Beer Baron

So very sad. It's awful to see what scarce few motorsport facilities we have left in this state (and this country) being managed so poorly. On the one side you have an organisation representing a cross section of motor sport enthusiasts who are looking to participate in and pay for a fantastic event at our most loved circuit. On the other side a council being charged with the duty of managing a facility that is at least in part paid for by tax payers and at the same time supposedly representing their constituents interests who I'm sure would welcome the boost in trade in their community and the direct injection of funds that the event hire fee brings. So whose interest is being served here? Not the motor sport enthusiasts who want to compete. Not the locals of Bathurst who are supposed to have their interests represented by their council. Certainly not the tax payers who funded works on Mt Panorama who are now effectively being denied access to a facility they paid for. Unfortunately openly bagging the council won't improve things, they need to try and understand the motivation behind these problems. I for one cannot see what it could be, but it needs to be understood so that a solution can be found. We have so few motor sport facilities left in NSW and Australia as a whole and the restriction of access to the few remaining places is a serious problem. I guarantee clubs in Germany booking track days at the Nurburgring Nordschleife don't have these kind of problems. There is undoubtedly one fee for all and you pay it and run your event and actually have fun. Not that it matters too much anyway as in good weather and when the track is free of bookings they hold tourist sessions anyway so you can rock up and do a few laps as you wish (wouldn't that be nice to see at Bathurst??). In Europe clubs can even have access to F1 circuits like Spa Francorchamps (I know, I drove at a private track day there last month). Even circuits like Monza are available for relatively trouble free hire by clubs. We have a lot to learn.

personally I reckon at 450awkw you are getting close to the limit of what LSX is talking about. With much more power the car will start to become a real handful on track and times won't necessarily improve, on top of that reliability will start to become questionable and of course costs for consumables goes up. as you've found in the past, as maintenance costs go up at some point fun goes down. it's all speculation though, maybe the happy point on a 35 is more like 500awkw, but personally I reckon around 400awkw is the happy point. you can get there without spending a fortune on bolt ons or internals, car still behaves nicely, electronics aren't having too much of a fit all the time, and maintenance costs shouldn't be much worse than a standard one. so you are getting a lot of fun for not much money. consider though in a 32 GTR that happy point is more like 280awkw. after that it's big money on turbos, reliability gear etc and drivability starts to suffer from 350 onwards. so things have certainly improved!

yeah agree. if it's got good sound and the logging capability then not being HD doesn't bother me at all. it's still regular TV quality if not better with the 580L camera head. all HD does is use up shitloads of memory card. I watched the footage we got on russ's POV 1 on my 46inch full HD bravia and it looked fine to me. I was watching it through my laptop which was plugged in to the TV via HDMI cable. it played nicely and sound was quite good actually. I think overall at the moment the POVs offer a good package. they are reliable, easy to use, give good (but not spectacular) footage, get great battery life and are priced reasonably. but for the next step up I'd look at a vbox lite as the logging functionality it offers and the software it comes with make it a much more impressive package. even without the bells and whistles of HD video.

I have to say at $1600 AUD + shipping for the vbox lite with 2 camera heads that's pretty good. I really like having 2 cameras and being able to add track map, gauges etc to the footage easily is very cool. I saw some guys using a vbox at SPA and it seemed fairly simple to set-up and use and I've heard the software is very easy to use. it's certainly got me thinking....

yep, will get onto pics this week. have downloaded to PC but that's it so far. need to do a quick sort.

probably limited by how many they can sell!

depends what you want. if you just want convenient, 100% accurate and reliable times then the beacon based mychron timer is the go. I have a mychron light TG ( it was around $300 from memory) and it does exactly what's advertised. it can also do splits as well with additional beacons (around $50 from memory). it's also super easy to read and easy to use. http://www.aimsports.com/products/tg/index.html on the other hand if you think you want to delve further into analysis of your driving then you really need something with more functionality like a drift box/performance box. or even some more logging stuff like vbox pro etc. in your first post you said you just want quick laptimes as you're sick of waiting for the sheets at track days etc. if that's really the case then the mychron is for you. the other good thing is. they are very popular. at any given track day there will be plenty of mychron beacons on the pitwall. you can just pick one and use that (providing they don't pack up and bail half way through the day! saves putting your own out there if you are worried about forgetting it).

yeah they are nuts. all this 'we don't favour anyone' strategy (if you can call it that) is going to cost them a WDC any moment now. unless webs can battle through (god I hope he can). come on old son!!!!!! GO WEBBER!!!!

WORD! Kobe is the man. nothing better than repeatedly dishing the chop on the same corner lap after lap after lap. he must have been a lawnmower in the suzuka circuit run off and infield as a teenager and has studied every square milimeter of tarmac on those lazy summer lawn mowing expeditions. he's the new taku without all the senseless crashes.

very prophetic troy. lol, should have been a 'switch to lean map' for seb 2 laps from the end and webber cruise past for a win and a decent lead into the final 3 races.

mm the vbox is awesome but fk me dead even on special at 2000 pound it's a lot of dough. having said that you do get a lot for your money with 2 cam set-up, timer, logging etc. so I guess if you priced up a vio or rad cam, 2nd camera, logging kit, and say mychron timer you'd be around similar money. the question is do you need all that stuff though?

yeah, my 2 favourite aus touring car drivers together again. how could they lose? wish I had been in the country and known they were driving together as I would have had a decent bet on. still fantastic drive by both lowndes and skaife. the old blokes still got it!

PS wish we had the incar from that. it was a f**king spectacular drive if I do say so myself. over hills, through ditches, through the bloody tour de france of bikes. it had it all.

well it has to be said, burger ring was good, spa was awesome but the hairiest drive of all was trying to get to my f**king flight at dusseldorf weeze airport in a diesel ford fiesta at warp 5. f**king GPS sent us to weeze AIRFORCE base not the bloody airport. realising my flight closed in 5 mins and we were 5kms away saw briz nav for me as I drove straight through the base, through the airfield, skirted the airport fence till we found a gap and shot through it. a bloke in a backhoe doing some work must have seen the desparate look on my face cause he stopped work and backed out of our way!!! what a champ. troy was a top nav too. i would have vomited about 12 times on that little run. how on earth I made that flight I have no idea. but make it I did. thanks bris.

keen for 2 seats if still available. let me know and I'll transfer in the next couple of days. sound be a grand ol time. I even have a new 32 GTR so I can park in the fancy parking.

Yep that's exactly our thought. Buy an e36 m3 put a set of semis on it and use that and sell at the end. Shouldn't cost more than 2 or 3k euro and you could do a few track days and drive it everywhere in between. Exige is a big outlay thoug. The exige was awesome. Great car. Even with the supercharged 240hp don I still reckon it could easily use at least 50hp more. By the last session we could hang with some pretty serious cars which is not bad at such a fast circuit like spa.

troy is modest, he was fairly hauling in the dry and pretty conservative in the wet with the 35K eu excess hanging over our heads (only covers your own car too). awesome few days. Im in venice atm and short on time but will add some more bullshit about how awesome i was later on...

everyone in europe is out to get us. but f**k we are having fun. nurburgring was awesome despite the M3 we had booked having it's engine blown before our day. they then offered to give us their 911 GT3 instead as compensation but some russian bastard stuck it in the fence on the ring the day before we were to have it. still we had fun in 2 alfa 75s (3L V6 with cage, semis, etc), had 2 different scirocco's (great car for the ring, nice cage, semi's, DSG, good car) and an Audi A6 too. Spa was also amazing. such a cool track and very, very quick. The lotus exige 260 we had was a serious piece of gear too. it was on semis as well and was amazing with corner speed and so good under brakes. A few little problems and the farking rad cam was a bit less than rad and sadly meant we didn't capture about half the ring footage (of course the best laps were the ones were it died) and same at spa (and again we missed the better arvo sessions). the POV worked fine though but we'd set it up as a secondary camera so the footage is kind of lame without the main angle from the radcam. anyway, without evidence it just means the laps get quicker in the stories we tell, the porsches we passed were more plentiful and the driving was out of this world!!!! now I need to get my 2 hours sleep before we drive to the airport. also, Spa casino was hilarious. definitely drop some cash there if you are in spa. built in 1762 it claims to be the oldest casino in the world and I'm inclined to believe it. it's a very cool old building. oh, we also had the most awesome meal in dusseldorf on the way to spa. big pork hock for troy about the size of a small child with sauerkraut and potato and schnitzel with mushroom and onion for me. eaten with many a beer and of course strudel for desert. it's about as bavarian as it gets. monza GP was cool too but sadly no victory for our mate webber but I did get to give vettel a piece of my mind as he hopped out of his car after the race. that was nice. bed time. pics, vids etc to follow when I manage to get 1 day where I'm not flying around europe, driving around europe or at the track.

yeah book place in spa for montag. nicer the better. 2 rooms. for sunday night I will look some sht up now in Milan. then I just need flight out of spa back to florence and I'm finally done booking sht.

stock cooler is about 60mm in the core. personally I'd go with a 70mm japanese intercooler, like ARC. they are nice and thing. the problem with the 100mm cores is they rob your radiator of almost all it's airflow so you then end up with higher water temps or even overheating problems. then you buy a bigger radiator and the cycle continues and you've suddenly added a whole lot of weight right up the front of the car where you don't want it. have you ever picked up one of those china 100mm GTR coolers? they are bloody heavy. an ARC 70mm core is actually lighter than a factory GTR cooler.

nice vids brisby. silverstone is a bloody awesome track. has to up in that top few tracks with spa, nordschliefe, bathurst etc. 2 more days till ring time. now we need to book a room in milan or we are sleeping on the streets monday night...

rock on hillbiilly. I have the vio here in hk but bugger all to report.

gold. both of them.

pretty tough problem with no easy solution unfortunately. like you say sliders will fix it but they are not always ideal in mounting location or height. seat insert is a good idea talk to places like revolition or race and rally, or GMP etc. most would be custom made by teams themselves I'd say. but it's probably the best idea.

yeah I got a pic message of the kit this morning. looks very professional. you could even say it's rad....