Montoya 2nd at Indy

[Ciro Pabón]

Here we go! Another one of those stupid ass threads about the inferior type of cars NASCAR uses compared to every other racing car. I'd bet 90% of you have never been closer than 100 miles to one of these cars and somehow everybody is a damn expert.

C'mon, Ray, don't worry, be happy.

It's pass midnight and I'm waiting for an Oracle process to finish, so, apologies for the length of the post...

I took this image from Wikipedia's article on the famous Niké riots, which I've mentioned before (to no avail), to prove that NASCAR follows a long tradition, while F1 is a "newcomer" to the racing world:

Modern depiction of a Roman race. Notice the "spine" (center area) with the lap counter to the left as the predecessor of modern "pit" area. Stands and lateral wall haven't changed in 20 centuries! I guess the guys with lances and shields were stewards...


Take a closer look to the people in the stands close to the "camera": they are from USA (baseball caps all around!).

As you can see, "turning left" has a long history. "Road course" racing, on the other hand, doesn't. On the previous image you can see that, as flynfrog pointed out, some drivers preferred the external line, while the chariot with the white horses is taking the "open wheel" line (well, all chariots were open-wheelers! But you understand me, don't you?).

Even the track has not changed much: notice that the palace and churches (that include the famous Hagia Sophia) or what you could call "paddock" without stretching the truth, are larger and costlier than the track itself.

First Turkey GP track: designed by Tilke? What was called then palace, now we call paddock


Parallels between F1, NASCAR and chariot racing are astounding (for me, at least). I quote:

"In the Roman form of chariot racing, teams represented different groups of financial backers and sometimes competed for the services of particularly skilled drivers. These teams became the focus of intense support among spectators, and occasional disturbances broke out between followers of different teams." Ring any bells?

Also you can find (at the Iliad, Book 23) that, greeks raced in chariots for the pit babes... : "at the funeral games of Patroclus.... participants... were Diomedes, Eumelus, Antilochus, Menelaus, and Meriones. The race, which was one lap around the stump of a tree, was won by Diomedes, who received a slave woman and a cauldron as his prize." I don't find any differences with Flavio Briatore's behaviour... Perhaps Diomedes was a relative of Coulthard.

I find interesting the "old" fact that "by the time of the Panhellenic Games, the owners usually had slaves who did the actual driving, and it was the owner who was awarded the prize." Again, I don't find major differences with Ron Dennis behaviour.

The charioteer at Delphi, one of the most famous ancient statues. Drivers had to be light (but tall), so teenagers were selected, as nowadays


I've been researching a little for the last year, to try to write a booklet about racing history. And I mean "old" history, really (any help is welcomed!). I've posted before that chariots used "monocoques" as early as 2000 years B.C. For me, Tut-ankh-amon tomb gave us much more than the famous golden mask (which is an astounding show of advanced metallurgy): it gave us the first example of entire egyptian chariots, carefully dissasembled and preserved. These chariots, five of them reconstructed at the Cairo's museum, are amazing: they don't have a single nail in the main structure, they are made entirely of composites. I could write a couple of pages only on the wheel design, I swear: it's one of the most ingenious assemblies I've ever seen.

Tut's chariot. Apparently, the king died from a racing accident (Senna was not the first "king of racing" to be lost that way)


If you ever go to Egypt, forget about the pyramids. They are not as good as the chariots! I quote: "The Tutankhamun-class chariot, the earliest high-performance machine, existed in its refined form for about five centuries. Eight complete vehicles have survived and support the argument that they surpass all monumental structures of the pharaohs in engineering sophistication... Several elements hint of thoughtful invention, advanced physical modelling and experimentation, with results that sometimes drastically and favourably differ from our concepts of vehicle design. It is difficult for us to envision a substantially better chariot made with the ancient materials of construction even if we were to apply our most advanced formulas and methods... The complex suspension system of springs and shock absorbers has advantages in structural dynamics, ride quality and safety. An example of the latter is a dual-purpose anti-roll device. The chariots' wheels have aircraft-like damage tolerance, and have fundamentally more perfect spokes and joints for carrying multi-axial loads than the wooden spokes of any classic car."

So, Alabamans (is that the correct word?), stay proud!

I only wish NASCAR pay me a sabbatical and I think I would be able to put to shame anyone that implies that americans run a crude form of the sport. On the contrary, "road courses" are a desperate attempt to race cars at a time (early XIX century) when tracks did not exist. You can call road course racing a newcomer and I wouldn't blink.

Well, I'm done with Oracle. I only hope somebody find this long post interesting if totally OOT. If somebody is interested, I could write a little more about racing history, chariots, F1 and NASCAR...

I cannot avoid to mention, as a final note, that the Niké riots (yes, Nike is an old word that means "victory") happened because the blue (Williams? BMW?) and the "green" (Honda?) teams fought for two fans arrested by "police" (early hooligans? Then it was Williams, not BMW). I quote: "Both the Blues and the Greens importuned the Emperor with loud prayers to show mercy to the two culprits who had been rescued by accident from the gallows." It sounds like an appeal to FIA...

Unfortunately, general Belisarius (an early Max Mosley) rounded 30,000 fans at the race track and killed them. That explains why track assistance declined...

The red (Forza, tifosi!) and white (?) teams were not as popular back then. I imagine this means Ferrari has got a wider base through the years. Manchild would be happy to point out that it took the reds 1.500 years to become popular... .

Emperor Justinian, early patron of racing in Turkey (Byzantine Empire), boss of Belisarius, almost was deposed during the Niké riots (Bernie must have learnt a lot from him)

[Ignis Fatuus]

Montoya-Gordon 'Tradin' Paint' 2003 - Press Conference Transcript

Q: Could each of you tell us how you used your feet differently in the two cars?

MONTOYA: Same.

GORDON: No difference really. Just a different feel in the pedals. The Winston Cup car is a long travel on the throttle and probably the brakes a little bit spongier. But most of it's just the cockpit is narrower and angles are different. But I know when Juan put the steering wheel on my car on the first time, he is like, 'What is this thing?' He was laughing. This big steering wheel and it was right in his face and he was like, 'I need it out there and up here.' And it's similar to me, you know. I got in there and I was like this (indicating), so it's certainly a new experience there. But no, in the Winston Cup cars now with the transmissions we have, we left-foot brake and, you know, downshift. The only thing I don't have to match any RPMs with the F1 car where you know we had to with the NASCAR Winston Cup.

Q: That was my question, just about moving the steering wheel for both of you guys because, Jeff, can you imagine road racing like that? Juan?

MONTOYA: The first time I got in, he said, 'Oh, I like the steering wheel low.' And I was like, 'Low?' The steering wheel was against my legs, I'm like, 'Right.' So they pushed it a bit away, and that was OK. I think the biggest difference I really felt on the braking was that the F1 the amount of pressure you put and bite you get is very direct. You know you press harder, you get more here. You get to the point if you press harder you smoke the tires. It's like, that's it, you know, pull a parachute or something.

http://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.co ... ry_id=1458

[checkered]

I only hope somebody find this long post interesting if totally OOT. If somebody is interested, I could write a little more about racing history, chariots, F1 and NASCAR...

This being a technical forum, chariot construction could be interesting to read about; thousands of years of R&D there, nothing to be sneered at. (I looked some things up superficially already - apparently the egyptians knew about the advantages of concentrating mass near the CoG!) And you're right about "composites", we're perhaps a bit smug about our current prowess. It's not the materials we have that are stupid - it's our understanding of those and our imagination that is severely limited. People go on about "intelligent materials" whereas we continue to use resources in a fashion that propably overlooks most of nature's inherent ingenuity in structures ... "Engine development", I don't know about the relevance of that since it was basically horse breeding. But at least those vehicles were running on renewable fuels! And no, I won't blink if someone calls road course racing a newcomer and you won't blink ... Ooops!

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, thanks, checkered. Engine development... well, you might find interesting to know that, yes, Romans took horse breeding as seriously as they take engine design at Ferrari. The lineage of them was carefully recorded and many of the differences we find between "modern" and "ancient" horses were "developed" through careful breeding.

Actually, the famous four horses you can see at Venice St. Mark square were taken from the race track at Istanbul, where their statues were erected to commemorate their fabulous racing. It was like putting a Cosworth on top of the paddock. Neron (who was a racer) made one of his horses a Consul...

About the wheels, probably the most interesting fact about them is that they use six spokes, extremely slender, made of parts that had joints at places where momentum (the twisting effect that any column has) was minimal. Check the following image for the joints. This is not strange: the chariot was invented around 3500 BC but it was not introduced to Egypt until 1500 BC, so we're talking 2000 years of development. It's like talking about F1 in the year 3950...



The spokes were not simply joined at the center: they were made in pairs (three pairs) of bent beams, each pair in the shape of a V. They were joined with leather and sinew. This is an extremely good design, structurally speaking, because when you construct a wheel this way, the spokes interlock naturally. I wonder if modern constructors could take a look at them and learn something. The rim was made of slender parts, it was not a circle, but was made of six curved beams, joined to the T's at the end of the spokes through a loop made of leather, that was inserted in slots in the rim, so it wouldn't come in contact with the ground, another "new" or forgotten idea: you could use a steel wire around a rim made of parts (if you wish to experiment a little) to achieve the same rigidity AND flexibility nowadays, the same way prestressed beams are made in bridges, but I digress more than usual. I imagine this desing was another sort of suspension integrated into the wheel (I remember Manchild posted something about a patent he made based on the same idea, remember MC?).

I know I've posted this before, but check this:

Michelin's tweel
[img::]http://www.gizmag.com/pictures/3603_01.jpg[/img]

The charioteer, as you mention, was located on top of the axle, to maximize "grip" and minimize the torque on the back of the horse. The long axle that joined the chariot to the saddle of the horse was optimized in length to cushion the jolts on the horse and provide a suspension. They had another suspension mechanism, whose description I have not found, that, allegedly, not only cushioned the bumps on the rider, but also included an anti-roll device similar to the one we have in our modern cars.

Finally, the wheel axle was covered in extremely thin copper AND bronze plates, used in an intelligent way to minimize friction and noise and maximize strength. They were covered not only on the inside of the hub, but they used sleeves covering the wood members to maximize torsion resistance, a familiar trick to an structural engineer: you wish to put most of the material as far from the axis as you can.

The "monocoque" was made of layers of wowen reeds, covered with some sort of glue and gold. The gold layers were not only for the beauty of it: they were inserted in such a way that provided extra-strenght, like the modern composite sandwiches...

All the wood was cured in ovens that remind me of the carbon fiber ones, to bend the material and cure it.

Anyway, I think if I wish to take this post further I should open a new thread. Montoya doesn't deserve to be ignored this way... On the other hand, I insist, left-turning race has a 5.000 years history. Go, NASCAR!

Thanks, Igniis Fatuus. Very interesting post (and in-thread).