MMy Ferrari Challenge Experience

[Mike]

david, all it really takes is a desire, a small bit of pestering, and some time off. they don't interview you or require any specific skills. if you want to do it and they have an opening, they'll bring you along.

[G.Irish]

G, I know you summarized how you got into all this in your first post, but this is incredible...not to take anything away from all this but is it really that "easy"?? I imagine with your experience background you're definitely a good candidate, but I always thought it was much harder to get behind the scenes of all this. Regardless I'm sure you know that you are living many car guys dreams here. Congrats!

Goodspeed you can get into a lot of jobs in motorsport if you are motivated, reasonably easy to get along with, can devote the time, and are genuinely interested in motorsport (whichever type).

In the early days of the club when we were out trying new things and talking to people I can remember having the same sort of shock as you. "Is it that easy?" Pretty much. I think a lot of things are a lot easier than people think they are. As long as you are motivated and are willing to put energy into figuring out how to do something there's all kinds of seemingly difficult things you can get into.

In this case what probably got me in was that I've been pretty into road racing for awhile so I probably asked the right questions that piqued his interest.

But there's no reason you couldn't achieve the same result in several different ways.

*Hang out on the various road racing forums for the pro series, sometimes they'll post ads for crew. Even if not you can learn a bit about the series and racing from there.
*Cold call (or email) race teams in the area about volunteering for them. In our area there's FoW, PTG, AtSpeed Motorsports, MAM, CDOC, Bimmerworld and probably some others. There's even more club racing teams you could crew with. You could probably also intern with a team over the summer if you liked. You may have to start small, but the experience can open doors to elsewhere.

That said its hard work and you can have days where you're thrashing all day into the night, only to wake up at 5 or 6 am the next day to do it again. But god damn it sure beats waking up at 5 or 6 am to work for 'the man'.

[Feersty]

Great picture story Gerald. Really brings the experience to light.

[G.Irish]

Oof, I have never seen so much bent metal in one weekend for this amount of cars. There were about 30 or so 430's for the weekend and I'd say somewhere around 8 to 12 cars (maybe more) hit something over the course of the weekend. In a word, carnage. I didn't even bother to take a picture of all the cars running around with primered bumpers and bent quarter panels. Ferrari North America actually ran out of spare bumpers!

This guy had a rather amusing off (which was caught on video). He passed one of our guys going into the roller coaster, then started to slide on the exit of 17. He lifted, and in a big plume of smoke flew back across the track and hit the guardrail at pit in.





The guardrails at VIR rarely get a workout like they did this weekend...


This weekend I got put in charge of tires and gas. Not a bad job but I must admit I was a little bit jealous of Kevin who got to work on putting his car back together after his driver hit a guardrail.

Note my supreme 100 octane pumping skillz


I don't know if the 360, 355, and 348 had this feature but the 430 has a panel in the driver compartment that exposes the front of the engine. In the 355 (and I wanna say the 360) the whole engine and rear subframe comes out in one piece for you to service the engine.

What's wrong with this picture?


Time for an episode of the Ferrari Price is Right. Pictured below is a Ferrari diagnostic computer that only the dealerships can purchase, and even then, most dealerships are limited to one (unless you support 430 Challenge, in which case you can have more). How much does it cost?

A. $5000
B. $10000
C. $15000
D $25000
E. $30000
F. $50000



Here one of the Ferrari North America officials is reflashing the ECU. Apparently in 430 Challenge they randomly swap ECU's between cars in the series to reduce the chance that someone is cheating.



More to come...

[ScottyB]

woohoo an update!

judging by the amount of photos, you really like to pump gas....

[Hunter]

I think I know whats wrong with that picture... the shoulder harnesses are conected to the cage with eyebolts instead of wrapping around the bar. WTF mate?

[G.Irish]

Well shit, my site must've gone down =/

Myspace to the rescue...

[Goodspeed]

Awesome G, I was just reading an article in R&T about the Ferrari Technician Training program and they mentioned those computers; how they can diagnose absolutely everything about the drivetrain without having to do any manual labor on the car, pretty astounding.

[white_2kgt]

I think I know whats wrong with that picture... the shoulder harnesses are conected to the cage with eyebolts instead of wrapping around the bar. WTF mate?

Well, there's an enormous hole exposing the engine to the cockpit and there doesn't seem to be a belt on the engine either.

[G.Irish]

I think I know whats wrong with that picture... the shoulder harnesses are conected to the cage with eyebolts instead of wrapping around the bar. WTF mate?

Well, there's an enormous hole exposing the engine to the cockpit and there doesn't seem to be a belt on the engine either.

Correctamundo. The hole is just a panel that can be removed but the car lost a belt during the race. Apparently Ferrari neglected to put self-adjusting tensioners on those belts which of course makes the cars vulnerable to that type of failure.

I wanna say those belts drive the power steering pump and water pump but I forget exactly what the techs were saying.

Hunter I actually didn't catch the eyebolts thing but you're right, they shouldn't be mounted like that :?

[.RJ]

Hunter I actually didn't catch the eyebolts thing but you're right, they shouldn't be mounted like that :?

Why not? Its legal according to most rulebooks, and most belt mfr's mention it in their installation instructions. It does have the benefit of keeping the shoulder belts from moving around on the harness bar, as well as easy removal.

[G.Irish]

Hunter I actually didn't catch the eyebolts thing but you're right, they shouldn't be mounted like that :?

Why not? Its legal according to most rulebooks, and most belt mfr's mention it in their installation instructions. It does have the benefit of keeping the shoulder belts from moving around on the harness bar, as well as easy removal.

It seems like in a heavy impact the threads can shear off. If they're welded in there I guess it wouldn't be so bad though.

[white_2kgt]

Hunter I actually didn't catch the eyebolts thing but you're right, they shouldn't be mounted like that :?

Why not? Its legal according to most rulebooks, and most belt mfr's mention it in their installation instructions. It does have the benefit of keeping the shoulder belts from moving around on the harness bar, as well as easy removal.

It seems like in a heavy impact the threads can shear off. If they're welded in there I guess it wouldn't be so bad though.

nah, those belts are mounted good. Lots of belts are mounted using the eye bolts, they aren't going anywhere. Personally I like the wrap style with a little roll padding to keep them in place, but some like the eye clip.

[.RJ]

It seems like in a heavy impact the threads can shear off.

If you're shearing those off, you have much bigger problems on your hands - tensile strength on a proper fastener that size is going to be pretty large - I'm too lazy to look it up, but the cage will probably bend before the fastener fails.

[G.Irish]

It seems like in a heavy impact the threads can shear off.

If you're shearing those off, you have much bigger problems on your hands - tensile strength on a proper fastener that size is going to be pretty large - I'm too lazy to look it up, but the cage will probably bend before the fastener fails.

Ah werd *thumbup*

[Maengelito]

i use eyebolts for my harnesses, i personally like them more than the wrapping of belts, but thats just me

[Andy]

Speaking of mounting shoulder belts, I forgot to bring this up to Mike but IÔÇÖll post here so we can talk about proper harnesses mounting. ItÔÇÖs my understanding that harnesses should have at minimum 4 inches of slack because in a collision, the belts will stretch and without proper slack, the harnesses will slip through the buckle and come free. Having assumed that, it looks like MikeÔÇÖs shoulder harness are too short for his application. I donÔÇÖt want our Mikey to hurted himself cause I love and care.


http://www.schrothracing.com/info/2

[.RJ]

ItÔÇÖs my understanding that harnesses should have at minimum 4 inches of slack

Depends on who made the belts - always follow the mfr specific instructions when installing them.

[G.Irish]

Our driver Skip, who races Spec E30 with NASA got a fantastic start to the weekend at what was effectively his home race. He had the fastest time in every practice leading up to race 1, dipping into the 1:59's. In qualifying he got down to a 1:57.xx hock:

Skip's car had Speed Channels cameras in it. Both races from the weekend will be broadcast on Speed on July 7th. They'll also be filming the last race of the season at California Speedway.

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Actually I lied. Oprah's Oxygen channel actually had their pink bag of camera equipment in the car


In the race he led more than half of the race but eventually got passed with about 6 laps to go. Next time by he took a lunge going into turn 1 to retake the position and the other driver tried to close the door on him. He hit Skip on the left side, spun in front of him, and hit on the right side of the car as he flew off the track. Skip continued and was really none the worse for wear (except for his dented up 430).

Contact on the left


Contact on the right


A few laps later another guy caught up to him and attempted to pass on the outside in Turn 15 going down the rollercoaster. Skip had a little slide going at the time and inadvertently squeezed the guy off track, but didn't hit him. Apparently race control was told that he hit the other guy and they black flagged Skip with a stop and go penalty for 'avoidable' contact. He ended up finishing sixth.

Of course this led to a bunch of drama and what not after the race. The decision of course was irreversible. The driver who won and was unintentionally squeezed off the track took it upon himself to come with some of his crew down to our pits to come bitch at Skip. He wasn't around so he told one of our crew, 'Tell him that I'm going to run him into the wall tomorrow'. Nice move tough guy.

There was a bit more to the drama that maybe I'll explain in a subsequent post.

In race 2 Skip ran as low as 9th but was able to fight all the way back up to 2nd. The leader had an over 10 second lead that Skip was able to cut to within 1 second by the end of the race but he couldn't get close enough FTW.

1Mo' Bent Metal

BFH time


Cracked up rear diffuser? Don't throw that away, we can epoxy that back together


That's some mighty expensive....junk






All it needs is a bandaid or two (one of our cars)

[ScottyB]

G, do you ever want to or get to keep any of the "junk" as cool souveniers? kinda like nascar guys that hang beat up battle damaged hoods on their walls?