Lateral Gs

More than 1 lateral G's sustained for about 2.5 seconds...

Max forward Gs: 0.62
Max braking Gs: 1.10
Max left Gs: 1.25
Max right Gs: 1.23

Corner exit speed onto long straight...

Just did some video analysis between the 29 July trackday and the recent one on 14 October.

You know the old adage about the importance of having a high corner exit speed into a long straight? It's definitely true. The last two turns, T14 and T15, accounted for almost the entire 2 to 3 second discrepancy in lap times.

Video link (22.2 MB)

Flickr photo library updated

Down the front straight

Updated my Flickr photo library of the BMWSG trackday.

Photo credits: Stephen Yong.

BMWSG trackday hot lap video of 14 Oct 05

The video footage is finally up. Please take note that the following software is required on your computer to view it.

1. QuickTime 7 or later
2. WinZip or any utility to un-Binhex the file

File size is approximately 22.5 MB.

For techies: the video is compressed using H.264 using multi-pass encoding, with data rate at about 950 Kb/s. Audio codec is MPEG-4, VBR, 44 KHz in stereo. Resolution is 720x576, targeted 25 fps. Running time 3 minutes 17 seconds.

Link

Two minutes forty seconds

To complete a full lap around Sepang within this timing has been a goal I've set for myself over the past year or so; I've gotten close to it, even matching it consistently, but never breaking it. It has been the equivalent of the psychological 4-minute mile barrier for me.

Certainly, professional drivers have easily gone below this mark in a relatively stock Evo. But I'm no professional driver, and my car is far from what's possible in terms of being "modified". And so the lure of adding more power to overcome my lack of driving ability grows more tempting by the day. Oh, what sweet temptation, to banish this specter of doubt, and to bask in the glory of having gone under 2'40".

So it's with great trepidation on Friday that I would be forced to deal with the possibility of not being able to beat it yet again. And the signs were not good. The early morning sky was dark with rain clouds, and a light drizzle was starting to develop. Sigh...

Oh well. Bearing in mind some things I wanted to try after reviewing videos of my previous failed attempts, I concentrated on making my lines smoother. One, two laps, and I'm done.

I pull over into the pits and go over everything. What's this? The Defi gauge is showing V_max of 224 km/h? I bring out the laptop and download the datalog, and it corroborates with the gauges, showing a top speed of 225 km/h. Whoa.

Rewind and review the video footage.

Never mind the greasy wet surface, worn tires and traffic.

The barrier, at last, has been broken.

What can you do with stacks of cards?

This was formerly the tallest house of playing cards, stands at about 25 feet tall. The current record is about a foot taller. Simply amazing. :) Be sure to check out his galleries as well.

Link
Gallery 1
Gallery 2

Times Online review of Evo IX

Of course, if you do put the Evo on the track it will astonish you even more than it does on the road. Put simply, it does things that cars are not supposed to be able to do.

Link

Which Lost character am I?

Via BK.

You scored as Sayid Jarrah. You are Sayid. You have many things in your past that you regret, but that does not mean you should not look forward to your future. You are a born leader, but would rather not have that responsibility. If you care about someone, nothing can get in your way. Sayid Jarrah 75% Jin Kwon 70% The Island 65% Hugo "Hurley" Reyes 65% Shannon Rutherford 60% Charlie Pace 55% Kate Austen 55% Jack Sheppard 55% James "Sawyer" Ford 55% John Locke 40% Walt Lloyd 40% Michael Dawson 40% Sun Kwon 40% Claire Littleton 35% What Lostaway Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

Further analysis on J's car

Continuing from the earlier post.

Mitsubishi claims a stock Evo weighs about 1410 kg.

According to calculations, on his setup, each additional 0.1 bar of boost is worth about 20 bhp. At current boost levels, this translates to about 400 bhp at launch and peak power of 500 bhp.

0 to 100 km/h: 3.3 seconds
0 to 162 km/h: 7.9 seconds
0 to 300m ET: 9.5 seconds
Projected 1/4 mile ET: 11.4 seconds

Let's make some comparisons with cars of similar power levels and weight, from Car and Driver magazine:

Lamborghini Gallardo

4WD 5 liter V10
Power (SAE net): 493 bhp @ 7800
Torque (SAE net): 376 lb-ft @ 4500
Weight: 1430 kg

0 to 60 mph: 4.1 seconds
0 to 100 mph: 9.2 seconds
Standing 1/4-mile 12.4 sec @ 118 mph


Ferrari F430

RWD 4.3 liter V8
Power (SAE net): 483 bhp @ 8500
Torque (SAE net): 343 lb-ft @ 5250
Weight: 1451 kg

0 to 60 mph: 3.5 seconds
0 to 100 mph: 7.9 seconds
Standing 1/4-mile: 11.7 sec @ 123 mph

Chevrolet Corvette Z06

RWD 7 liter V8
Power (SAE net): 505 bhp @ 6300 rpm
Torque (SAE net): 470 lb-ft @ 4800 rpm
Weight: 1427 kg

0 to 60 mph: 3.6 seconds
0 to 100 mph: 7.9 seconds
Standing 1/4-mile: 11.7 sec @ 125 mph

Crazy Arabs!

Left in awe by the amazing skill and courage...

Pasir Gudang night sprint

Two nights ago J's car had a stalling problem that didn't seem to have a reasonable solution. So it's with a sense of relief and elation that the car ran last night at Pasir Gudang, not only without stalling, but also turning in some decent results.

More work remains to be done as the MAP sensor shows the car is only boosting at about 1 bar @ 5500 RPM in first and second gears, and about 1.3 bar in 3rd. J would also need to adjust his shifting technique since GCIC was on but years of muscle-memory can be hard to overcome.

Launch control on, antilag off. Logged data shows century sprint in about 3.3s. It reached 20m in about 1.7s, 300m in about 9.5s at 176.9 km/h. According to this little rule of thumb that would mean a 1/4 mile ET of about 11.4s.

Money grubbing music labels

The labels are getting greedy and are threatening to "cut off" the iTunes Music Store if it doesn't increase the pricing of the songs.

Digital strategy chief Michael Nash said during a discussion at a wireless telecoms conference that the music industry has let Apple get too much power in the digital downloads market.

'What if Jobs says 39 cents or 29 cents per download - what then?,' he said. 'The industry can say, OK we'll cut him off - very few people buy music from digital downloads.'

He added that he is sure that the Apple CEO would find another way to sell iPods.

Nash's comments echoes those made last week by Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman, who called for Apple to adopt variable pricing and share out revenues from iPod sales.

The record companies' position is based on the dubious argument that digital downloads sell iPods. In fact all the evidence points to the opposite: that iPod sales have driven demand for downloads. The vast majority of digital music sales are made by iPod owners. Cut off Apple and the labels digital sales will slump.

Note that there is not a single reference to what the consumers want.

This is an industry that has seriously lost touch with its customers. I'm sure if iTunes Music Store were to offer 39 or 29 cents song downloads the customers would be ecstatic.

The iPod was already a best-seller before iTunes started offering songs for download, so even if iTMS were to stop operations, unlikely as it is, things shouldn't alter significantly.

The labels also don't seem to understand that they're dealing with His Steveness. This is someone who has a singular focus and a lot of balls; axing his best selling product, the iPod Mini, which is barely a year old, with the iPod nano.

So if things really spiral into a legal battle, I'm resolutely in His Steveness's corner.

Link