djr81

Hey that looks familiar... Also pays to check the bolt on the upper outer trailing position on the drivers side. Mine continuously works loose. No idea why. I cant remember the size or pitch other than it is a flared nut ont he inside.

Hmm I was going to buy some rims shortly but I was worried about them getting stolen. I think that, in those stickers, I have found a solution.....

So its confirmed that STR are going to be around next year?

I ran an older GT-R (A 32) at the track over a number of years on 13#. There is no reason why you should have problems at this level as it is relatively safe. It is however always possible. There is no hard an fast rule, but there appears to be a consensus that 14# is a perfectly acceptable number for these turbos. Be sure that the engine is warm before you go out on the track & give the thing plenty of time to cool down after each run. Also be aware that wear and tear will be relatively high on your car mostly the brakes and tyres. Keep an eye on your oil temps too.

I am having a bet on Webber this weekend also. The bet is that on lap 14 he will spin the car into a sandtrap from P8. It is like F1s version of Cluedo. You pick the lap, the cause of retirement and the position from which he retires. If he actually ever finishes a race the prize jackpots. I just wish someone would give him a good car that he doesn't need to overdrive so much.

NPKJR has had a bad start to the year. No one would debate otherwise. But he has stepped his game up in the last couple of races. He beat Alonso in France. He qualified on the same row as him in England (With more fuel) & was racing well until the rain caught him as it did no end of others. Don't forget if it wasn't for a bullshit yellow flag incident that did not involve him he would have beaten Hamilton to the F3000 title. And don't forget what a rubbish start to the year Kovi had at Renault. Anyway, go the sons of former F1 drivers.

Bah, the German GP. It was much better on the old Hockenheim circuit. Then the cars could just fk off out into the forrest & blow up without disturbing anyones sleep.

The problem with rallying in Australia is the spectators have no commitment. Not like Portugal in the Group B days.

Because modified road cars are horrendously expensive to run week in/week out. The V8 category started out as being not dissimilar to modified road crs. Take the VP Commodore. It had a 5 litre Holden motor (Not a Chev) a three link rear live axle (like the road car) McPherson strut front end (like the road car), shared the body shell with the road car. Over time the category has moved away from this arrangement - principally to SAVE money. It has also changed the regulations to try & ensure parity. So cost & parity are the two main drivers....

I remember the 2 litre Super Touring championship. Both here & in Britain. It provided some good racing and the technology of the cars was interesting & diverse. There were variously front, rear & four wheel drive cars. Four, five & six cylinder engines. Sedans, hatchbacks & station wagons. The Williams Renaults were a lovely bit of gear. In Pomgolia there were anything up to 8 or 9 manufacturers involved at any one time: BMW, Audi, Volvo, Ford, Vauxhall, Mazda (Eunos), Nissan, Renault, Alfa Romeo. Plus some others I can't think of. Unfortunately costs got somewhat out of control & with one make dominating the series in turn the manufacturers decided spending large sums to come 10th wasn't worth it anymore. Australia's Super Tourers were, by and large, the previous years BTCC cars. Audi, Volvo & BMW had good factory involvement & good drivers. (Jones, McConville, Richards, Brock, Morris, Brabham, Baird...) By comparison most of the privateers struggled. Ross Palmer basically gave it away after the PI tragedy & even Gary Rogers efforts were fairly hand to mouth. As for a salary cap they tried to introduce it for our V8's. It didn't work. Personally I favour Mark Larkhams idea. Holden & Ford tip their money into a pool for marketing & team funds are provided by whatever Cochrant can gouge from tv & the circuits/promoters plus whatever sponsors they can find. This neatly removes the ludicrous situation where you have one or two factory teams & a bundle of privateers running. Classes? Well no one gave a fk about anything other than the outright class. Given how many safety cars racing currently suffers from I would hate to see slower cars added to the series.

Maybe some cheap stuff here: http://www.v8clearancesale.com/

F3000?

Well there has been a fundamental shift in the enforcement policy in the last few years. The shift if based on the bankrupt notion of road safety as peddled by the arseclowns at Monash University & happilly taken up by State governments across the country. Essentially now that they have introduced draconians fines for everything they can think of & failed in their stated purpose of having a meaningfull effect of the number of fatalities they have chosen to focus further on "driver behaviour". When you link this with the equally bankrupt concept of state governments being "tough on law and order" you get them targetting people whom they have labelled as "hoons". This ties in nicely with a great many voters prejudices about young people & about car enthusiasts. It just so happens that it has next to nothing to do with road safety. As for the police enforcement of the laws. They will stereotype you and they will target you if you conform to certain stereotypes.

Phaark, so much hate. There are something like six or seven biographies. Only one of which was in any way authorised. So maybe other than blaming Hamilton people may look at all those cashing in on his fame.

What I find somewhat surprising is the willingness for people to go into bat for Toyota & others. Can anyone point out a factory backed Toyota anything that has run competitively in the outright class in any circuit formula in Australia? Because I can't. They have never been genuinely interested in competing int he V8 series anyway. It is only journalists running out of story lines that keeps the idea alive. Toyota are happy to play along because it is free publicity. As for the V8 formula suffering in any way from lack of ratings & spectators, well other than Sydney most events are near on sold out. Some are weeks in advance For some perspective, check the photo below of a round of the 1992 SATCC - from Tassie. What can be seen? No Holden factory team for one. Only twelve entries in the outright category. Six of which were sponsored by cigarette companies. Only six teams. Only one of which was a factory team. Rubbish tv coverage. 3x20 minute heats over two days. Dire crowds etc etc etc. So people that say V8s are struggling need to keep some perspective. Fk I remember going back a few years after Jason Bright won Bathurst for the Stone Brothers their merchandising consisted of two ladies selling caps from a card table set up behind the pits at Wanneroo. I kid you not. Now you can't walk down the street without seeing some bogon in a HRT jacket. Although to be fair, this may have something to do with where I live...

The motors weren't the problem. It was the rest of the Williams kit attached to it. Cosworth could doubtless do an excellent job. The problem is who would be signing the cheques to pay for it all. With regard to Toyota the motors themselves cost a fair bit of money. With the tight regulations & the homologation requirements I wouldn't think there is much difference between the factory stuff & what Williams get.

When Super Touring was about the only manufacturers who properly committed were BMW (Now basically restricted to F1), Volvo (Now owned by Ford) and Audi (Doing the LeMans thing). Everything else (hoo boy Hyundai, Toyota, Peugeut, Ford, Renault, Holden, Alfa Romeo, Nissan) were basically privateers or only entered for the big events. It would be nice to see other makes in the cetegory. It would help it along. But I cannot see how joining the V8s would help any of the other car makers save, maybe Chrysler. But how many bogons have $60k for a 300C? Australia used to have a vibrant open wheeler scene too. Tasman used to refer to something other than an ocean & a Holden team...

Sorry dood. I cant spell any of the Finn's names either. Lucky Rosberg is German. Which occured to me when the commentators were banging on about Frank Williams tribute to the Territorial Army during the British GP. He has that & a Japanese & a German driver. Hmmm.

I guess with regard to the second driver the development of the car plays an important role in defining their competitiveness. There are loads of examples (look how the FW14B affected Patrese relative to Mansell) but I will try & keep it to one. Schumacher & Herbert at Benetton. Now I am a card carrying member of the Johnny Herbert fan club. He recovered from an awful crash & some really ugly foot/ankle/leg damage to return to top line F1. When he was at Lotus with Hakkinen they were both competitive & equally matched. But at Benetton he struggled against Schumacher. Why? Well mostly because the car & the development of the car was tailored towards Schumacher. Now that it isn't a criticism, just an observation. No team would do otherwise. But it meant that Herbert drove a car not tailored to his preferences, whereas Schumacher did not. And it showed. For the best result go back to 1984. Lauda bested Prost by half a point to win the WDC. Both were Mclaren drivers. As far as teams/engineers getting on it is a funny thing. Competitiveness helps (eg Piquet loved life at Brabham, didn't at Lotus). But it is not always the whole answer. The best example is possibly the late & much lamented Denny Hulme. He won his world championship at Brabham but was always happiest driving for McLaren. It may just be about motivation. Getting your arse handed to you every fortnight by your team mate can make motivation a rather difficult commodity to find. Berger dealt with by realising that he was in the present of greatness. Some of Jimmy Clarks team mates did likewise. I too would love to see a Wiliams renaissance. But in the absence of a works engine deal & the attendend financial benefits I can't see it happenning. Which is a big shame. Maybe I will console myself with a limited edition Kozuke cap.

Do you remember what the V8 racing was like before they introduced the control tyre? I do. It was rubbish. Basically at the end unless you were on Bridgstone rubber and on their development rubber at that you had no chance. So it meant that HRT & GSR won most events. Dunlop never recovered from the Kobe earthquake & Yokohama never had the wherewithal to compete on even terms with Bridgestone. Hoosier was the only other company to try & their attempt was laughable. So a tyre supply contract ended up being the most important arbiter of a teams competitiveness. It also meant that only a few teams had any real chance of competing at the top level. Getting rid of tyre competition & replacing the tyres with a single, control tyre was one of the key changes that allowed the growth of the series.

Well I take the view point that the normal (If F1 could ever be referred to as that) position is to have one gun driver & a hack. It makes for happy teams. McLaren is one of the few teams to go against this trend. Ferrari in recent history haven't (Thinking back the last time they did was Prost/Mansell - Mansell left in a huff then Prost got sacked a couple of years later) Renault haven't. (although in their earlier iteration they got close) Williams haven't. Lotus didn't. Brabham didn't. (In the Ecclestone era anyway) So over the time Ron Dennis has run McLaren he has had drivers such as De Cesaris, Watson, Lauda, Prost, Rosberg, Johansson, Senna, Andretti, Berger, Hakkinen, Mansell, Blundell, Coulthard, Montoya, Raikkanen, Alonso, Hamilton & Kovi. Of those partnerships I would say that six pairings have had two top line drivers: Lauda/Prost Rosberg/Prost Senna/Prost Hakkinen/Senna Hakkinen/Coulthard (just to show I care, Roy) Hakkinen/Montoya Alonso/Hamilton Over the equivalent time I struggle to think of 6 top line pairings in the remainder of the field that could genuinely be said to be competitive. Maybe Mansell/Prost at Ferrari in 1991 or thereabouts. Ended badly. Arnoux/Prost at Renault in the early eighties. Ended badly. Mansell/Piquet at Williams in the mid eighties. Ended badly. Hill/Villeneuve at Williams in the early/mid nineties. Ended badly with Hill leaving for Arrows. Villeneuve/Pironi at Ferrari in 1981. Ended in disaster. Which gets me to my main point. Given the pairing of two gun drivers you expect problems. So I would contend that you need to lower expectations about how much love is in a team when there are two good drivers. I mean it goes back further than BRM with Graham Hill not getting on with Jackie Stewart.... By the way the Hungarian dear lovers society will be in touch to discuss your opinion of Stefan Johansson. Lastly, yes you are right Mark Blundell (Got the wrong MB) deserved better treatment, mostly because he was/is a nice bloke. Not that that ever counted in F1.

Where is the bad driver management? Montoya was the problem, not Ron Dennis. Dennis has been running McLaren since the early 80's. Apart from the Senna Prost thing (& I would defy anybody to keep those two happy) there hasn't been a great deal of driver unhappiness. Mostly it has been pretty good. Yes you could claim Alonso - but that was because he is a twat not because of anything Dennis had done. Same for Mansell. Pretty much everything else was transitory belly aching.

I had this information all written down but unfortunately it is not to hand. I will try & dig it up. From memory the Cusco sway bar I bought for the rear of my R32 R was 20% stiffer than the equivalent Whiteline bar. For the front the disparity was greater. When you look at the lever arm component the Cusco pickup point is matched to the inner of the two Whiteline drilled holes (Or the middle one if you have the extra drill hole). The Cusco bar is also quite a bit lighter. The Cusco pickup point (for the lever arm) is the same as the stock item. Also the bar geometry ie bends etc are very similar. I didn't buy a front Cusco bar because my Whiteline on is still set on soft, whereas the rear was on hard (Although I could have drilled more holes). If you have inner & outer diameters you can compare bar stiffnesses by raising the diameter to the 4th power. So eg a 22mm bar compared to a 20.5. 20 raised to the 4th power divided by 20.5 raised tot he fourth power = 234256/176610 = 130% ie 30% stiffer. If the bar is hollow you subtract the inner diameter to the fourth before you do the division. Interestingly (Or not ) the Cusco items have a welded on end connection (The bars are hollow). So I am unsure as to what they are made from. I haven't had sufficient enthusiasm to remove the bar & bring it to work to find out. The % carbon in the steel is the tell tale - higher carbon in this application would indicate spring steel.

You mean apart from the round they won at Eastern Creek this year? And the podium at the AGP. Oh and last years Bathurst result. But yeah, other than 6 Touring car championships, three Bathurst wins, not to mention the Sandown victories and any number of other non championship wins. Well there were the djr badged road cars dating back to the XE turbo in 1983 admittedly. And no end of positive publicity & legions of fans. So clearly Ford are better of spending money advertising in the Womens Weekly or whatever they are pissing away their advertising spend on.

The inherent problem with handicap racing is that teams efforts in engineering a better car get rewarded by a lead trophy. Then it becomes a formula about who can best lobby the governing body to gain the best advantage. Just like Group C used to be.