Raceway the weekend prior to the Nine-Hour and the car seemed fine, but when Mario prepped the car he found the crown-wheel & pinion were in no shape for long-distance racing and there was no time to bring the parts in from Porsche AG.

You can read about that test by clicking here.

And that was that. Dave and I were out of the ‘09 Retro Nine Hour for all intentional purposes, again.

But one of the advantages of having good friends in the racing fraternity means that you’re never without a ride for too long. Franz Pretorius entered both his 956 and 911 RSR for the Three Hour and obviously wanted to concentrate on the 956, so when he got wind that Dave was out, he offered his RSR to Dave for the race, and Keith Rose asked me to co-drive with him in the One Hour, so both of us were back in business. How sweet is that?

Keith Rose… I’ve met some decidedly windswept and interesting people in motorsport over the years and I gotta say, Mr Keith ‘Norval’ Rose is right up there. Most South Africans will remember the TV commercial with the little white mouse running on top of a BMW steering wheel, well that was Keith’s work. So was the ‘He aint heavy, he’s my brother’ ad with the elephants and lately the James Dean ad for Allan Gray with the Porsche 917s, amongst others. Keith is a producer and owns a company by the name of ‘Velocity Films’.

Velocity Films has won nearly every local and international advertising award for creativity and production excellence. In fact, the company has been awarded 7 gold, 6 silver and 7 Bronze Lions at the Cannes International Advertising Festival.

Added to this is Keith's induction into the Clios TV Hall of Fame, with additional awards from advertising and production competitions in Europe, America and Asia.

Velocity has become recognised as a major player worldwide, confirmed by its top 10 positions in the Palme d'Or standings at Cannes two years running and its conclusion in the Gunn Report.

But racing is a different kind of action to film-making and I wondered how many takes would be necessary for Keith to get his lines right, seeing that he’s never driven Kyalami before. So, on this occasion the roles got reversed, so to speak. I became the ‘director’ with him acting out the lines around Kyalami. Didn’t take him long to get into character though. He’s a quick learner and pedalled well, but obviously needed as much track time as possible, so the plan of action was that he’d do all the practice sessions as well as official qualifying for the Sprint Races.

Yours truly had to qualify the RSR for the One Hour Enduro, which was pretty much one of those ‘just-get-in-and-drive’ scenarios where you put two and two together as you go along and depend on experience more than anything else. Mind you, I’ve had times when I had to get behind the wheel of strange cars and head straight into a race with no prior practice in the car whatsoever and not knowing what to expect, but your never heard complaints from me. No sir, I was just too happy to swing my ass into the driver’s seat and take control of the situation.

As a matter of fact, I have always found that the best way to get my mind straight whilst strapping myself into a race car, is to think about it as ‘taking control of the situation’, because that’s what you’re actually doing innit? Besides, there is no time for self-doubt when you’re behind the wheel. Period.

This time it was no biggie, really. I knew the car pretty well from the previous weekend’s testing, so it was relatively easy to turn in some pretty decent times, qualifying 4th fastest behind Franz Pretorius in the 956 on pole, Steven Dick in a Lola T70 in second spot and Colin Frost in the Lucky Strike 917 in third. Checking the time sheets we discovered that I was quickest of all the 911s throughout all classes on Friday, so needless to say I was pretty stoked about that.

Hey cut me some slack for bragging a little, will ya? He-he.

Anyway, Saturday came and Dave finally arrived with Franz’ RSR in tow after Mario had it in his shop for two solid days fixing suspension stuff-ups. Dave’s day ended early though, engine popped just six laps into the morning warm-up session. Bummer.

Keith pulled two respectable fourth places out the hat in the sprint races, but let’s fast-forward to the One Hour Enduro…

To say that we were a bit disorganised is an understatement. Keith started the race and was supposed to do the first half hour, but got tired and came in ten minutes early for the fuel-stop and driver change. We filled the car to the brim before the race and decided to do a 20L come what may splash-&-dash during the driver change, but he signalled no fuel required – so I hopped in and rejoined the race.

With almost a three-quarter tank of fuel at my disposal I got into the swing of things without much ado, passed a gazillion cars on my out-lap and found good rhythm with the car. I intended to enjoy myself, and right on cue that weird phenomenon set in when you know you’re quick, but everything kinda happens in slow-motion. You almost become detached, although you remain super-aware and in control. Racing nirvana, driver’s orgasm, call it what you want, it’s a very special feeling…

It’s nice when they frantically wave blue flags and people get out of your way, but somewhere along the line I had to think about where I was in this race. There were about 30 cars and I was fourth quickest, but I didn’t know how much time we lost with the pit stop and how the leaders were doing. To my calculations there could only be three cars ahead of me, the Porsche 956, followed by the Lola T70 and the Lucky Strike Porsche 917.

A couple of laps later I saw the Gunston-coloured T70 parked on the way up to Wesbank corner and thought- “Hell, I’ve just been handed third…?” – and on the next lap I caught a whiff of the 917’s tail entering Sunset corner. A few corners later I was on him, out-foxed him into turn one and learned something new – In a 911 you can tailgate a 917 without losing your line of sight, he-he-he…

But where was the almighty 956? Was he out? Was I in fact leading the race, must I keep pushing, ease up, or what? Like I said, we were so disorganised we didn’t even have a pit board and my guys on pit-wall were all just standing there like a bunch of zombies. No signals, no nothing, so I just kept circulating, passing more cars per lap than I care to remember. I lapped my mate Mark Saunders in the little 924 twice, and by that time we had a whole vocabulary of sign language going, waving back and fro and giving each other the thumbs-up and other obscene hand signals. Hell, I had more communication with him than I had with the guys on pit wall, he-he.

About four laps from the end I picked up a slight vibration from the clutch, so I started paying attention to short-shifting, feeding the power on instead of just hoofing it, you know, all those little things you do when you’re on that fine line of nursing the car home without losing too much time…

And that was that. The black & white table cloth dropped and I was tad disappointed that the race was over so soon. Back in the pits I learned that Franz finished first in the 956. Turned out he slacked off halfway through the race and we were circulating on different parts of the track, that’s why he never came to lap me as expected. I finished just behind Josh Broome in a super-quick little yellow Ford Escort at the line. He was hounding Keith during the first part of the race, but I passed him on my out-lap after the pit stop, but as it turned out we dropped a lap during our pit stop, which meant I had to pass twice to finish second, duh.

So the little yellow Escort finished second, how ‘bout that? See that’s what I like about endurance racing. You get plenty seat time and it’s not just about outright speed and lap times. Strategy and consistency also play a big part. By the way, they’re talking about a Six-Hour Enduro for the 2010 event. Man, that’s really gonna be something!

In hindsight, I gotta say this was one of the most enjoyable races I’ve had in a long time. It sure was nice to compete against such a mixed bag of classic race cars. I’ve always said that putting a classic, but perfectly race-worthy car into a museum is like taking your dad and forcing him into a retirement home before his time. It just aint right.

That’s why I have a special appreciation for well-kept old race cars that are lovingly restored and maintained by true enthusiasts who believe that historic race cars belong on race tracks, not museums.

See ya next year.

Cheers,
Pierre.

my tips list

2009-12-23T13:24:00.001+02:00

On this Blog.
by Pierre Martins

Unlike most other guys I like to share what I learn about track driving and motorsport in general. Yup, I’m your regular walking-talking Wikipedia of useful petrol-head hints and tips. Hell, I can even tell you what to do when the neighbour’s barking dog keeps you awake at night. – Just cut a one inch piece off your garden hose and shove it up the dog's ass. That way the dog loses all back-compression, rendering it incapable of barking, he-he-he…

Anyway, I’ve got plenty more where that came from -

A guide for track day virgins

I’ve received a couple of emails recently asking for tips and advice for people who want to do track days, so I've decided to put this little guide together. What follows here is not intended to teach anyone how to drive fast, but more how to get through your first track day without making an ass of yourself.

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Become a thinking driver

Things happen very fast when you’re out there on the race track. There is really no time for thinking and you have to drive on instinct.

The thinking part you have to do in the pits, between sessions. In other words, the actual driving part is the net result of your thinking.

To become a ‘Thinking Driver’ you need to learn how to turn your thoughts into driving…

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Brian Beckman’s Physics of Racing Series

The how’s and why's of punting a car around a track. The entire Physics of Racing Series (PhoRS) by Brian Beckman, PhD, reproduced here with permission.

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So you wanna race, do you?

Well, have you ever heard of a Hurry-Curry bird? - It’s a bird that gulps curry in hurry and ends up flying backwards to cool down its ass. It reminds me of overzealous people who indulge in motorsport without due consideration - people who hurtle into the sport without considering whether or not they’re cut out for it, or whether they can afford it.

The outcome is inevitable – Get into this sport without proper research and you’ll get burned up the wrong end. That is why I’ve gone to great lengths to write about the questions you should ask before you enter the sport…

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On brakes & bekker moments

You may think that the job of your brakes is to slow you down, but have you ever given any thought as to the physics of how brakes actually work?

The common misconception is that brakes just slow you down by the pads squeezing against the discs, but there is much more to it than that…

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How to remember the flags

Humour stimulates one’s memory, so here’s a light-hearted way of remembering the flags and how you should react to them next time you’re out on track…

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Kyalami Track Notes

Picking the right lines and smooth driving are crucial if you wanna go quick at Kyalami. Some people say it's a 'stop & go' track because you come from high speed sweepers into relatively tight corners.

My general advice is to put that mentality out of your mind. The easiest way to make up time at Kyalami is getting off the brakes a fraction earlier in most turns. The track is wide enough to carry relatively high corner speeds everywhere…

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Looking Ahead

The common sense with regard to ‘looking-through-corners’ on a race track is set in the fact that the further you look ahead, the more time you allow your brain to process things that are hurtling towards you when you’re travelling at speed.

It’s the basis, the foundation, for fast track driving…

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How and why front splitters work

Front end splitters on a race car produce aerodynamic down-force by creating pressure differentials in the air that the car moves through at speed.

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Whether you’re actively involved in racing or just spending time at race tracks often, you inevitably see, hear and learn a lot of stuff. Light-hearted or not, I sincerely hope that my tips will add to your learning experience.

Cheers,
Pierre.

funny stories & profanity check

2009-12-22T15:29:00.001+02:00

On this Blog.
by Pierre Martins

As you’ve probably gathered by now, there are two things in life I love – driving and writing. As for my writing, I’d like to think that I write entertaining stuff for the most part, but I also have no illusions about the fact that I sometimes suffer from writer’s diarrhoea and end up writing a load of crap. And sometimes when I suffer from these spouts of writer’s poop, the language can get a bit, erm, shall we say ‘strong’…?

So be forewarned – You can expect some occasional slippage into the more profane side of the English lingo when you read this blog, but these words do exist and are used by the majority of real people in everyday life, whether you like it or not. This blog is written in a chatting style and I only curse for the sake of expressive significance. Hey there’s a new one - Expressive significance! - Sounds like bullshit in itself, but how’s that for justifying swearing? He-he!

Anyway, regardless of my profanity, I sincerely hope you enjoy some of these stories…

Johnny Bravo and the Texas Files

I’m fairly good at remembering faces, but about as inept as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest when it comes to remembering names.

It’s a character deficiency that’s caused me some real embarrassing moments at times, but then one day I read something somewhere along the lines that you’re more likely to remember names if you memorise them with humorous connotations and I must say I’ve actually enjoyed a fair amount of success with this system ever since…

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Keith’s cross-holes

At the start of the 2006 season I tested a 350hp pre-73 Porsche 911 RSR replica for initial shakedown and track setup. This is a funny little track story about the brakes on that car…

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Meet Naughty Tyres

This little car carries a lot of good karma. Olly and I turned it into a little side-line race car project, and it gave us plenty laughs…

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Never too old to learn

Some years ago when I was still young and dumb and full of cum I woke up early one Sunday morning to the sound of breakfast runners winding it up at a nearby intersection…

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Racing with Hair-Lip Sean

During the late nineties the local Northern Regions Super-mono bike championship was a hotly contested series with a mixed bag of riders. I got into it when someone offered me a ride for a couple of seasons and discovered how much fun it was…

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Sun City run

I’m no gambler cause my luck is of such a nature that if I ever had to fall into a barrel of titties I’d most likely come up sucking my thumb…

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This really happened

My mate Barry phoned me one day to tell me Mick Doohan was coming to SA on a ‘low profile’ visit and we were gonna chaperone him around…

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Very fast Mini

I knew the Mustang wouldn’t get hurt, it had big chrome bumpers designed for the specific task of nudging small European cars out the way. I mean, for what other reason did the Americans put such big bumpers on their cars? – To curb any possible influx of sensible small economic cars, did they not?

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I have plenty more where these came from, but as I’ve pointed out in some of these stories, you shouldn’t always believe the tripe I write…

Cheers,
Pierre.

track tests

2009-12-22T11:00:00.001+02:00

On this Blog.
by Pierre Martins

I’ve been fortunate to test some fairly quick and interesting machines on race tracks in my time and I’m always grateful, not only for the opportunity to drive cars on race tracks that most people can only dream about, but also for the experience I gain in the process. Every car is different and handles different. And all the new things I learn go upstairs into my memory bank…

Be that as it may, I take extra care during testing. You see, unless the owner of the car specifically asks me to, I never take a car to the absolute limit. There is no point in trying to break lap records when your job on the day is to give feedback on a car’s handling or to provide driving impressions. Besides, one must always show respect for another man’s machine when you’re given the opportunity behind the controls, especially with rare exotics such as these.

Anyway, here are some of the stories -

Superleggera, Kettles and Turbos…

They hosted another Supercar school at Kyalami a few Sundays ago. I was fortunate to get an invite to play instructor and was privileged to pilot a variety of cool machines at a decent pace around the track.

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Lamborghini Gallardo at Kyalami

I can only say that there is no way in hell you can call yourself a true petrol-head if you don’t like this car…

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Porsche 930 turbo at Zwartkops

Putting a well-kept classic like this on a race track is actually not the right thing to do, but the idea behind this test was to blow the cobwebs away and see what the car was capable of on a race track, for once…

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Formula GTi versus 250 Superkart at Zwartkops

With almost two full seasons under the belt in 250 Superkarts I got an itch to try something else in the way of single seater wings & slicks racing, so when the first opportunity to test drive a Formula GTi at Zwartkops presented itself, I grabbed it with both hands, literally…

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GT40 versus GT40 at Kyalami and Zwartkops

Of all the GT40s built by Bailey-Edwards to date, about sixty percent were built for street use. The other forty percent went to customers who wanted all-out race cars. The idea behind this test was to take an example of each around a track to see how a Bailey-Edwards street legal GT40 compares to one in full race trim.

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Lotus Exige S at Kyalami

By the time I zipped through the Bowl and wiggled the car’s cheeky little ass as I hoofed it a moment too soon I had a huge smile on my dial. I had forgotten that this was just the warm-up lap. This was just way too much fun. It’s like the gods of sports-car heaven answered my prayers and built a track toy just for me.

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Porsche 911 – Two RSRs at Midvaal

What’s better than spending a day at the track behind the wheel of a powerful old-school 911 RSR? - Spending the day behind the wheel of not just one, but two RSRs of course. So without further ado, allow me to introduce the cars to you…

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Porsche 917 – Bailey-Edwards replica at Zwartkops

The Porsche 917 is the car of my childhood dreams, but the problem with the 917 is that it’s generally so far beyond the reach of mere mortals like you and I, that driving a 917 will always just be just that - a dream. And then a local company started building 917 replicas and guess what, I got to track test their test mule.

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Porsche 944 Gabor’s Turbo at Kyalami

Gabor's Porsche 944 Turbo is a wild animal indeed. This gutted, light-weight 944 Turbo produces 500bhp! Well, almost. It makes 496 to be exact, and is is yet another wild 944, built by M&R Motors in Johannesburg and one of the most radical 944's you've ever seen!

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Shelby Can-Am at Zwartkops

I can tell you upfront, if you have any thoughts of ever getting behind the wheel of a sports prototype such as a Shelby Can-Am car, you’d better not be a zombie ‘cause this thing will bite your head off if you’re not paying attention. You’d have to be wide awake and sharp, a thinking driver with a fair amount of skill to be consistently quick in one of these things.

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SPEADS Single Seater & Sports Prototype at Zwartkops

Some cars are quick, but they’re hard work. The SPEADS are so easy to drive fast it’s a joke, to put it mildly. I’m talking about a lightweight single seater that resembles a Ferrari F1 car and an open top sportscar that resembles a LeMans sports prototype, both powered by motorcycle engines, but don’t let that fool you. These things are proper race cars and they’re seriously quick!

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Sunshine Testing at Phakisa

So here’s the dilemma. - A 600km round trip in the middle of the week for an off chance of getting some seat time in something exciting. Besides that, I was already semi-switched off from track driving for what was left of 2008… Well, I didn’t get to drive anything, but I enjoyed the day nevertheless.

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VW Challenge cars at Zwartkops

I have to admit I was a tad apprehensive when asked to do this test. Spoke to VW Challenge Class B competitor Stuart Mack and he gave me just one single bit of advice - “Make sure you’re on the gas even when you’re not on the gas”. Erm, okay Stu, I’ll be sure to try that…

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250 Superkart – First drive

I’ve always wanted to have a go in one of these little rockets, and when the opportunity presented itself when I was offered a test drive at Zwartkops Raceway, I grabbed the opportunity with a fat smile, dusted off my old leathers from my bike racing days, removed the knee sliders and squeezed myself into them…

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Keep your eye on this page. I’ll post updates of more track tests in due course.

Cheers,
Pierre.

cars with names

2009-12-21T16:44:00.001+02:00

On this Blog.
by Pierre Martins

Some people say you should never get overly materialistic, emotional, or too attached to your cars. You should never give your cars pet names. Maybe they’re right, I dunno, but I do know that most people who say that are people who tend to change their cars as often as they change underwear. Now I’m not saying they’re right or wrong, but for some reason I’ve always thought that, if you’re a true petrol-head, there will always be certain cars that will leave a lasting impression on you, and maybe those cars should have names?

So call me a fool if you like, but I like to name the cars that I care to remember. Here are a few interesting names you’ll find on this blog -

White Puppy

This is Keith Rose’s pre-74 911 RSR. I’ve driven it numerous times during testing and in races, and I’ve always enjoyed this car thoroughly. It’s a cheeky little white fox-terrier, so I had to name it…

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Black Bitch

Yeah, I know. A crude name to start off with, but If you knew my Hungarian buddy Gabor and this particularly rough slut of a 944 turbo, you’d forgive me.

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Blue Mule

The Porsche 917 is the car of my childhood dreams, but the problem with the 917 is that it’s generally so far beyond the reach of mere mortals like you and I, that driving a 917 will always just be just that - a dream. And then a local company started building 917 replicas and guess what, I got to track test their test mule.

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Fat Bully

My Porsche 928 that I turned into a track racer. A German friend of mine, Olly Boecker, named the car one day at an open track day when I proceeded to to carve through some lightweight 911s with this heavy pig.

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Naughty Tyres

Another car that my mate Olly named. This little Alfa carries a lot of good karma. It was given to me as a road-going car by a friend who had no use for it. Olly and I turned it into a little side-line race car project, but we eventually grew tired of the car and I gave it to youngster to race.

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Red Lady

A classic plain, unmolested, stock-standard 911 will always grab my attention, but some 911’s are simply just more special than others, especially when they carry no mods whatsoever. This is one of those cars, Mario’s lady in red…

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Tabasco

I did a stint as a test driver and writer for a local rag for a while. This was one of the cars they asked me to test at Kyalami early one morning. A hot car on a cold winter’s morning, there could be no other name for this car…

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Team Anglia

My Old Man’s V8-powered Ford Anglia was probably the car that infected me with the dreaded disease. You know, that disease whereby you can’t think straight for too long without the whiff of high-octane race fuel.

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White Lady

My buddy Mario’s 911 goes by the name of the ‘Red Lady’ and somehow, somewhere along the line we just started calling Dave’s white 911 the ‘White Lady’. I can’t remember how it happened exactly, but perhaps it’s not just the name of a car that lingers in your mind, it’s the experience associated with the car that stays in your memory.

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Yellow Bird

There’s the famous Ruf Yellow Bird, and then there’s this one – My buddy Dave’s yellow RSR. Both are special, but I’ve had a hand in the development of Dave’s Yellow Bird, so that makes it very special to me.

You can read more about Dave’s Yellow Bird here and here.

All the cars with names on this blog all have nice stories. Enjoy!

Cheers,
Pierre.

911 rsr testing, one-two…

2009-12-03T03:20:00.001+02:00

A long day.
by Pierre Martins

What’s better than spending a day at the track behind the wheel of a powerful old-school 911 RSR? - Spending the day behind the wheel of not just one, but two RSRs of course. So without further ado, allow me to introduce the cars to you;

I’ll start with the white car.

‘73 RSR, 3.5L engine pushing out around 350 horses, delivered through a close ratio crash-box. Porsche used to experiment with 3.5L engines once upon a time but never released them on the open market, so the 3.5L boxer engine is quite a rare find these days.

The car was built from the ground up by M&R Motors about ten years ago for Keith Rose, who’s been campaigning the car with great success in Historic Racing ever since, mainly at the Killarney circuit in Cape Town.

However, the car has had a few offs over the years and some butcher mechanic in Cape Town put an angle grinder to the rear RSR suspension pickup points, heaven only knows why. People who don’t have intimate knowledge of these cars should never be allowed to work on them, in my not-so-humble opinion.

I tested the car at Killarney a few months ago and it had such bad bump-steer that my arms were sore the next morning from the steering wheel kicking back violently three or four times in each and every corner. Some bright spark decided to lower the ride height of the car without taking the tie-rod angles into account.

The rear end was also doing weird and stupid things, and quite frankly, I was appalled by the piss-poor handling of Keith’s white RSR. But that’s all besides the point now. Keith sent the car back to Mario at M&R who stripped it and stuck it on a chassis jig to check it for straightness and fix the butcher job on the rear pickup points. With that done, Mario installed a new crash-box using straight cut gears in the car’s original 915 gearbox. Finally, he worked his usual magic with regard to suspension setup for the track.

But more about the white car later. Let me first tell you about the yellow car:

Different kettle of fish altogether, this one. We call it the ‘Yellow Bird’. I was first introduced to this 380+ horse power IROC-replica RSR back in 2007 when Mario asked me to test it for its owner, Dave Fourie, prior to the local Porsche Challenge Unlimited series, in which the car took overall and class honours that year.

You can read the story about Dave’s 2007 season
by clicking here. You’ll love it.

I’ve also added a photo journal of the original build process elsewhere on this blog. You can view it by clicking here.

Anyway, the car has undergone extensive development since those days. Off the top of my mind and in no particular order we’re talking 3.8L, 964 casing with proper RSR internals, cams, PMO carburettors, close ratio crash-box, new lightweight 17” BBS-style split rims, bigger brakes, fuel-cell, new lightweight doors and bumpers, custom made Polycarb windows all round and whatnot. The list of improvements reads like a grocery list, so let’s just say that no expense was spared in the quest of creating one of the best as far as RSR replicas go.

In my opinion, Dave’s Yellow Bird is certainly the best example in South Africa, and would probably rate pretty high if there was such a thing as a world wide scale of competitive ‘74 IROC-RSR replicas. The car is now reaching the final stage of development, the ‘salt & pepper’ stage, as Mario calls it, with the latest upgrade being a small fortune’s worth of super trick stabiliser bars from Smart Racing in the States…

And so it happened that we decided to kill two birds with one stone by testing both cars back to back on the same day.

We opted for Midvaal Raceway just south of Jo’burg. It’s hard to believe that Michael Schumacher once tested a Benetton F1 car at this very track, but that’s another story. The place has been little more than a dilapidated dump for a number of years now, but remains a popular testing venue due to the amount of track time you get for your money, as well as the fact that Midvaal is quite a hardcore technical little track with a knack for exposing any track car’s hidden weaknesses in just a few laps. Get a car to work there, and it will work at just about any other track, sans minor tweaking for each track, of course.

As a side-note - I see it as a privilege to be able to test drive special machines such as these Porsches on race tracks and believe that one should always spread a little goodwill around, so that’s why I regularly invite someone to join us on these test days. On this occasion I invited an up and coming local photographer and petrol-head, Waldo Swiegers, along for the day. All the photos on this page were taken by him and you gotta admit, the young man has talent.

Waldo is a freelance photographer, based in Pretoria. He specialises in Individual car shoots. You can reach him on his cell: 084 824 0392 or by email: wswiegers@gmail.com

By the way, all the photos on this blog are thumbnails of larger versions. To view the bigger photos, just click on any thumbnail and use the ‘back’ button on your browser to return.

Anyway, Dave drove down from his hometown Nelspruit and Keith flew in from Cape Town for the day. My job for the day was to test both cars, give feedback to Mario on setup and assist Dave and Keith so they get the most out of their cars. First order of the day was Keith’s white RSR. I only needed five laps to figure the car handled sweet, the rapid-fire bump steer and stupid rear end antics the car had when I last drove it in Cape Town were gone, so I handed it over to Keith and he pretty much had a ball in the car for the rest of the day.

He didn’t know the track from a bar of soap and this was the first time he experienced a whining crash-box, but he learned the lines, got the hang of clutch-less shifting and got quicker with each session. So did the smile on his dial. The man was happy.

Between sessions we discussed the added benefit of left foot braking you have with a crash-box. Not having to worry about the clutch means that you have your left foot doing nothing, so why not use it to help transfer load to the front end of a 911 when it tends to push? Some drivers have a real problem with left foot braking. First try they tend to hit the brake pedal with the same amount of force you’d normally use on the clutch pedal, which is way too much and they think ‘Shit! - I better not do that again…’

I believe it’s not really that difficult. Most drivers can do it, they just don’t know it. It’s just a mental block that can be overcome with a little practice. Think about it like this – You can put just about any driver in a single seater or go-kart and they will left foot brake pretty well without effort. In a kart you have the steering rod between your ankles, making it impossible to right foot brake, so your brain automatically adapts to left foot braking without you even trying. All you need to do is bring that mindset over to car driving and you’re ‘A’ for away with a little practice. Go on, try it. Just be careful with the amount of pressure you apply to the brake pedal when you use your left foot initially.

But enough of that.

Dave’s Yellow Bird started off a notch or two beyond our understanding of the car on this day. Make no mistake, the car was very quick and driveable, but it was showing us the middle finger as far a setup goes. I managed to get it down into the 1’10”s around Midvaal and that’s seriously quick for any tin top car, but the car was a handful and anything but confidence inspiring.

We played around with the settings on the new Smart Racing stabilisers and although that improved the handling somewhat, it also brought other handling problems to the fore. Mario went for the same aggressive caster settings that Porsche used back in RSR heyday, but on this day, on this car, those settings weren’t really working. In the end we reached general consensus that the spring rates weren’t correct in the first place and any settings we tried on the day were just putting band aids on gaping wounds.

But that’s what testing is all about, innit? – To figure things out. I always say that any test day is a good day as long as you come away with enough data to know where you’re at with the car. One thing is for sure – Dave’s Yellow Bird is an awesome car and when we get it dialled in properly, it’s gonna be something else, believe you me. I can sense it. There is potential lurking in this car that can elevate it to something very, very special…

And so ended another fantastic day at the track. It sure was a long, long day and they kept me busy throughout. Go out for five laps, hand over the car to its owner and tell him what to expect during a quick driver change, give feedback to Mario on the car’s handling characteristics and discuss possible setup changes.

Talk about the cars and discuss the track with Keith and Dave between sessions whilst Mario is making setup changes to the cars. Put my helmet on and go back out again. Give it stick and pay attention to what the car is doing. Come in for a driver change and repeat the same process all over again…

I was truly knackered at the end of the day. But you know what? – I wish I could spend every day of my life like that…

Cheers,
Pierre.

ford anglia v8

2009-12-01T15:45:00.001+02:00

A trip down memory lane in an overpowered car…
by Pierre Martins

I just saw this photo of a pristine looking ‘66 Anglia for sale on the internet and it brought back fond memories of a little Ford Anglia my late father converted into a track beast. It all started circa nineteen-65 to ‘67, I think. I was born 1960, so that would make me between five and seven years old at the time, perhaps just the right age to become hooked on sniffing petrol fumes and addicted to the sheer adrenalin of speed, methinks.

Performance wise my Old Man’s stock little Anglia was less than special. It wasn’t built for speed, this quintessential cheap and sweet little entry-level car of the mid-sixties, but somewhere in the garage he also had a wicked 327cu V8 with Isky cam lurking inside and a custom intake manifold with three twin-barrel Stromberg carburettors in a row to feed the beast, ready for action, ready for the next race car project…

Then, one weekend over a BBQ and too many beers my Old Man and his petrolhead buddies decided that it would be a good idea to stick the 327 into the puny little Anglia, so over the next few weeks they proceeded to cut most the engine bay away and shoehorned the V8 in there and coupled it to a 4-speed manual box with over-drive from…, well, some car I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but it was a gearbox that worked with the Ford Zephyr diff they plotted for delivery of the v8’s power the rear wheels.

Of course the car was bound to suffer serious traction deficiency on the stock wafer-thin tyres, and back in the day custom mag wheels weren’t off-the-shelf items as they are today, in fact, I don’t think custom wheels were even thought about in the small Hickville town we lived in, so my Old Man and his cronies widened the stock rims to fit wider rubber. This was done by splitting the stock rims with a cutting torch and arc-welding a steel band in as a spacer along the centre to widen the offset. All done in a jig and very ‘professional’ at the time, but I bet they must have had a helluva time trying to balance those wheels, he-he.

I remember the first time they fired the thing up and took it for a spin up and down our street. All the neighbours came running out to see what the noisy commotion was all about. This car was a real ground pounder, shaking and heaving with the rough idle that only a superhot cam can induce, but people lemme tell you - I’ve grown up around race cars and to this day I’ve never seen a street ‘legal’ car so out of control as that little Anglia when my Old Man put the hammer down. I almost felt sorry for the poor little thing. It buckled and twisted like a modern day gazillion horse power top fuel dragster under launch!

To curb the chassis flex My Old Man welded in a roll cage. He told me the cage was for ‘safety’, but even a little snot-nose like me could tell there was nothing ‘safe’ about that little car.

More up and down the street tests revealed that the V8 suffered cooling issues, so they cut the lower front air-dam bigger with an angle grinder to improve airflow to the radiator. The car ended up looking like a guppy fish with a big growling mouth. Mind you. it looked viciously appropriate from the front, like the angry little beast it was.

The photo above is the only one of the car that I currently have on file. It was taken at some car show. The guy trying out the driver’s seat is not my Old Man, dunno who that was.

Something had to be done about the blunt, unattractive grey. So what did my Old Tappet do? – He painted a wide yellow dicing stripe over the bonnet and boot of course! The roof was left white, as it came from the factory, but ‘to-balance-the-look’ he spray-painted the rocker panels under the doors the same colour as the roof, white.

I’m all for that. If you spend your own money developing a car you should be allowed a little ‘artistic freedom’ when it comes to the paint job, but he should have stopped there. Instead, my Old Man decided to add the words “Team ~ Anglia” on the rocker panels under the doors. In my opinion that just spoiled the look. Keep in mind this was back in day before vinyl. You could see a mile away it was hand painted. “Sign-Writing”, they called it. He-he-he…

More up and down the street tests ensued and after a good few broken side-shafts and whatnot, ‘Team ~ Anglia’ was ready for the track. Of course it chewed up some seriously fast cars of that era and spat them out unceremoniously in straight-line acceleration. That was to be expected with the power to weight ratio of the car, but it also turned out to be surprisingly good in corners. Car Magazine even did a two page write-up on it during the Krugersdorp Hill-Climb once.

‘Team ~ Anglia’ also entered the famous Kyalami Nine-Hour endurance race one year, but never made it to race day though. The little car was blisteringly quick during practice, but overheated and cooked the brakes, so the Old Man never qualified.

If I remember right I have a few more photos of the car tucked away in a shoebox somewhere. I should really dig them out sometime, scan them and post em here. But for now, for what it’s worth, I can tell you that little car really went like stink. I remember sitting in the passenger seat watching my Old Man fight the wheel to keep the little over-powered short wheel based Anglia in a straight line under hard acceleration whilst everything in the car vibrated so bad it obscured my vision. I loved every bit about it.

He sold the car eventually, to pay for the next project – a post office red Ford Zodiac with 351cu power-plant. The guy who bought the Anglia lost it a week later, rolled it and landed in ditch. He was okay. The roll cage saved him, but the car caught fire and burned out. And that was that. A little trip down memory lane.

RIP, dad.

Cheers,
Pierre.

altech gt-challenge ‘09, round 5

2009-09-17T22:44:00.004+02:00

Race report from Zwartkops.
by Pierre Martins

25 July, 2009:

Herewith some photos from the July Zwartkops round of the local GT Challenge series. I’ll post a race report soon.

Cheers,
Pierre.

altech gt-challenge ‘09, round 6

2009-09-17T18:44:00.004+02:00

Race report from East London.
by Pierre Martins

29 August, 2009:

Herewith some photos from the East London round of the local GT Challenge series. I’ll post a race report soon.

Cheers,
Pierre.

meet the red lady

2009-07-14T22:54:00.003+02:00

Another sweet 911.
by Pierre Martins

‘81 911sc:

This is my buddy Mario’s pristine 911sc. Mario runs a Porsche shop in the south of Johannesburg. In my not-so-humble opinion Mario is perhaps one of the last true classic Porsche Specialists left in South Africa. A tad eccentric, old-school, but very experienced and very knowledgeable in the mechanical workings of P-cars, very unlike some of these new breed of “Porsche Specialists” who think that paying their dues comes from the amount of time they spend on the internet to try and learn a thing or two about Porsches. With Mario you get no Google wisdom, just hard-earned experience.

Anyway, Mario saw this very car being put together on the production line at the Porsche factory in Germany way back in the late seventies. It was also one of the first cars he serviced when he used to run the workshop for Porsche South Africa way back then, so when it came up for sale from the original about five years ago he scooped it up.

It's the kinda car you can do a track day at Kyalami and a 2000km round trip to Cape Town and back immediately afterwards with no problems. The only problem is Mario hardly drives the thing, so once a year I pick it up and put some mileage on the car.

The Red Lady. A sweet, un-molested 911…

Cheers,
Pierre.

supekarts ‘08 – association kart

2009-07-07T07:56:00.003+02:00

From rubbish to something decent.
by Pierre Martins

I have a bit of a reputation for building nice Superkarts, so in the beginning of 2208 I was asked to fix up a demo kart for the local 250 Supekart Association. They wanted something not too fast and safe to give people joy rides in. Journalists and people interested in joining the sport. I took the job on condition that I get to race it for the first two meets after completion, to make sure it’s safe and all…

This is the kart I came up with. First time out I started from the back of the grid in the rain and pulled off a third place. I wonder who was more surprised, me, or the rest of the field? Man I love racing in the wet. It takes horse power out of the equation. Ten percent car and ninety percent driver. Short-shift everywhere, watch out for puddles and rivers and be ready to catch slides all the time. Good fun.

Click on the images below to enlarge and use your browser’s ‘back’ button to return.

Cheers,
Pierre.

chery 48-hour endurance records

2009-07-04T12:15:00.011+02:00

48 hours of random weirdness.
by Pierre Martins

The Event:

The Time: First week of September, 2008.

The Place: Gerotek Test Facility close to Pelindaba, about an hour’s drive from Jo-burg. To be a bit more specific, the 3km high-speed banked oval.

The Cars: Three Chinese Chery 1100cc and two 800cc models. Don’t laugh.

The objective: Set new 48-hour endurance records for 800cc and 1100cc vehicles. I said don’t laugh, dammit!

I got roped into this thing at the last minute by long-time Formula GTi racer Gerrit de la Rey.

What? Me, driving a little slow poke puny engined front wheel drive noddy car around in circles for hours on end? Oh what the hell, why not? I’m a track junky and frankly, I’ll drive a damn motorised wheelbarrow if it presented an opportunity to learn something new. Besides, this would be one more thing to add to my ‘been there, got the T-shirt’ list…

I remember getting something in my inbox a few days before outlining the event, but to be honest I didn’t read the email. At drivers briefing the organizers handed out information packs with schedules and whatnot. Teams of four drivers per car. Thank heavens they put me in one of the 1100cc cars and not an 800cc jobby. The modus operandi was that drivers would do stints of about to hours twenty minutes each, basically the time it took to drive out a full tank at full taps in top gear. Driver changes were done during scheduled re-fuelling stops, with tyre changes as and when required.

That was the gist of it. The event started at noon on September 2nd. I was scheduled to do my first stint around midnight, watched the start and went home to catch up on some sleep.

What the little 1100cc QQ3 felt like on the “High Speed” oval:

I wasn’t there for the trial run a few weeks before and didn’t do a single practice lap, so this was one of those ‘just get in and drive’ occasions.

So I did just that. Got into the little thing during the scheduled driver change and got it up to top speed as quick as possible. Well, I’m not sure whether ‘quick’ is really the operative word here…

Balls to the wall turned out to be a mind-boggling 160kmh on the dial, but believe me, you wouldn’t really want to go any faster than that in one of these little cars, he-he-he.

Once I got it up to speed I kept the accelerator pedal planted for the entire two hour twenty minute stint. Never lifted a fraction until it was time to come in. To run such a small engine flat out and get the best lap times possible, I was told to keep the sunroof and windows closed to eliminate unnecessary drag and to keep the air conditioner, fan and radio switched off to reduce the alternator sapping power from the engine. Small engines really suffer when you pull power off the crankshaft pulley. As a matter of fact, night-time lap times were a full second a lap slower on average, due to driving with the lights on.

Funny though, I wasn’t able to just sit there picking my nose. Keeping the lap times consistent and as low as possible meant running as close as possible to the outside armco lap after lap after lap. That was the best line, so instead of being bored I was kinda locked in a prolonged state of monotonous concentration, with only irritating issues like dodging the slower 800cc cars, my ass getting numb after about two hours and my right foot getting pins and needles, but that was all just par for the course, I guess.

I did learn something new about aerodynamics though. You don’t have to be right up behind another car to catch a slipstream. With the Cherys doing the same speeds and lap times, I could get a good feeling for when slipstreaming came into play. The rev-counter would sit at 5500rpm, but it would start to climb with the car ahead still a good fifty to sixty metres away and eventually hit 5700rpm as I got to within a few car lengths. Lap times dropped accordingly. This happened time and time again.

My synopsis – With all other things being equal, there is noticeably less drag on a car travelling through ‘turbulent’ air than a car travelling through ‘still’ air…

Oh, and I also found out that an oval track actually has four corners, believe it or not. The entry to the first corner is called T1, the exit T2 and the second corner entry is referred to as T3, with the exit T4. Bet you didn’t know that, eh? I think things must get very complicated when you start talking about Tri-Ovals, He-he-he…

And then Murphy struck!

Approximately twenty minutes into my second stint I hit a huge porcupine in turn three during the early hours of the morning.

There was nothing I could do, I collected the poor critter the instant it appeared in front of me. I sent out a warning call to the other drivers over the two-way radio, the car survived the impact and I was able to continue without losing much time.

But I felt like shit. That sickening ‘thud’ when you hit an animal at full speed kinda lingers in your mind if you’re an animal lover, trust me.

And if that wasn’t enough, in the last ten minutes of my stint I barely missed a big stray dog feeding on the road-kill from the porcupine incident, so I sent out another warning over the radio and hugged the inside line in turn three on the next lap, keeping well clear of the porcupine debris patch and what happened? – I hit the freakin' dog!

Figure that. I had never killed an animal on the road up until this point, and here it happened twice in one go. There were five cars and twenty drivers, yet this had to happen to yours truly, twice! How’s that for shit luck? Anyway, I felt miserable after that, parked the well and truly stuffed-up car in the pit, went home and got into bed just as the sun came up…

Back in action:

Woke up at about noon to a gazillion missed calls, voice-mails and SMS’s on my cell-phone. They had fixed the car and wanted me back.

I couldn’t believe it, but called in anyway and made my way back to the track.

The front end damage was repaired and from that point on the gold car became the ‘chase’ car, used for punching holes in the air for the lime coloured number 1 and blue number 2 cars. I did the dutiful team player thing by letting them catch my slipstream and moving over at the last moment so they could slingshot past, slowing right down and speeding up again a lap or so later when I picked them up in my mirrors. Gerrit de la Rey was in the lead car and together we had this little ritual down to a fine art, repeating the same process over and over throughout the night.

At least that kept my tired mind and body occupied…

And that was that.

On the final day I did the penultimate stint in the leading car and handed it over to rally driver Charl Wilken for his final stint and the drive over the line to take the chequered flag.

To me it felt like we had just completed the LeMans 24-hours, or something. We were all knackered beyond belief, blood-shot eyes and day-old beards, but elated. We did it, and as far as could be established, this was the first time a Chinese vehicle manufacturer achieved anything like this.

As for the cars, well you know people tend to slag Chinese products in general, and I have done so myself on occasion, but I must say I was thoroughly impressed by the stamina and reliability of these little cars. All five cars completed the event without a hint of mechanical hiccup or failure. Even the gold car ran flawless before, and after the animal incidents. And yes, the cars were probably thoroughly checked and properly serviced for this event, but you have to remember they were driven absolutely flat-out at maximum speeds for 48-hours, setting the record at 7 262km and 6 369km for the Chery QQ3 1100cc and 800cc respectively. All in all these five little cars covered more than 33 351km in the allotted time.

As for me, well I now have a sore bum and a little red certificate on my trophy wall stating I was part of this event…

Cheers,
Pierre.

Find out more:

Chery Cars.co.za – Official website.
Chery 48-Hour Endurance Record – Official page for this event, includes a breakdown of all the records established.

VW challenge – track test

2009-06-30T17:52:00.020+02:00

Class B and C cars.
by Pierre Martins

What? Me, in a front wheel drive race car?

I missed the whole noddy car front wheel drive thing by a decade or two. See, I grew up at a time when Bobby Olthoff was throwing the big Galaxie around Kyalami with Koos Swanepoel and Basil van Rooyen snapping at his heels in their Lotus Cortinas. Yes, I’m that old, but I can tell you there were no such things as front wheel drive race cars back then. Well, not that I can recall, anyway.

So I have to admit I was a tad apprehensive when asked to do this test. Spoke to VW Challenge Class B competitor Stuart Mack and he gave me just one single bit of advice - “Make sure you’re on the gas even when you’re not on the gas”.

Erm, okay Stu, I’ll be sure to try that…

He was however, more helpful in providing me with good information regarding the Goldwagen VW Challenge series for this article. The series started out as the GTI Challenge around ‘86. The first race cars were people’s road going Golfs with bolt in roll cages and stickers that were pulled off before going to work on Monday. There were Mk1 GTis racing against Mk2 GTis, CSLs and even a few 16-valve jobbies, with the odd red, yellow, or blue Citi Golf in the mix. The formula worked well and the fields soon grew, with the cars becoming more race car like as the years went by.

In the middle to late nineties the top flight class became a battle of local VW tuning shops with cars from Erasmusrand Motors doing battle with SAC and the like. Back then the cars ran on full slicks and were insanely quick, but there were still classes for guys with stock and slightly worked GTis with road tyres, and even a class for bone stock 1600cc cars. So almost all tastes and budgets were catered for.

Even though a few 16-valve race motors were tried, the 8-valve VW power plant proved to be more reliable and cheaper to run and is still the engine of choice in VW Challenge today. When the first generation Polo's were released an EFI option was added to the trusty 8-valve motor and phased into the series. Over the spread of a season the side draughts and K-jet motors made way for the newer type motors that catered for the new Bosch MP9 EFI system. These heads and inlet manifolds are still being used today, but engine control systems are open to any locally made system. Today, all cars that race in Goldwagen VW Challenge have to be front wheel drive VW products that were/are officially sold by VW South Africa, and they have to run the "normal" 8-Valve VW U-flow motor. The series is dominated by Citi Golfs but Mk2', Mk3 and Mk4 Golfs as well as Polos make up the grid.

As for tyres, VW Challenge switched to Dunlop Semi-slicks about 5 years ago and they became “control tyres” for all the classes. In 2007 the VW Challenge was asked to join the Pro-Tour series. With limited TV coverage in 2006 swelling the grids to around 40 cars this was a real boost for the series. The two seasons that VW Challenge spent as part of the Pro-Tour have done wonders for both the VW Challenge and the Pro-Tour. With some grids of over sixty cars and bumper to bumper racing throughout the field, VW Challenge has been a huge draw-card for the Tour over the past 2 years. 2009 sees Goldwagen VW Challenge stay with the Pro-Tour and more of the same magic racing is evident.

I race a Porsche in the Altech GT Challenge in Pro-Tour, so I don’t get much time to watch the other races on race day, but I do follow the VW Challenge races religiously on TV and I can vouch for two things – a.) The racing is ferocious in Goldwagen VW Challenge all through the field and in every race. There is no such thing as a boring Goldwagen VW Challenge race. b.) There are some bloody good drivers in VW Challenge. Well known names have raced in VW Challenge and have gone on to bigger and better things, like current Class T National Production Car Champion Greame Nathan, and Mazda MPS Pilot Heinz Bose, but I reckon most of the top flight drivers in VW Challenge have what it takes in the skills department to cut it in Production Car racing at national level.

Goldwagen VW Challenge is split into four classes:

Class C - The feeder class. This class is meant for those just starting out in racing, to cut their teeth and build a car that they can easily convert to a higher class. They have to use normal road going shocks and springs, a stock 1.6 EFI motor, just like a Citi Golf Velociti. The brakes are upped to the same size as the class B cars to make upgrading to class B easier, and besides, bigger brakes on a Citi Golf is never a bad thing.

Class C cars produce +/- 65kw and the minimum weight limit is 920kg car & driver. Lap times around Zwartkops for class C cars are in the 1'19" zone.

Class B - Dubbed the hooligan class by many, this is the class of the up and coming youngsters as well as anyone who is not well in the head. The racing in this class is always top notch and super competitive, but always fair as the budgets in class B do not allow for expensive repair bills. These cars run stock 1.8 motors but are allowed to run a 288 degree cam. Suspension is class A specification, coil-overs with the same brakes as class C. Class B is usually the biggest class at race meetings.

Class B cars produce +/- 80kw with a minimum weight limit of 1000kg, car & driver. Class B cars lap Zwartkops around 1'16".

Class P - When the Polo was launched in SA, VW Motorsport started the VW Cup. These cars were replaced with the current Polo a few years ago and therefore had nowhere to race, so VW Challenge made a class P for them. They run in the same spec they did when they were VW Cup cars, and some of the newer shape Polos are filtering into the class as well. These cars run stock 2.0l motors with 288 degree cams and pukka VW motorsport brakes and suspension.

Class P cars make +/- 82kw, minimum weight 1025kg, car & driver, with Zwartkops lap times in the 1'15"s.

Class A - The big bangers. These are the quickest cars in VW Challenge and have full coil over suspension as well as massive 280mm brakes. This class is allowed to run either 1.8 or 2.0l motors, both of them in very high states of tune. Cylinder head gas flowing is allowed and cam duration is limited to a max of 300. This is the quickest class and the biggest budget. The cars look and sound and go like real race cars.

Class A cars make +/- 95kw, weigh 1050kg car & driver and lap Zwartkops in 1'14".

Budget wise it all depends on the class, but some of the running costs are the same over all the classes. Only 2 new tyres are allowed per car per race. These tyres are around R700 each. A set of competition brake pads will last you all season, R1500. The engines and gearboxes are usually very strong, so failures from these parts are relatively uncommon. Most guys run on a race to race budget of around R3500, with class C costing around R2.5k per race meeting, depending on who’s telling the story.

Be that as it may, VW Challenge offers amazingly good bang for the buck!

So what are they like to drive?

The cars for this test were supplied by Guilio Sabattini Auto Stylists in the shape of Philip Croeser’s class B car, and his wife Elna’s class C car.

Talking to them beforehand I realised the setup on these little front wheel drive jobbies were not at all like the race cars I’m used to. Rear springs were almost three times stiffer than the fronts. They run rear tyre pressures at over 3-bar, with the fronts below 2-bar, crazy! With their tyre rules, new tyres generally go on the front, old stuffed ones on the rear. The rear wheel track width is a lot less than the front and the rear anti roll bar is stiffer than a 17 year old snot-nose at a high school social.

The reason for all that is to try and overcome the under-steer that VW engineered into the chassis of these cars for normal everyday road use. Most VW Challenge guys deliberately make the rear end very loose, so the rear either slides or steers on lift-off to aid turn-in. The front tyres have to do all the steering, braking & power delivery and you obviously don’t want the rear end fighting the front.

The weird setup started making sense to me, but I was a little surprised by how nervous these cars were in a straight line. Geesh, it was hard work just keeping the damn things pointed in the right direction down the straights, and the nervousness got worse under braking. I learned afterwards that they run stupid toe out in the rear to make the cars turn in better. It kinda worked, I guess. I didn’t need much steering lock at all to make the car point in, and both these cars did change direction very quickly.

Once I had it turned in the fun started. The only way to keep the car from spinning out was using drive from the front wheels to pull the car through corners. Cornering became a process of turning in and getting back on the power with determination, or the rear end kept wanting to overtake the front. The more sideways I got, the more power was needed. Stu was spot on when he said stay on the gas even when you’re not on the gas. Things worked totally opposite to the rear wheel drive cars I grew up with.

I also found that in places where the car under-steered, just a small lift off the gas would bring the nose back in, but I also sensed that if I had to jump off the gas completely the ass would snap around as quick as a politician changes his mind.

All in all, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this test. I can see why the VW Challenge guys are so passionate about these cars. They are huge fun to drive once you get your mind around the dynamics of a small front wheel drive hatch. When I went out in the class B car I thought the rear end was broken at first, but the more I pushed the nicer the car became. The more powerful class B car also felt ‘looser’ than the Class C car. I guess the class C car would be quite benign compared to a VW Challenge class A car.

On a final note I’ll vouch for the fact that as small as these cars are, they offer a pretty wild ride and you have to be precise with your driving, but you also have to wring their necks to get the best from them.

Ain’t that exactly what you’ve always wanted from a race car?

Special thanks to:

Philip & Elna Croeser for making their cars available for this test.
Stuart Mack for providing info and helping to put this article together.

Find out more about Goldwagen VW Challenge:

VW Challenge.co.za – Official web site.
Calendar – 2009.
Results & Standings – xls file.
Pro-Tour.co.za – VW Challenge page on the Pro-Tour site.

Cheers,
Pierre.

my suzuki tl-1000-s

2009-06-30T00:52:00.007+02:00

A story about a Bike.
by Pierre Martins

I would have liked to start this story off by saying that I owned a TL1000s because I liked to be the underdog, but truth be known, more often than not one’s financial disposition forces you to be the ‘underdog’ whether you like it or not.

Sometimes you just can’t afford the best and you end up buying second best and turn it into something sweet as you go along. Yes, at the time I would have much rather wanted a new 998sps Ducati, but you know what they say about Ducati – They break if you park em in the sun. And besides, I’ve always thought Ducatis were made for the Chinese – They’re small, unreliable and that dry clutch go “ching-ching-ching-ching”, but before I get accused of racism I better get back to my Suzuki TL1000 and the chequebook I threw at it, so to speak.

When the TL was first launched in ‘97 it quickly developed a bad rep in the British press for being a bad-handling bike. A few Pommy journos got spat off the beast and that made the TL the official bad bike from Japan in the late nineties. Eh?

Now lemme ask you an honest question about motoring journalists in general – How often do you see their names on the entry list on race days? Huh? huh? Just what the hell do they know about handling cars and bikes that the rest of us don’t?

Anyway, the bad press forced Suzuki to de-tune later models of the TL and fit a stupid steering damper that didn’t really work, but I was lucky enough to find an un-molested ‘97 and quickly set out to sort the handling issues. A braced swing-arm, Ohlins rear shock and stiffer Ohlins front inners did the job. At the time a buddy of mine, Barry Scholtz, was in Japan and phoned me with a line of high-performance stuff he found over there – Special cranks, rods, pistons and cams. Cash-flow was good so I told him to get the lot.

Back in SA Barry installed all the go-fast goodies and turned the TL into a true Duc-eater. It turned out to be a very, very strong bike, so I decided to race it. First race I entered the bike was a ‘Battle of the Twins’ race at Kyalami. Started from the back of the grid and got myself up to P5 before I got fatigued and finished 9th eventually. Keeping the front wheel down was a problem. The next race I entered was Superbikes at Welkom. I remember that race to this day. It was the first and only time my wife ever came to watch me race. I pulled a podium for her in the Super-mono race before I got on the TL. Ian Emsley got killed in during the opening laps of the Superbike race, and as fate would have it he was also on a strong TL. My wife had seen enough. That was the first and last time she ever came to watch me race…

And that was that. I put the TL back on the road, albeit with upside-down shift and track gearing and used it for odd breakfast runs and track days for a year or two. Barry pulled a Beretta blow-job on himself and blew his brains away a few years later, sad story. My urge for bikes kinda dwindled as time went by, I started racing four-wheelers and eventually sold the TL to one of my employees. He enjoys the bike and still hangs with the best that modern superbikes have to offer on breakfast runs. The other day he told me people still talk about the TL like they used to on Sundays, but I just know it’s not being ridden and looked after the way I used to…

Times do change, eh?

Cheers,
Pierre.

one very fast mini

2009-06-28T20:46:00.004+02:00

Another funny story for ya.
by Pierre Martins

So there I was on the way back to Jo’burg during the late seventies in my old man’s pristine Gunston coloured MkI Mustang, similar to the one in the picture to the right…

My old tappet had a thing for big Yank Tanks. I’ve always liked small European sports cars, but the Mustang was different. I have fond memories of that car. For some unexplained reason the ‘Stang was a fanny magnet of note and my old man promised I could have the car for a long weekend on condition I did well in my final year in school, which I did, even though I was expelled two weeks prior to final exams for smacking the drunk History teacher in the car park after school one day when he called me a ‘loser that would never amount to anything in life’. But that’s another story.

I ended up having to write final exams at the local cop shop along with a buddy of mine, Martin, who also got expelled for shitting in a teacher’s bag. Naughty bugger.

Anyway, Martin and I had a successful weekend pulling Durban sluts in the Mustang and we were on our way back, on that boring stretch of road on the N3 between Harrismith and Villiers before they widened it into two dual lanes and turned it into a toll road. The worst time to be on that road was late afternoon with the sun in your eyes and fatigue setting in after a weekend’s hard partying and screwing your brains out, like we did.

Needless to say, I was kinda tired and kept the Mustang at around 75mph on the dial for the cruise home. The last thing I felt like was entertaining the dumb son of a bitch tailgating us in an old clapped out red 1275cc Mini. I stomped it for a minute, pulled a gap on him and settled down at 75mph again, but he slowly creeped up on us and managed to build up enough momentum to make a pass on us going downhill, but as soon as we hit the first uphill the Mini ran out of steam and I had to re-pass him.

By the time we repeated that pointless ritual about four or five times I had enough of the irritating little asshole and when he slowed at the slightest hint of an incline I thought “Right you bastard, time I give you a bit of a wake-up call” and I gave him gentle nudge from behind. I knew the Mustang wouldn’t get hurt, it had big chrome bumpers designed for the specific task of nudging small European cars out the way. I mean, for what other reason did the Americans put such big bumpers on their cars? – To curb any possible influx of sensible small economic cars, did they not?

Anyway, the asshole in the Mini ignored the nudge, so I upped the ante and settled in behind him and pushed him gently up the hill. I thought he’d be shitting himself, but he turned around and gave me the thumbs-up. Cheeky bastard!

But I had a big V8 under the hood, so when we reached the top of the hill I played my trump card. Instead of backing off I planted my right foot and took him up to 110mph! He-he-he. I wish you could have seen it. The little Mini was bouncing around frantically right there in front of us. Martin was in fits of laughter. Through the Mini’s dash-mounted mirror we could see sweat pouring off the guy’s face and his eyes were the size of saucers with fear.

At that point I felt sorry for the guy, backed off and passed him. We waved at him, but he was too preoccupied trying to keep the Mini straight. He obviously had it in neutral, or had his foot on the clutch, cause the only sound coming from the Mini was a loud Ziiiiiiiinngg, like a bicycle freewheeling down a mine shaft. That must have been the fastest any 1275 Mini had ever gone in history!

Anyway, we never saw him again and laughed all the way home. As for the Mustang, a bit of burnishing compound removed all traces of the Mini’s red paint from the front bumper and my old man was none the wiser. And Martin? Well I bumped into him again about five years ago when I moved to Pretoria. Big beer belly and no hair. He became an Advocate of all things. We did lunch and laughed about the Mini story and other stupid things we did when we were young…

Hope you enjoyed that.

Cheers,
Pierre.

altech gt-challenge ‘09, round 4

2009-06-27T10:08:00.004+02:00

Race report from Welkom.
by Pierre Martins

20 June, 2009:

Funny sport this, motor racing.

I’ve had so many obstacles thrown in my way in the build up to this weekend that at times I didn’t really know whether I was Arthur or Martha. Just a few days before I was flat-cat in bed with a bad case of flu. And then we had drama when the race car fell off the trailer when a tie-strap let go on the way to the race track. Luckily that happened as we pulled off from a stop street and not on the highway. Can you imagine the carnage if it had to happen at speed?

Anyway, I managed to jump through all the hoops that the bastard Murphy threw at me and came out tops in the end…

Race 1:

This one turned into a heated battle right from the start with youngster Dillon Miller in the lightweight little 911 RS. It was like a continuation of the Kyalami races, with me piling the pressure on in bucket loads and him blocking like there was no tomorrow. I wanted to break him and knew he’d crack sooner or later if I bullied him relentlessly, and sure enough, on lap four he missed a gear exiting turn three and over-revved that poor little flat six to high heavens.

After that the tell-tale puffs of blue-white smoke from his exhausts told me he wasn’t gonna last long, so I kept the pressure on and on the next lap his engine finally cried enough in cloud of white smoke whilst I continued with a wry smile on my dial to take a win in class E, evil bastard that I am…

Race 2:

With Dillon gone and the closest class E competitor seven seconds off the pace, all I had to do was cruise to make this a double win in class E for the day. But no, that’s not me. I’m the kinda asshole who sometimes do stupid things like pushing hard for the sake of putting on a good show even when there is no pressure.

And so it turned out that there was a Ferrari F430 behind me on the grid for race two. Of course I had to see how long I could keep him behind me just for the hell of it, even though it was a class B car and I knew I had no chance of matching his straight-line speed…

Three laps into the race he was still there in my mirrors, but he came screaming past me down the back straight. That got me thinking about these bastards in their Ferraris. They just screwed Porsche in LeMans GT2 the weekend before and I would love to get one over on a proper race spec F430, so I decided right there that if he lifted for the super-fast double right-hander at the end of the Phakisa back straight, I was gonna re-take him. So when those little round brake lights lit up on the back of the Ferrari I just kept my right foot planted and took him around the outside, he-he-he.

My toes were curling! That move was the icing on the cake for me. He eventually powered past me and disappeared into the distance. I think he must have been relieved to get the hell away from me.

After that I saw Peter Warton-Hood in his class C Porsche GT3 up ahead and managed to reel him in for a nibble at his heels, but he also caught a wake up, upped his pace and disappeared into the distance. And then it turned into a lonely race. Nobody to dice with. Nobody to catch. I was miles ahead of the next class E guy, so there was no reason to push either, but I kept pushing for the hell of it. It was one of those times when you find good rhythm, when you stay in the zone and dance with the car in pure enjoyment, come what may.

And that was that.

The weekend started off bad, but I managed to pull another double win in Class E to place myself comfortably ahead in my class and in the overall points standings, which means I’m currently leading the Altech GT Challenge in a heavy tank Porsche 928.

How about that? Good for a chuckle at least, eh?

Cheers,
Pierre.

kyalami track notes

2009-06-27T00:43:00.007+02:00

A turn by turn guide.
by Pierre Martins

Track Info:

The image to the right is the latest official track map from Kyalami.

Click on the track map to enlarge and use your browser’s ‘Back’ button to return.

Contact details:

Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit
Allandale Road (R561), Kyalami, Midrand, 1685
Denis Klopper, Track Manager, Tel: +27 11 4662800
denis@kyalamiracing.co.za
Kyalamiracing.co.za - official website.
kma.org.za - Kyalami Marshalls Association.

General Notes:

Undulated with a good mix of fast and 'slow' corners, Kyalami is perhaps one of the most technical of all the circuits in South Africa. If you do a count there are 9 left hand corners and 5 right-handers. The track is 4.261km long and runs anti-clockwise, a left-hand track, so to speak. Even though it's seen a fair share of fatalities over the years, Kyalami is still regarded a safe track by local standards, with ample run-off areas and kitty litter to stop you.

Picking the right lines and smooth driving are crucial if you wanna go quick at Kyalami. Some people say it's a 'stop & go' track because you come from high speed sweepers into relatively tight corners. My general advice is to put that mentality out of your mind. The easiest way to make up time at Kyalami is getting off the brakes a fraction earlier in most turns. The track is wide enough to carry relatively high corner speeds everywhere.

As a rule of thumb, any lap time below 2'10" at Kyalami can be considered relatively fast. Fast as in faster than 99.9 percent of excellent road drivers would be capable of first time out. Anything under two minutes is seriously quick, no matter what class you're talking about. Lap times below 1'50" can only be explained with ample use of vulgar lingo.

And then compare that to F1 testing at Kyalami in February 2000 when Villeneuve, Zonta, R Schumacher and Button were all in the 1'23"s...

Track History:

Kyalami was originally built in 1961 as a 4.104km track. The track was widened and resurfaced in 1968, the length being marginally extended. The circuit has been used for Grand Prix and Formula One races and has hosted the South African Grand Prix many times.

When some of the F1 teams boycotted the track in 1985, the circuit was heavily revised and rebuilt, using only part of the previous track. Crowthorne, Barbeque and Jukskei sweep were either eliminated or heavily modified. Formula one abandoned the rebuilt circuit in 1993 after just two races and a bankruptcy on the part of the promoter.

The track has also played host to five rounds of the World Superbike series from 1998 – 2002 and again in 2009 when the track was altered again by removing the much hated “Bus Stop” chicane and replacing it with a fast right hand kink as the penultimate corner, turn 13.

Kyalami also hosted the South African round of the A1-GP series for the first time in 2009.

About this Track Guide:

I've done more laps at this track than I care to remember. Been around Kyalami in all sorts of vehicles, from track days in ordinary road cars to a variety of Porsches including a 900hp GT2 track car, a lightweight 500hp 944 Turbo, as well as a couple of 250 Superkart races. On bikes I've done plenty Superbike schools and raced regionals at Kyalami on 600 and 750cc fours, as well as Battle Of The Twins and Supermono races for a few years.

Other than that I've had seat time as a passenger coaching various drivers. This track has been good to me over the years. Touch wood, I have never ever had a crash or even spun at Kyalami. Had a few close calls, but never anything remotely serious. Most memorable laps for me were a few 1'56"s (slow by today's standards) on a ZX6R when I still raced bikes in the late nineties, a few low 1'50"s in a GT2 Porsche in the beginning of '07 and some 1'51"s first time out in a 250 Superkart I built from scratch in '06.

Although the track itself is a good challenge from a driver / competitor's perspective, I've never really enjoyed a Kyalami weekend as much as I enjoy some other tracks in SA. Traffic to and from the track is a bitch to begin with and the staff, marshals and facilities aint spectator friendly. Not by a long shot.

Anyway, the notes below are based on my own experience and intended for tin top and single seater cars. Make your own adaptations for front, rear, or four wheel drive cars. These notes are not really intended for bikes, but some principles are the same. Use what you can.

I obviously can't tell how your ratios will work out on this track, so I can't recommend gear changes and such, but I'll take the odd guess. Kyalami is generally not hard on tyres, but grip is average. Soft or medium are the compounds of choice. The track's not hard on brakes either, but in normal road cars you can expect the brakes to go off after about six laps of hard driving. Don't be surprised when the pedal suddenly drops to the floor at the bottom of the Mine Shaft, but don’t ask how I found that out, he-he-he…

Anyway, how you implement my notes is up to you. Use what you like and disregard what doesn't work for you…

Turn 1 & 2:

Fast right / left combo. Think of these turns as “curves”, not corners.

Turn 1 will probably be a 4^th gear corner in your car. You should not have to brake for T1, you don’t even lift off the throttle. In a 250 kart you keep it pinned all the way through T1 & 2. Slower cars can do the same. On a bike you can generally go full taps through T1 and feather the throttle for T2.

On your run-up to T1 make sure you move all the way over to the left. You can even use some of the pit lane entry. There are two bumps there, use them as your signal to start pitching into T1. As you apex T1, stay against the right hand curb to line yourself up for T2. You shouldn’t have to brake for turn 2 either, just change down one gear (probably 3^rd).

Turn in late for T2 and feed the power on. Try to straighten out as you apex and stick it. You need good drive out of T2 for the climb up to Nashua. It is important to turn in late into T2. If you turn in too early you will run wide on the exit and lose terminal speed if you’re forced to lift. The track is very wide on the exit. If you find you have unused track space on the exit it means you can probably increase your entry speed into T2 next time round.

Passing in T1 & T2:

The race is not won in the first corner. Duh. On lap 1 the safest bet is to get the inside line for turn 2 and avoid the ten pin bowling fest that sometimes happens there.

T2 is the crucial corner. Make your pass there. To make it stick on a flying lap it's best not to pick the inside line into T1. Chances are your opponent will get back at you in T2, or get better drive and re-take you into Nashua.

Catch a tow down the main straight and place yourself to the left of your opponent as you exit T1 for the inside line into T2.

Turn 3 & 4 – Nashua:

Medium fast left hander. This is actually a double left hander with a ‘table top’ at the second apex where you join the old track.

I've found the fastest way through this corner is not braking and powering through the corner. It’s all about setting the car up and balancing the car to carry high entry and mid corner speed. The key word here is 'momentum'. The trick is to let your entry speed carry you.

You have to look through this corner to get it right. Do not over-brake on entry. Just a confidence brake, or no brakes at all when you get it right. Roll off the throttle and heel & toe (probably down to 3^rd). You can carry more entry speed than you think. Use the racing line and turn in smooth with the extra speed you carry. Keep a smooth consistent line and balance the car on the throttle.

Note the skid marks on the track surface coming out of Nashua - Evidence of plenty mistakes. Do not get throttle happy at the apex. The car will be loose when you go over the table top and you will spin, and if you spin here you are likely to hit the inside wall. You don't want that. Wait for the suspension to settle before you stick it. Use the curb on the exit, but be careful of the astro turf there. If the car snaps sideways you might end up hitting the inside wall. You don’t want that to happen, do you?

Passing in Nashua:

Most drivers tend to over-brake into Nashua and there is an inside line, but don't pass here if it means changing your line and losing drive on the exit. If you follow the advice above and get it right, you can use your terminal speed to make a pass on the old straight that follows, or into Sunset.

Turn 5 – Sunset:

Fast right hand sweeper.

It’s not called ‘Sunset’ for nothing. The sun gets in your eyes as you exit in the late afternoon, especially during winter months.

Think of this corner in two parts. Part One is turning in and balancing the car as soon as you can. Part Two is feeding the power on and using the whole track and the curb on the exit.

Again, don’t over-brake on entry. Very little braking is required, think of it as 'confidence' braking. Don’t turn in too early, but don’t turn in too late either. It is imperative to find the right marker for your entry into Sunset.

You can start feeding the power before you apex. The track is mega wide on the exit. Look through the corner. Once you see the exit, hoof it and allow the car to drift wide. Use the whole track and the curb if you need to.

Sweet corner!

Passing in Sunset:

Perfect for the classic catching a tow down the straight and making your move in the braking zone. However, be careful not to turn in too early if you have the inside line. If you turn too early you will most likely sacrifice terminal speed on the exit, giving your opponent the opportunity to come back at you into Sunset.

Turn 6 – Clubhouse:

Medium fast left hander.

This is where the track starts playing tricks on your mind. Because you come from such high speed into such a ‘tight’ corner, you gonna want to over-brake, trust me.

The track is wider than you think. Try to get off the brakes earlier on the entry into Clubhouse. Turn in a fraction later and open up the arc of your line at the apex. There’s a rectangular patch of tar at the apex. Use that as your signal to open up your line. Hoof it. The outside curb is pretty wide on the exit. Use it, but be careful that you don’t drop a wheel onto the astro turf on track-out.

Passing in Clubhouse:

Pull a move up the inside as you enter Clubhouse. Plenty racers have probably made more passes in this corner than any other corner at Kyalami. But take heed - Clubhouse is perfect for late braking moves, but it's easy to over-brake and lose the advantage you had. Yes, brake later, but make sure you get off the brakes a fraction earlier.

Turn 7 & 8 – The Esses:

Medium to fast left / right combo with an off-camber bit in-between.

Use turn 7 to set yourself up for turn 8. The objective is to turn in tight and point the car as soon as you can. Keep it tight on entry for the first left hander. If you don’t, you will run out of space before you apex the right hander that follows.

After you turned in for the first ess, point the car straight for the apex of the second ess before you gas it. The track is off-camber there and you will spin if you get on the gas whilst turning. If you get it right you should be hard on the throttle when you apex the second ess. Let the car run wide and use all the track & curb on the exit of the second ess.

Passing in the Esses:

The entry into the first ess is too tight for a clean pass and you will probably lose terminal speed on the exit of the esses. Rather try getting up the inside as soon as you exit the second ess but be careful. Remember, the track snakes going up to Wesbank making it easy to make a car wide.

Turn 9 & 10 – Wesbank:

Slow left hand hairpin type corner, off camber on exit. If you study the track map carefully you’ll see it’s actually a double left-hander that opens up on the exit.

The track zigzags up to Wesbank. Don’t follow the track, just go straight. Place the car in the middle of the track for the entry into Wesbank. If you used a straight line you should come onto the table top more or less in the centre of the track on the entry into Wesbank. This will block the inside and outside lines.

Do not follow the radius of the track in Wesbank Corner. The exit is off camber and you won’t be able to get on the gas early. Go in deep. Turn in late and point the car straight for the exit as quick as you can. You want to apex on the left curb where the track starts falling away. If you get it right you should apex two-thirds through the corner in a straight line and flat out on the gas as you apex. You can make up mucho time here with good terminal speed and a steep downhill that beckons - Hello Mine Shaft. Heehaw!!

Passing in Wesbank:

Most drivers will take a lunge up the inside on the entry into Wesbank. Be careful with your braking on the inside line, the track can be slippery there. If you follow the line described above you won't have to worry about that. Unless an opportunity presents itself in Wesbank, it's best to concentrate on your line, getting better terminal speed and making a pass down the mine shaft or into the bowl.

Turn 11 – The Mineshaft Sweep:

Helluva fast left hand sweeper.

How big are your balls? The trick with this sweeper is not the sweeper itself, but where you wanna be in the braking zone for the bowl. Turn in early and you will be wide coming out. Turn in late and you will be tight on the exit.

The objective is to straighten out on the exit as soon as you can for braking into the bowl. There are two bumps as you apex close to the left curb. Use them as your signal to wake up and decide where you wanna be on entry into the bowl.

Passing in the Sweep:

Picking the inside line at the entry into the sweep is dangerous if the guy in front doesn't know you're there. Make sure he sees you and that you can get next to him before you commit. Alternatively, make your move as you exit the sweep, into the bowl.

Turn 12 – The Bowl:

Medium fast right hander.

This is another corner where the track plays tricks on your mind. This corner is much, much wider than you think, especially on the exit.

Don’t be overly concerned about getting over all the way to the left of the track on entry into the bowl. The emphasis is on entry speed. Let that carry you into the bowl. In other words, don’t over-brake and sacrifice too much corner speed in exchange for a perfect line through the bowl. Rather carry higher speed and use the width of the track on the exit.

Passing in The Bowl:

Most drivers tend to over-brake into the bowl. To make a pass in the bowl you have to set it up before you enter the sweep in the mine shaft, but try not to telegraph your intentions. Be careful with your braking on the inside line, the track can be slippery there.

Turn 13 – The Kink:

Fast right-hander. This is where the old “Bus Stop” chicane used to be. Unfortunately I don’t have any good pics of this corner yet, but I’ll try to get some and post them as soon as possible.

Most drivers love this new corner. It brings a new dimension to the track and keeps with the flowing nature of Kyalami. What used to be a very slow chicane is now a fast, flowing corner. Slower cars can take this corner flat-out in 4th gear, faster cars may have to lift off slightly before turn-in, but the faster you go, the less room for error you have. Duh…

The approach is a no-brainer, you just stay over to the left of the track and turn in smoothly. Don’t yank the car into the kink. In low-slung cars like single seaters it’s not easy to judge the apex. The inside curb is raised considerably at the apex, use it as a reference point, but do not clip the raised curb. It will most probably throw you off line.

The exit is easy on track out. Use the curb on the left, but beware of dropping a wheel onto the astro turf next to the curb. Also keep an eye out for slow moving vehicles at the pit lane entry. bring the car over to the right as soon as you can.

Passing in the Kink:

Taking a lunge up the inside on the right-hand side is not as easy as it was in the days of the chicane. If you wanna try this, make sure you’re committed early enough with enough room between the car next to you and the raised curb at the apex.

It might be a better idea to stay close through the kink and line yourself up for a pass in the final corner.

Turn 14 – Pit Corner:

Slow left hander. The final corner.

Very similar to the final corners at Zwartkops & Phakisa, but slower, probably 2nd gear in most cars. Since they took the chicane away you arrive at this corner much faster, so it’s imperative to keep in mind that you need to brake sooner.

The classic racing line works best, but be ready to catch your ass if it steps out. Lots of drivers get throttle happy here and spin. There are no run off's on either side of the track here, so if you make a balls-up you're likely to incur serious damage. Now is a good time to set yourself up for T1 & T2 and think about doing better on the next lap, but don't forget to look what your pit board says...

Passing in the Final Corner:

The problem here is the run-up to this corner is quite short and a lunge up the inside is predictable and easy to block. If you wanna make a move here you need to start working on it before the kink already and pick the inside line before your opponent does. Easier said than done. It’s hard not to telegraph your intentions here. Perhaps the most important thing about making a pass in this corner is to avoid going in too tight and having to brake harder, losing drive on the exit and being out-dragged to the line.

The straight bits between turns:

Don't go brain dead on the straights. Use the straights to check your gauges to make sure the car is happy. Look after the machine, it's your mode of transport. Check your mirrors to see where your opponents are and anticipate their next moves, just like you do in everyday traffic.

Remember, the perfect line through a corner starts with setting the car up for the corner before you even get to the corner. If you screw up the entry you've screwed up the rest of the corner and the next one perhaps.Think ahead and concentrate on being smooth.

Hindsight:

Like I said earlier, my notes are not gospel, but they have helped some drivers in the past. Use what is relevant to your driving and please be kind enough to let me know what you found useful in particular.

Good luck and cheers,
Pierre.

drifting in south africa

2009-06-26T10:55:00.008+02:00

Saw something new…
by Pierre Martins

The other day I spent a cold and windy Sunday at Midvaal Raceway helping a friend with a little Porsche 924 improve his lines and lap times, but that's not what I wanna talk about…

I saw some car control on the day that was quite awesome to say the least. Now, I've seen drifting on TV & U-tube before and I once saw a dude putting on a show at Wesbank Raceway by doing donuts whilst hanging halfway out of the car. He was good, but the speeds were kinda slow and I wasn’t all that impressed. Afterwards they told me that was “Spinning”, not proper “Drifting”.

Well, I’m happy to report that I witnessed proper high speed “Drifting” at Midvaal the other day and it’s very similar to what we called “Power Sliding” in the old days…

Saw some guy from Kimberley who answers to the name Otto Craven in a mega horse-power black Skyline driving Midvaal in the opposite, anti-clockwise direction. He'd come down the pit straight flat-out, pitch the car sideways at +/- 160km/h, hit opposite lock and steered with the throttle in a very, very, very spectacular manner…

At first I thought he was gonna crash, but wow, what control! The entry speed he carried into the first corner was simply mind-boggling, and the speed with which he flicked the car to opposite lock was something else. The car obviously made big power, but he toyed with it at will. Lots of noise and tyre smoke, but with absolute control and finesse. This dude knew what he was doing, period.

There were a few other drift cars there as well, but none as impressive as Otto in his Skyline. He travelled all the way from Kimberley for the day to practice for an up-coming drifting event at Midvaal in the near future. I’m told that he’s been competing in drifting events all over the world, including the USA and that he owns a fleet of drift cars which includes not one, but two high-powered Nissan Skylines, a tweaked M3 CSL, a twin turbo E46 M3, a new Mustang and a supercharged 350Z with gas. Sounds like he’s serious about drifting, eh?

And the tyres? Hell, I thought my Porsche had an appetite for race tyres, but these guys went through a set of rear tyres every twelve laps or so. Every time they came in after a session their rear tyres were in tatters, literally. They must have generous tyre sponsors, I’m sure.

So there you have it, my first impressions of drifting in South Africa. I wonder what kinda budget I would need to do this in my Porsche? He-he-he, just kidding. Not really my my cup of tea, but I certainly see the attraction and I definitely have respect for the skill these guys have when it comes to car control.

Cheers,
Pierre.

You’ll find some more info on drifting in SA here:

http://www.rockracing.co.za/
Website for the home of drifting in Gauteng - The Rock Raceway. Host of the SADC series.

http://www.ndsdriftseries.com/
NDS Series homepage. Cape based National Series.

http://www.monstermob.co.za/
Kimberley based team / track.

http://www.facebook.com/group.
Rock Raceway on Facebook

http://www.youtube.com/user/MonsterMobAdmin
Monstermob's Youtube channel.

250 superkart - ‘06 PVP

2009-06-23T09:37:00.003+02:00

Photos of my 2006 PVP.
by Pierre Martins

Black Magic:

Here are some photos of the kart I built for the 2006 season. It gave me two 3rd places at the opening round in Welkom. Later that year I crashed it at Zwartkops when another competitor spun in front of me in the Hairpin. I T-boned him hard enough to bend the chassis.

Those are the risks you take in this game, I guess.

Cheers,
Pierre.

Anyway, here are the pics.
Click on the thumbnails to enlarge,
and use your browser’s ‘back’ button to return…

superkarts ‘07 – round 8

2009-06-22T09:40:00.003+02:00

Race report from Wesbank Raceway.
by Pierre Martins

10 November 2007:

This story actually started two weeks prior to this race meet.

Picture a Porsche 944 TurboCup going flat out down the back straight at Midvaal Raceway, with me in the passenger seat coaching a rookie driver. At the 100m mark this guy threw anchors and what happened? The brake pedal fell to the floor...

Driver panicked. Instead of using the runoff he suddenly pitched it anyways. Time slowed down. We went sideways off track with the tyre wall coming up at a rate of knots. I braced for the impact. Next thing a bump in the boondocks threw the car up in the air. Spectators say it was airborne by +/- 10 feet.

We came down hard, smacked the tyre wall at about 160km/h and pushed it along a couple of metres. LHD jobby. Driver's side took the impact, but I slid out of my seat and clouted the driver's seat hard.

The passenger seat was a generic Porsche OEM unit with stock 3-point belt. Driver's seat was a proper job, 6-point belts and whatnot. I've done many a track day in similar OEM seat & belt setups in 911's and never thought anything of it. I guess when the shit hits the fan you kinda change your thinking a bit about safety...

Anyway, I was lucky to walk away from that one with some pretty colourful bruises and a buggered up shoulder. Driver not badly hurt either, but his car was toast. Sad story.

Friday Practice:

I decided to lay off the painkillers for Friday practice and do just two sessions to save my old bones. The kart felt good and I had the gearing spot on, except for the second ess bend in the infield.

Gearing was a tad too tall for that corner, so I decided to pitch it more sideways and steer on the throttle to keep the revs up and stay in the power-band, but on the third lap I overcooked it and spun out. I don’t like spinning, but sometimes you have to try new things and push the envelope. That is what practice is for.

For the second session I stayed out a full race distance to see if my sore shoulder would cope. It felt quick. Fabio Tafani, Sean Moore and yours truly were the only guys in the 1’10”s. The rest of the guys were struggling.

I was happy, but my shoulder started telling me it was time to go home and relax…

Saturday Qualifying:

Woke up Saturday morning full of pain, but nothing a good dose of 250 Superkart adrenalin wouldn't take care of...

Qualifying was a bit of a stuff-up though. I wanted to go out behind Sean Moore to check him out, but slotted in behind his bro Giles by mistake cause their karts and helmets are identical.

We hit traffic for three laps, so I backed off to make space. Tried to stick in two flying laps, only to hit traffic in the wrong places again. Eventually qualified in sixth spot on row three, behind Giles and next to Greg Farah…

Race 1:

With the hectic pace upfront and a mediocre grid position it was back to the drawing board for me with regard to race strategy, especially for the start.

I thought about pulling a sly move by hanging back slightly and jumping the rolling start by a fraction of a second, but it’s difficult to pull it off when you’re not at the back of the field. Nobody watches the back of the field, but when you’re towards the front people notice any sneaky moves on the starting grid.

So I opted to play it safe and just be sharp. That was a good call, planted my right foot at just the right moment, caught a few guys sleeping and drove right past Giles and both Farahs at the start to slot into P3 behind Sean Moore and Fabio as we entered turn one. I saw immediately that Sean had a problem. He was getting under my feet in the infield whilst Fabio cleared off. Giles got past me and we were all over Sean like a bad rash, until he pulled in after lap 2.

Right, time to work Giles out of P2…

I knew his balls got the better of his driving skills at this track a few times in the past, so I figured I had to put pressure on him and hoped he’d make a mistake. Sure enough, he out-braked himself at the end of the main straight and spun. P2 for me, thanks Gileseee. He-he-he...

But it wasn’t over yet. Mario’s signals from the wall told me that someone was riding my ass. I figured it must’ve been one of the Farahs, or both, so I went defensive in the infield. Man, I made my kart three times wider by going slightly off the racing line in the right places.

It worked. I kept the Farahs behind me. Tony managed to get past me on the very last lap just before we got onto the main straight, but I powered past him and waved good-bye. Even the flag marshal showed his appreciation with an all teeth ear to ear Gary Busey like smile as we crossed the finish line.

No bumping and barging, just good honest hard clean racing. What more can you ask for?

Race 2:

Pulled off a good start again and into P3 again by the first corner.

At the end of lap one Mario signalled a huge gap. I was delighted to have the pack of wolves off my back whilst trying hard to keep up with Fabio and Sean. Kept P3 for the first five laps but I just didn’t have it in me to keep the pace.

Mario signalled someone was closing the gap I had. Giles got me first, then Tony. I tried to fight em off but they were too fast for me. Then Greg took a bite at me. He passed me onto the main straight, I out-braked and re-passed him into turn one, but the man is a hard racer and outfoxed me in the infield. Game over.

After that I just gave up. Pain was killing me and I battled to hang onto the wheel, especially over them pesky bone jarring bumps leading into the chicane, so I cruised home to take P5 for race two, thanks to Fabio who fell off towards the end.

Hindsight:

I must admit I was quite surprised at the overall results for the day. Tony Farah took his first win of the season for Team Farah with two stonking drives, finishing both heats in P3. I got 2nd overall and Fabio 3rd. Behind us there were some excellent dices between Vaughn Obhlidal, Steve Lavender and Ivor Horne, with Ivor producing his best drive ever. I wish I could have seen that dice from a spectator’s view…

For me it was a bittersweet result in more ways than one, not my best performance, yet I took home another trophy from a track I hated This was a historic race weekend of sorts. - The last race meeting at Wesbank Raceway, before the bulldozers move in and turn this track into a fat profit for the money-grabbing property developers.

Anyway, this is the end of my longwinded story. My kart is sold and I’m moving on to another race formula next year, but I’ll tell you more about that after the final round of the 2007 Superkart season…

Cheers,
Pierre.

how to remember the flags

2009-06-09T00:23:00.006+02:00

Standard flags and what they mean.
by Pierre Martins

A funny way to remember things…

I have found writing and coaching to be very therapeutic in my own learning and thought processes in that every time I try to explain something to someone it forces me to find ways to put my ideas forward in simple and easy to understand terms.

Humour stimulates one’s memory, so here’s a light-hearted way of remembering the flags and how you should react to them next time you’re out on track…

Chequered Flag:

Also known as the ‘Table Cloth’ flag. The race is over. Come into the pit, eat, drink and party all night.

Red Flag:

Works like a traffic light. All racing to stop immediately. All competitors to slow down, proceed to the finish line and stop.

Black Flag:

The ‘Affirmative Action’ flag. You must give up your position. Together with competitor's number in white on black board, informs the driver that he must stop at his pit at the end of the lap. Very controversial flag, this one.

Yellow Flag:

Like amber on a traffic light, it means Caution! Competitors must slow down and maintain their positions. You can’t pass under yellow like you’d skip amber at a traffic light, the track nazis will penalize you severely.

Blue Flag:

The flag that makes you sad. Informs a competitor that he is about to be passed by another competitor, Duh.

Black with Orange Disc:

Someone shot a hole in the Affirmative Action flag. Together with competitor's number informs driver that he has mechanical problems, and that he must stop at his pit at the end of the lap. More controversy.

Green Flag:

This is the easy one, the "All Clear" you’ve been waiting for after a yellow flag dangerous situation. May also be used to start warm-up or practice sessions. Time to pedal! If you don’t know what this flag means you shouldn't be on a race track.

White Flag:

The Stig’s flag. Attention! Slow-moving traffic on the circuit like emergency vehicles, or the Stig. He-he-he…

Yellow & Red Stripes:

The Bacon flag. Someone’s frying pan is leaking and is spilling slippery stuff on the track. Deterioration of track surface due to oil or water.

Black & White:

The racism flag. Play nice or you’ll be in trouble. Together with a competitor's number it warns the driver of ‘racist’ or unsportsmanlike behaviour.

There is more to it than the above and you should obviously familiarize yourself with the rules at your local tracks and attend driver’s briefings and all that, but I hope the above will give you something to remember the flags by and keep you out of trouble when you’re out there on track…

Cheers,
Pierre.

View	Title	Download pdf’s
Intro	Introduction to the Physics of Racing
Part 1	Weight Transfer	904k
Part 2	Keeping Your Tyres Stuck to the Ground	792k
Part 3	Basic Calculations	786k
Part 4	There Is No Such Thing as Centrifugal Force	898k
Part 5	Introduction to the Racing Line	953k
Part 6	Speed and Horsepower	903k
Part 7	The Traction Budget	1019k
Part 8	Simulating Car Dynamics with a Computer Program	815k
Part 9	Straights	996k
Part 10	Grip Angle	904k
Part 11	Braking	427k
Part 12	CyberCar, Every Racer's DWIM Car?	832k
Part 13	Transients (The missing episode)	943k
Part 14	Why Smoothness?	1099k
Part 15	Bumps In The Road	1229k
Part 16	RARS, A Simple Racing Simulator	1104k
Part 17	"Slow-in, Fast-out!" or, Advanced Analysis of the Racing Line	955k
Part 18	"Slow-in, Fast-out!" or, Advanced Analysis of the Racing Line, Continued	1031k
Part 19	Space, Time, and Rubber	635k
Part 20	Four-Point Statics	981k
Part 21	The Magic Formula: Longitudinal Version	1093k
Part 22	The Magic Formula: Lateral Version	1026k
Part 23	Trail Braking	856k
Part 24	Combination Slip	781k
Part 25	Combination Grip	1021k
Part 26	The Driving Wheel, Chapter I	1108k
Part 27	Four-Wheel Weight Transfer	973k
Part 28	Hazards of Integration	1152k
Part 29	A Magical Trick	1501k