Good Bad and Ugly Discussion.

[Final Turn Motorsports 80]

Just now, 91AU said:

Just a thought; Has Champcar ever invoked Rule #2.2.2 on a 500 point car

2.2.2. ChampCar reserves the right to deny entry to any EC car if ChampCar determines the car to be excessively superior in power, braking, top speed or other factors that ChampCar feels would be unsafe or disruptive to any event.

They would never do that to the Riley team.  They drive safe, just excessively fast.

[veris 161]

1 minute ago, Final Turn Motorsports said:

They would never do that to the Riley team.  They drive safe, just excessively fast.

 

True. GBU has been building excessively fast cars in Champcar since its inception. 

 

They just haven't been dominant as they were always fuel limited and drove car with a proper vpi.

[CBraden 248]

1 minute ago, veris said:

I concur. There are areas that could be changed with minimal impact to performance. 50 points easily. 

 

They are now a 550 car as is. Come January however they are a 700 point car. 

 

I am less convinced they can remove 150+points for minimum performance impact. I suspect they will just have a competitive car with 2hrs of fuel vs a dominant one.

 

 

I am going to disagree. They have 200 points to play with, 50 of which are for the rear susp swap. I think with 150 (or 200 if they want to take 5 laps)) they can easily field a 300hp version of that car. As long as they have enough power to pass people on straights, and the ability to use the same tires, in the same quantity they have last couple of races, this car will be faster than the field, by a good margin.

[Ron_e 4,841]

4 hours ago, atxe30 said:

I pulled the Sunday data. Basically:

 

Best Lap Times across the field:

GBU: 2:37.3

Overall Mean: 2:56.9

Slowest: 3:22.1

 

Delta from GBU to P2: 7.8

Delta from GBU to Mean 19.6

Delta from GBU to Slowest: 44.8

--------------------------------------

 

So if they ended up at 550 Pts after the re-tech, but still have same P/W...........something is wrong with the rule structurally. Show me another car in the VPI table at 550 pts that has a similar P/W number...I'll wait.......

 

Lap times are immaterial to VPI.  In the same race with GBU the Cobra with a best of 2:46.7 wins, CRX finishes second with a best of 2:47.1, both turning the same number of laps.  Cobra base VPI is 300, CRX base VPI is 150.  Cobra is getting bumped up by 50 points, the CRX not so much.  One may wonder how a VPI increase happens.

[mender 8,140]

5 minutes ago, Ron_e said:

 

Lap times are immaterial to VPI.  

Vehicle Performance Index.

[Jer 3,397]

1 hour ago, CBraden said:

I am going to disagree. They have 200 points to play with, 50 of which are for the rear susp swap. I think with 150 (or 200 if they want to take 5 laps)) they can easily field a 300hp version of that car. As long as they have enough power to pass people on straights, and the ability to use the same tires, in the same quantity they have last couple of races, this car will be faster than the field, by a good margin.

As a board we voted, not unanimously but it carried, that IRS will be valued as the components that make it up.  So they will have to contend with that too on top of the higher starting value.  Just an FYI.  we are trying, but there will always be a loophole to exploit.  They exploited one exceedingly well.  We are also raising the values on other older cars with gigantic fuel tanks.  

[Jer 3,397]

1 hour ago, Ron_e said:

 

Lap times are immaterial to VPI.  

With enough penalty laps it won't matter.  We won't ban them because they are fast.  That's just petty.  But we can even the playing field by starting them with more laps in penalty.  

[petawawarace 202]

Heres some fun math.

 

GBU vs Crowd Control

Straight up race each running their best laptimes from last weekend every lap for 8hrs.

Crowd Control makes it 2hrs on fuel

GBU makes it 1hr on fuel.

 

Who wins?

[turbogrill 484]

Curious, did someone protest it? According to this thread the car is like 9000pts.

 

Or none of the findings in this thread are actually valid? It's just a super fast champcar?

[Final Turn Motorsports 80]

20 minutes ago, petawawarace said:

Heres some fun math.

 

GBU vs Crowd Control

Straight up race each running their best laptimes from last weekend every lap for 8hrs.

Crowd Control makes it 2hrs on fuel

GBU makes it 1hr on fuel.

 

Who wins?

You do realize that GBU can do dam near 2 hours on a stint.

[enginerd 6,493]

44 minutes ago, Jer said:

As a board we voted, not unanimously but it carried, that IRS will be valued as the components that make it up.

Thank you!!! 
I don’t know how/why “IRS swap” was added in the first place but appreciate you guys correcting it. There was no need to add this in when a value already existed in the form of “add up the non-OE parts that go into it”.

[Burningham 2,139]

15 minutes ago, Final Turn Motorsports said:

You do realize that GBU can do dam near 2 hours on a stint.

They ran 2 hours twice at Indy. Have not looked at the data from this weekend.

[CBraden 248]

1 hour ago, Jer said:

As a board we voted, not unanimously but it carried, that IRS will be valued as the components that make it up.  So they will have to contend with that too on top of the higher starting value.  Just an FYI.  we are trying, but there will always be a loophole to exploit.  They exploited one exceedingly well.  We are also raising the values on other older cars with gigantic fuel tanks.  

Jer - thanks for the response. Appreciate the work to address these issues. Please advise if something is in the works to address the smog era V8s. If not, I'll look at possibly swapping one so I can get out of EC.

 

Honestly, it is the biggest remaining loophole in my mind.

 

 

[petawawarace 202]

19 minutes ago, Final Turn Motorsports said:

You do realize that GBU can do dam near 2 hours on a stint.

Yes. That’s my point. They could have 1/2 the fuel capacity and still challenge for wins.  

[QuaTTro 265]

22 minutes ago, CBraden said:

Jer - thanks for the response. Appreciate the work to address these issues. Please advise if something is in the works to address the smog era V8s. If not, I'll look at possibly swapping one so I can get out of EC.

 

Honestly, it is the biggest remaining loophole in my mind.

 

 

How many points is your car? Why do you feel required to run EC?

[mender 8,140]

1 hour ago, petawawarace said:

Heres some fun math.

 

GBU vs Crowd Control

Straight up race each running their best laptimes from last weekend every lap for 8hrs.

Crowd Control makes it 2hrs on fuel

GBU makes it 1hr on fuel.

 

Who wins?

GBU by just under 3 laps.

[petawawarace 202]

4 minutes ago, mender said:

GBU by just under 3 laps.

Ding ding ding.  I used 5:30 for each pit stop because of in/out laps, and got just under 2 laps.

 

 

[CBraden 248]

1 hour ago, QuaTTro said:

How many points is your car? Why do you feel required to run EC?

 

Heh, about 17,000 points. It is a by product of the swap calculator when you start with a wildly underpowered car, and swap in a marginally high powered platform (while still completely outgunned by the GBU SBC from the video I have seen). Opel GT, with 255 hp engine...

[enginerd 6,493]

2 minutes ago, CBraden said:

Heh, about 17,000 points. It is a by product of the swap calculator when you start with a wildly underpowered car, and swap in a marginally high powered platform (while still completely outgunned by the GBU SBC from the video I have seen). Opel GT, with 255 hp engine...

Starting HP doesn't matter.

[CBraden 248]

2 minutes ago, enginerd said:

Starting HP doesn't matter.

 

Ah, thanks. Ok, then in that case - let's focus on the output.

 

Anybody can easily make more than 300 hp with a "134 hp" 70's 302 (with H/C/I/E).

 

In the case of the Opel, I could pull out the Gen III SBC truck motor @ 17,000 points, put in the "134 hp" 302, and my VPI would be... 128 points. I can then add H/C/I (exhaust is in the swap points) and still have plenty of points to cover all the aero and suspension swap stuff and race Non-EC. Basically, my car would be no slower than it is now, probably faster actually with that H/C/I 302 setup, and I would lose 17,000 points.

 

It makes no sense.

 

I understand the rules are supposed to be simple, but this loophole of cheap H/C/I and low values on smog era V8 cars just beg people to build what GBU has done. Now people get out the pitchforks. Certainly, they could have run 255/40/17's and kept the closing speeds down and probably not gotten anywhere near the backlash, but what they are doing is actually much better at pointing out the issues with the rules, and how they are woefully inadequate to constrain performance. This is not a potshot, I think it was an oversight, and it looks like it is being addressed - but unfortunately, it takes people spending $$$ to point out the holes in the rules to get them fixed.

 

[wvumtnbkr 7,207]

1 hour ago, CBraden said:

 

Ah, thanks. Ok, then in that case - let's focus on the output.

 

Anybody can easily make more than 300 hp with a "134 hp" 70's 302 (with H/C/I/E).

 

In the case of the Opel, I could pull out the Gen III SBC truck motor @ 17,000 points, put in the "134 hp" 302, and my VPI would be... 128 points. I can then add H/C/I (exhaust is in the swap points) and still have plenty of points to cover all the aero and suspension swap stuff and race Non-EC. Basically, my car would be no slower than it is now, probably faster actually with that H/C/I 302 setup, and I would lose 17,000 points.

 

It makes no sense.

 

I understand the rules are supposed to be simple, but this loophole of cheap H/C/I and low values on smog era V8 cars just beg people to build what GBU has done. Now people get out the pitchforks. Certainly, they could have run 255/40/17's and kept the closing speeds down and probably not gotten anywhere near the backlash, but what they are doing is actually much better at pointing out the issues with the rules, and how they are woefully inadequate to constrain performance. This is not a potshot, I think it was an oversight, and it looks like it is being addressed - but unfortunately, it takes people spending $$$ to point out the holes in the rules to get them fixed.

 

Aren't heads 100 pts?  Intake 50 pts.  Cam 50 points, plus the 53pts for a swap.  That's 253 pts to make 300 hp.  Seems about right to me if somebody wants to spend that many points on just the engine?

 

Probably need a new trans to support that engine.  25 pts.

 

Need a new rear end to support that horsepower 25 pts...

 

Now at a total of 378 pts (starting vpi of 75 pts).  

 

14.5 gallons of fuel (16.5 with a fuel cell).  Will probably only make 1.5 hours.

 

Sounds like a fun car!  

 

Edited October 27, 2020 by wvumtnbkr

[turbogrill 484]

1 hour ago, wvumtnbkr said:

Aren't heads 100 pts?  Intake 50 pts.  Cam 50 points, plus the 53pts for a swap.  That's 253 pts to make 300 hp.  Seems about right to me if somebody wants to spend that many points on just the engine?

 

Probably need a new trans to support that engine.  25 pts.

 

Need a new rear end to support that horsepower 25 pts...

 

Now at a total of 378 pts (starting vpi of 75 pts).  

 

14.5 gallons of fuel (16.5 with a fuel cell).  Will probably only make 1.5 hours.

 

Sounds like a fun car!  

 

 

Turbo is 100pts, intercooler 50 pts, oil cooler 25pts, etc

I guess if you know what you're are doing that would be a cheap way to get infinite hp.

[veris 161]

1 hour ago, turbogrill said:

 

Turbo is 100pts, intercooler 50 pts, oil cooler 25pts, etc

I guess if you know what you're are doing that would be a cheap way to get infinite hp.

Also less reliable with a 15 to 20% additional fuel burn for the same hp.

[Snorman 2,814]

7 hours ago, petawawarace said:

Heres some fun math.

 

GBU vs Crowd Control

Straight up race each running their best laptimes from last weekend every lap for 8hrs.

Crowd Control makes it 2hrs on fuel

GBU makes it 1hr on fuel.

 

Who wins?

I haven't done the math but the back of napkin answer is that in a 160 lap race it takes a ~1.9 second average lap time to account for each additional fuel stop. We would stop at 2:00, 4:05 and 6:10. The GBU car would stop at 1:00, 2:05, 3:10, 4:15, 5:20, 6:25 and 7:30. They'd need a 7.6 second/lap average advantage to counter the additional fuel stops. I have no idea what their mean lap data is but suspect they are faster than they are showing. 

None of this accounts for FCY, weather, etc. which is huge in strategy and winning a race. 

 

[Slugworks Paul 1,787]

17 hours ago, Jer said:

As a board we voted, not unanimously but it carried, that IRS will be valued as the components that make it up.  So they will have to contend with that too on top of the higher starting value.  Just an FYI.  we are trying, but there will always be a loophole to exploit.  They exploited one exceedingly well.  We are also raising the values on other older cars with gigantic fuel tanks.  

So the value randomly dropping seemingly for one team (compared to what was previously in the knowledge base) is a loophole? Can you explain that to me?