Summer of Speed

Following last weeks figure 8 race I got to enjoy more racing. Saturday and Sunday I attended the World Ford Challenge at ORP. It was a Mustang full day at the drag strip, with a side of car show and parts sales. The cars that were racing ranged everywhere from F-250 Powerstrokes to 6 and 7 second pro-stock/pro-mod door slammers. It was sick. I had considered racing in it, but it would have required a lot of time and money. I would have had to take Thursday off for the test and tune, Friday for qualifications, and then the class I would have competed in had eliminations both Saturday and Sunday. All told, about $300 in entry fees, and 2 days of vacation to race at a track that I can run at Any Given Sunday. No Dice.

I did get a chance to walk though the pits and talk to different OEM's about components, but when you ask the Edelbrock guy if his TPS sensor is a potentiometer or a voltage divider, and if the ECM can accept either, you tend to get a blank look back.

The other part of my weekend was spent at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Saturday qualifying. Not only did I get to see the qualifying, but the Society of Automotive Engineers hooked me up with garage passes, so I got to walk around in the pits and watch them tear everything apart after a run. Something I didn't realize is that every single car is powered by a Honda engine. Apparently this is the second year for them to do this, and they have done so without a single engine failure. . . huh.

The reason I got the garage pass was because I was attending the SAE Lou Schweitzer Award ceremony, which was presented to Delphi for the second year in a row. They developed something similar to a black box, except theirs is red, for race cars. It records crash data 400 times/second, including data recorded from accelerometers in the drivers earpiece, and alerts paramedics if the crash was above a certain thresh hold so they know to take additional care with the driver.

All this, and still to come, Figure 8 school bus racing AND the 91st running of the Indy 500. I am starting to remember why I moved out here.

I have uploaded a bunch of pics to my Picasa web album. Feel free to browse.