I do not race (if you do not count some karting and a little instrumentation management for racecar tuning, both as a hobby): I've only helped to design a couple of racetracks in South America. This is why I am keenly interested on the opinion of the people of this forum on racetrack layout and on how the pilots read the road. Some people dream with one million dollars, other dream of being a rock star: some of us dream about designing a racetrack and be loved and hated by pilots because of it.
If it is a crime to be the oldest race spectator in this forum, you could make another mark on your list of suspects: I went to my first F1 race in 1966, when I was around your age (six years old...
). I saw my first NASCAR race in 1981. This means I like to see the commentaries you make on any form of racing as a
form of art, from midget racing to aviation races. I have "gusto", zeist, deep love for the artistic side of racing and I can appreciate the imagery of motorsports and the feelings it evokes as much as the engineering.
I've got a couple of M.Sc. in highways, system engineering and GIS for transportation on top of an civil engineer degree. I've wrote a bunch of books and articles on transit and traffic simulation, highway modeling, car trajectories modeling, and urbanism & transportation. I work on all these themes as a consultant, alone at my home.
You might know that in Bogota people is really making progress in these issues, so I find easy to work here: the entire city has made a great effort to find new ways to handle cars and I've found myself in the middle of it. The city has found original solutions to mass transit and to traffic planning. This means I find this forum is a nice place to talk about car dynamics simulation, as there are a lot of firm opinions on these themes between forum members, something I work on, on a daily basis.
I've also wrote a couple of odd articles for dummies, and by dummies I mean civil engineers
, on odd themes, like rock identification (yes, rocks, tracks are made of them and of a puny 5% asphalt). I can distinguish from a mile away a track made of peridotite from a track made with basalt.
I'm currently working on a book on car physics and racetrack and highway design, so I confess this is what is behind my constant opinions on tracks. Let me tell you that it is easy to become strongly convinced that highway and track design is light years behind the car's.
Thus, my only involvement with motorsports is the ground they are on.
