UFO Info Week-End

You’ll hear words about when and how overtaking is permitted plus stern

You’ll hear words about when and how overtaking is permitted plus stern mention of the penalties for any inconsiderate or reckless driving. The website the best place to start.Obviously circuit driving is potentially very satisfying as well as exceptionally good fun but, according to Circuit Driver’s editor Steve Bennett, the recent surge in popularity can be put down to the ever-increasing wherewithal of the modern performance car and motorcycle which on the road can really only be exploited by criminals with a death wish. These were initially organised by individuals, clubs or dealers on a non-profit making basis but in the early Eighties they grew in frequency and popularity – especially among the two-wheeled fraternity – such that commercial companies soon formed to handle the business.Today the Association of Track Day Organisers ( ) has over 50 members, while Circuit Driver magazine ( ) currently checks through 160 trackday organisers to compile its monthly track day “what’s on” diary. Importantly, the trackday provides an effective way of engaging in the art of circuit driving – a very different discipline from that of everyday motoring on the Queen’s Highway – but without taking the bold step of committing to official competition.The term “trackday” entered biker parlance about 25 years ago, but similar events have been held since the dawn of the purpose-built motor racing circuit. The purpose of a trackday is to drive reasonably speedily around a circuit, perhaps to extend your personal driving abilities, or your vehicle’s, at close to its dynamic limits, without the constraints of the public road.

In 2000 there were 314 and the following year that figure grew to 564. In 2003 there were 644 “days for cars” plus 715 for motorcycles, which equates to an average of 3.8 per day, and those totals looks like rising by around 10 per cent for 2004.But winning isn’t the point. This differs from conventional motorsport in that a trackday isn’t a competitive event – there’s no official lap timekeeping or racing as such, so consequently there are no winners or silverware.
The trackday is enjoying a rise in popularity: in 1997 there were 156 trackdays held for cars in the UK. What exactly is a trackday? Essentially, someone hires a motor-racing circuit from its owners or leaseholders for a given day and then invites others to pay a fee to bring their car or bike along on that day to drive it around the circuit. Cream teas, real ale, gardening, holiday camps and fish’n'chips: all quintessentially British. But we can now add “trackday” to that list for it was invented here and, remains an almost uniquely British event.

In spite of the restrictions of the rules, using the chemical equivalent of the computer-aided design and predictive analysis of modern mechanical engineering, the fuel composition is “designed” simultaneously with that of the engine design – “something never dreamt of in the earlier days.”. At the same time, it is made to compress the mixture into as small a volume as possible, for better efficiency. The smallness and narrowness of that space, and the very much more limited time to burn it properly, prevents swirl effects to be used. Therefore as Mike Evans explains, “We can assist by optimising the rate of fuel ignition and expansion by playing around with the evaporative ability of the fuel, its volatility, within the regulations.”He and his team in fact are involved closely with the Ferrari engine designers, right from the start of the design task. They want to go as far as possible in the race on the amount of fuel they have on board, before they have to stop to refuel. The more economical it is, the less fuel has to be carried, so the less heavy the car becomes. A lot of work on the engine, reducing internal friction, coatings on rubbing surfaces and so on, is all about improving efficiency.”The fuel men can help however.

“You want the fuel going into the inlet ports of the engine to vaporise as quickly as possible, you don’t want droplets of liquid fuel entering the combustion chamber.” In a road car engine, one popular way that any liquid as opposed to vaporised fuel entering the combustion chamber is helped to vaporise is by inducing “swirl” in the chamber – literally stirring the air-fuel mixture as violently as possible, as in cooking.An F1 racing engine is designed with a very wide cylinder so that as many as five of the largest-possible valves can be fitted in. So today’s F1 car has to also be designed to be, of all things most contrary to motor racing, economical.”Economical,” when extracting circa 900 bhp from a 3-litre engine driven most of the time, flat-out, at a racing fuel consumption of around 4 mpg, is a somewhat relative term. But if too little fuel is carried, and used up too quickly, that car will lose its lead in an early pit stop. In any case, as a spokesman for the Jordan F1 team said, “No team could afford to store the 200kg of fuel needed to run a whole Grand Prix race non stop, because the weight penalty would slow the car too much.” Hence pit stops for refuelling.The less fuel a Grand Prix car carries, the faster it will accelerate, which can be useful to help a car in the right hands to lead from the start, and build an increasing gap between it and its rivals.

No team may replace the engine used for qualifying with a brand new engine for the race. Next season, each engine has to “do” qualifying and racing distances of two entire events, totalling 1,500 km (over 900 miles). So F1 engines these days are designed to be reliable.Secondly, although there is no maximum tank capacity regulation, the amount of fuel a Formula 1 car may carry is limited by rules about where fuel may be stored. As the great engineer Ferdinand Porsche is reputed to have said, “The perfect racing car is one designed to cross the finish line in first place, which then falls to pieces.” That was not far off what used to happen.Recently, in an effort to reduce the huge cost of building racing cars, the FIA’s regulations require that the same engine must be used for all practice and qualifying laps as well as the race distance. And the FIA can then take more samples during the event to “ensure there is no discrepancy between the fuel being used and that previously supplied in the samples” – in plainer English, that there is no fiddling of the formula.You might also assume that the engine designer’s sole object is to make the engine produce as much power as possible. To summarise just two main points of a deeply technical list, the petrol can be up to 102 RM octane in its anti-knock rating (standard unleaded is 95 RM, super-unleaded 98 RM), and it has to be what is loosely called unleaded.Two five-litre fuel samples of whatever is brewed up for any Grand Prix car before the race must be provided for the FIA for analysis and approval. At 18,000 rpm, it has three-thousandths of a second to do the same.