I been Had

Well, I just wrote a scathing, lengthy and stirring article on the stupidity of the recent auto auctions in Arizona, and it seems this "blog-thing" has auto-edited my comments - to the point of eliminating the whole frikkin' article. Is this some new "auto-editing" feature? I'll try to re-write something more a little later on.
Meanwhile, I do have a thought for all to ponder. Am I the only one who finds these silly-moneyed people crazy when they pay 'way too much money for american muscle-car fakes, frauds and plain rubbish? I'm thinking the B-J crowd is doing the hobby a great disservice by artificially driving up prices and now depriving those of mere mortal means from owning old autos. I hope these posers in their psuedo-team Ferrari outfits (who IS that whacky guy, anyway?) never turn their attentions to the types of cars I enjoy owning.
D.S.

The season begins?

Well,
I just bin' looking at the qualifying sessions for this weekend's OZ GP and I have to say I agree with at least one of ol' Hobb's assessments: Honda spends what? 1.8 million to go more than half a second slower than last year's cars? (Plus I have to say in my humble "proper" opinion, their new "eco-livery" is absolute rubbish!) Folks are saying they've been spending $200,000 a month plus over the past year - frikkin' plus? - to get their ad agency/graphic developers to come up with the new livery - trying to put a representation of our good green earth as a "globe positioned in space" on a multi-faceted and surfaced and panelled F-1 car? Then we're going to speed it 'way up and try to keep it all before panning and re-focusing television cameras and make it look like...a globe? ... in space? See what happens when you don't know jack-****? Well, friends, before the tely-cameras, the thing looks like a badly rendered pollock-like (Pollack-like?) splooge of green, brown and blue clag. Although all the trendy-wallys will herald it as a design breakthrough, the bloody car looks like its done a slow roll-over through Derbyshire sheep-dip. It also seems to perform the same way. No doubt they'll get a lot of press. Go Super-Aguri!! (I can't believe I said that!!!)
Other stuff this season... Fragile Ferrrari boxes, yet an up-front qualifying for one of them? - Wee Willy Williams whining about the "pseudo-teams", (is this because they signed up for hyper-underperforming Toyota engines & their mega-buck non-technology as well?) We now have ING sponsoring the fabulous Pros..., no sorry, Bennet..- No sorry, Renault team (I still believe it must really be a Nissan team disguised by Carlos Ghosn because he has a much more magnificent plan for all of humanity!) And... with everyone running on the same Bridgestone tires, well, so long winter! No more snow tires for me!! ONE TIRE MANUFACTURER??? Maybe we can look forward to F1 degenerating into a mere shadow, "spec-car" series like CART, eh? One engine, sealed! Maybe they'll all run on go-fast turn left-mode too! Can tube frames be far behind? Crew Chief's named "Bubba" and "Junior" instead of "Flavio" and "Jean"?
There was a time when F1 was the epitomy of racing technology; a myriad of different engine, tire, chassis, suspension, electronics, hydraulics and other designers and manufacturers developing, working and competing with vehicles in a forum that put qualified drivers in a position to contest a "World Driver's Championship". Now we have a commercial presentation of a show that puts hilarious amounts of money into pre-programmed computer-gizmos that replace poor chassis and suspension and engine performance/design with computer-enhanced, assisted and substituted means of making crap work. I put to you that the end result of all this isn't as good as we think, because when the electronic-aid gizmos fail, the craft is "unflyable". These things aren't so much a technical advance as they are a crutch, an excuse for a lack of attention applied to these "older" fields of endeavour. We really haven't advanced that much, we're only masking our inadequacies with "whizz-bang" video game simulations and applying them to inadequate things to make them perform like we think they should. When the batteries run out, we're toast. In motorsport, this genre removes the need for driver's to have "the skill". In F1, there are (or at least, should be) more technologies than "advanced computerese" and the powers that be should perhaps remember the damn thing is still suppose to be the "World Driver's Championship". A few years back, At Silverstone, I saw first hand, a modern F1 "Superstar"- a gear-mashing clod-handed inept dufus trying to drive a vintage 50's Ferrari F1 car with straight-cuts in an non-synchro box. Shameful. World Driving Champion my ass. Without their "automatics, semi-automatics" and "launch-controls and other driver-aids" half these kids couldn't drive frikkin' nails. Is it all going for a flying frack? Hopefully not, we'll have to see, but with the "old order" gone and a new one waiting, hopefully it should be an interesting season to say the least!
HEY! and what's gonna happen at Sebring? Endurance!! Now there's relevant racing!!!
More to come...
D.S.

Formula Vee Stuff

Well, there's a stirring in the blood and I'm getting the itch to go work on the FV, but there's several annoying obstacles in my way. First and foremost, there's a distinct lack of monetary funding right now. Fortunately, not that much more is needed dollar-wise to get the car fully operational. I have high hopes of sorting that part of my problem soon. The more out-of-control thing right now is this bloody insipid cold weather. Every day continues being bitterly cold, grey and uninspiring and quite frankly I've had enough! I only have rudimentary heaters in my garage and unless the temps rapidly soar to something above freezing, keeping the place warm enough to work is a losing battle. The car needs final body-painting and a bit of fabricating for the throttle linkage/stop, some final riveting of snap-fasteners for the interior upholstery and final fitting and running of the fuel cell and lines, all of which I have, just not installed as yet. There is a front footwell shield that wants to be finished and installed along with a proper alignment and some other general fitting and fettling. Before we get truly track-serious, though, I have to get a set of real race tires, an on-board fire extinguisher system and a transponder. These things will cost more than "pin-money" so they are on indefinite hold for the moment.
The weather liars are claiming things are due to warm up, at last, over this coming weekend. We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose. I must also try to get a hold of some of the club-members at VARAC, BARC and the F1200 association and see how others have progressed with their racer refurbishment programs over the past dismal few months. Hopefully, I'm not alone in my despair! More when we know more...
Doug S.

Airport Adventures!

O.K. So we have some guests, good friends, actually, from the U.K. that for some peculiar reason, decide they'd like to holiday in Canada in March. Soooo, they fly into T.O. supposedly arriving at 3:15 on March 1st, last Thursday afternoon, right at the start of one of the biggest winter storms of the year.
I jump on the computer and diligently check the airport "arrivals" situation before leaving to pick them up and find out their flight is merely "delayed" by only 10 minutes! Off I go to meet them at the airport, through the driving, freezing rain, sleet and finally, the heavy snowfall. Over unplowed, clogged streets and onto the highway, I soldier on. With wipers caked in freezing slush-clag and traffic poking at a pace slightly quicker than a brisk walk, I press on, like a possessed postie. Finally, an hour and a half later at 3:45, I manage to reach the airport, confident that there's no way they'll have landed and cleared customs and picked up their baggage this quickly. I park and venture down to the arrivals area, only to be geeted by a sign saying their flight is, indeed, still delayed by approximately 10 minutes. I should have immediately been suspicious as there was no mention of their flight having actually "arrived". Given the raging storm outside, I figured I may as well sit tight until any new word was posted, and like a dummy I sat there until after 5:00 o'clock. Then, my daughter called on my cell phone and told me she had checked online once more for their status and sure, enough, they were now in Ottawa! Now, I was wondering why this info wouldn't have been posted in a more timely way on the airport status boards, I guess they just figure if you're already there, it doesn't matter when someone comes in. My daughter also told me that they wouldn't be leaving Ottawa for another hour and a half or more, so I might as well come to her place, which is nearer the airport than mine. I think this is a good plan and off I go into the jaws of the storm once again.
Just about an hour later, I'm stuck again in traffic, and still in the bloody airport. Why do people leave their brains behind when driving in snow? I mean it was slippery and snowy, but there really was no need to actually stop. You just need to go carefully and a little slower, you know? In another hour, I have made it an entire block away from the airport and have given up on trying to reach my daughter's. I pull into the nearest hotel and head to the restaurant for some dinner. After another 2 hours of waiting for the insane traffic to clear and receiving another call informing me of the "lost flight's" impending arrival, I finally decide it's time to make another attempt at reaching the airport. Suffice it to say, that I finally collected my guests and had them back at the house just before 11:00 o'clock that evening. Not bad for a projected 3:15 arrival, I thought, given the circumstances. Now, I must see if they plan on visiting Kansas during a tornado or maybe a Florida trailer park during hurricane season?