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BMW Club of Canada | |
| Club Racing Views | ||
by Phil Abrami (514 487-4646, pabrami@alcor.concordia.ca)
"He who hesitates is lost." "Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread."
Whether you are a driving school junkie or a rising star of the club racing circuit, at some point in time expressions like these famous quotations cross your mind. Excitement with speed, improved performance, and that phenomenon known as "red mist" can get you going, sometimes to places you don't want to be. Or you might experience frustration with your track performance, either relative to a friend or some seat of the pants criterion (since, of course, we NEVER time ourselves at a BMW CC driving school) which gets you wondering about whether you've lost your touch or maybe never had it to begin with. Ah yes, the embers of competition can burn brightly in one's soul.
Contrariwise there is the fear of unwanted cosmetic surgery to your beloved BMW or worse--selling your car to the insurance company. Yes, mistakes happen and they can be costly ones indeed. That is why a degree of temperance is always considered proper at a driving school and why the basic philosophy of club racing is: "A competitive driving experience for all BMW CCA enthusiasts, in any/all types of BMW's in a fun, safe, and friendly environment where the primary emphasis is on clean driving and machinery preservation" (emphasis theirs).
Upgrades The need for speed is basic to many of us. How do we satisfy the need? Often by emptying our wallets to specialty tuners and aftermarket performance companies. Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking these guys and gals. Far from it. Their parts and services are essential to our enjoyment of motorsport activities. But you know what I mean. If you want it, they've got it. Even if its unobtanium for many of us. Yes, one way to the top is to just outspend the other guy. Remember its not their decision to spend the money, its yours.
Machismo Another way to be quicker and the one I'm most against, is to try too hard or too soon to be quicker. At driving schools, I think we tend to see this most among M-car drivers. These cars are capable of so much and are so easy to take near the limit that its very easy to become completely intoxicated until its too late. High speed, inexperience, and being over the limit means you may just run out of luck. According to the statistics I've seen, the incident rate among M-cars is the highest per capita of all vehicles used in BMW driving schools. Yes, its better to learn on a power limited than a grip limited car. Better because in the former you learn to make corrections with technique while in the latter you learn to make corrections with engineering--theirs, not yours.
Remember that you can define what success means for you. Sometimes just moving up one spot in class or having a great race-long duel can be real accomplishments. Let's save the "win at all costs" mentality for pro racing.
Learning Of course the best way to be quicker is to learn and to develop better technique. Even as a club racer where it is more acceptable to drive near the edge, you still have to learn how to do that. It may look easy but it isn't and some of us never get it or just don't want to take the chance of being that close to calamity. That's why club racers participate mostly for the fun of it and why if you do damage your car by driving error you are going on probation.
How do you learn? Expert teachers help including some of the club's best instructors and the instructors in professional racing schools and the newly announced BMW club racing schools. In my opinion, you are usually better off spending money on learning then on go-fast parts and upgrades.
Experience is a great teacher too. But if you are really going to hang it out, you will certainly not be welcome at a club driving school so a lapping day may be where you'll need to practice. Unfortunately, to find out where the limit is, you have to go over it on occasion. Bringing it back takes lots of skill, experience, and sometimes plain old luck.
Maintenance Another thing about going fast is respect for proper maintenance. Scrimping on this is one of the most foolhardy things you can do. The faster you go, the faster you go through parts and maintenance. Now that I've been racing I inspect my car with a professional mechanics before every event. Of course, we look at the brakes and suspension in particular.
How many worn control arms led to E30 M3s being damaged? How many cracked front rotors caused catastrophic loss of braking? How many stress bar mounts broke putting cars into the wall? How many wheel bolts broke and sent cars a-flying? Too many! These are some of the incident reports and each one of them was avoidable and could have been prevented by cheap maintenance too. This is one of many reasons why at BMW driving schools students must have their cars pre-teched and why at club races every car is inspected for safety by the technical steward. Even so, YOU need to know your car best.
Harnesses and Helmets:
Basic Protection for Advanced Students, Instructors and Club Racers
In club racing, a roll cage, safety harnesses, window netting, protective clothing, and a Snell SA-rated helmet are required. We discussed these before in Club Racing Views but I wanted to update you on some important information I may not have highlighted previously. Thanks to Joe Marko at HMS Motorsports for much of this information.
Sub-straps Although allowed by rules - it is nearly impossible to properly install a sub-strap properly with ANY stock seat. We strongly recommend that you use some sort of race seat in your car... regardless of the class you are running. A sub-strap (single or dual) should only be installed through a proper slot in the seat bottom approximately one inch in front of the crotch. The sub-strap should pass through this hole and be mounted at a perpendicular with a bolt(s) to the floor at the exact point below where the sub-belt passes through the seat. It should NEVER be attached to a side bracket or other seat mounting points!
Installing the strap forward of this point means that your groin area will come in contact with the strap directly as your body submarines under the lap belt. If you have the sub-strap wrapped around the front of the seat, or between the thigh support cushion and seat bottom you have 5" or 6" of acceleration into the strap (OUCH!). If you go through the bottom side bolsters with a dual-strap and bolt to the side brackets or back bolts of the seat, you are forcing your inner thigh (soft tissue) to take the full load... about 1,200 to 1,600 lbs. of pressure.
A properly installed sub-strap is designed ONLY to keep the cam lock or latch link buckle in place which in turn prevents you from submarining. Properly installed, the sub-strap takes the 1,200lb load directly at its mounting bolt without any contact to soft body tissue.
Sorry to take band with but this is one of the most common installation problems that I see in racecars with stock seats and I thought that it is important to get this information out.
After an impact Harness and helmets should always be suspect after an impact. The "stuff" inside the lining of a helmet cracks and gets crumbly after a big bang, not unlike the "stuff" inside the skull of many racers. If your helmet made significant contact with a roll bar, window, road, door, whatever, it needs to be replaced.
Once the belts have been really challenged by holding, say, a 200lb object in place for a sudden impact, they should be VERY carefully checked and probably replaced, mounting hardware too. At one of the earlier races the tech steward wrote in one racer's logbook, after an accident, that the harness had to be replaced before the car could race again. The Schroth stuff is made to pull apart-slightly- on impact and is good for one use only. They can be sent back for renewal. I think Simpson offers a belt "tune-up" as well.
Even with careful inspection, it is hard to tell if the belt has been partially compromised. The effectiveness of a belt in preventing injury is due to controlled elongation of the webbing material. Once the material has been stretched, a secondary elongation will stretch the webbing more and at an accelerated rate significantly reducing its effectiveness.
The policy at HMS/Schroth is to replace the belt in question. They will do this at cost providing they get the original harness back with a brief description of the incident (as much as one can remember) including approximate speed at impact, direction and number of impacts.
It never pays to save a few pennies in exchange for safety.
