Knowing where to place your pressure sensitive labels is an important part of your slot racing team strategy. Now you won’t be in the dark when you’re assembling your GTO or DB5.
Remember slot racers, magnets are for wimps; and me.
via.
Have you ever played too much Tetris?
When I was playing A LOT of Tetris as a kid, my mind went a little funny. Whatever I would see that day—a car, the space between buildings, the front of the classroom—in my mind I was subconsciously figuring out what Tetris pieces I needed to fill in the space. It’s an odd sensation.
I imagine that Paul “Lego911” has a similar affliction. Whenever he sees a shape, I’m betting his mind starts figuring out how to sculpt it in Lego bricks. The condition must be grave, because he’s got serious skills. You probably didn’t think you could craft the gentle arc of a Ferrari 250 GT Lusso’s bonnet, the distinctive mouth of an Aston Martin DB5, or the short tail of a Porsche 917K from humble Lego bricks, did you? Turns out, in the hands of a master, you can.
Thankfully, Paul has learned that he’s not alone. He’s started a Flickr group called LUGNUTS as a support system of sorts and found others with the same condition artistic vision.
Check out Paul’s blog, his Flickr stream, and the LUGNUTS group pool and prepare to be amazed.
I bet he’s better at Tetris than me.
Speaking of early 911s, let’s hear what Sports Illustrated’s guest sportscar reviewer, Steve McQueen, thought of the 911 in 1966. This is excerpted from a larger article in which Steve drove the latest sportscars from Porsche, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Alfa, Mercedes, Jaguar, and the latest Cobra and Corvette.
“Like the 230SL, the other German car, the Porsche 911, was a six. The Mercedes straight-six is in the front. The Porsche flat-six, with horizontally opposed cylinders—an engine developed from the Grand Prix car of a few seasons ago—is in the rear. I was curious to see how much the Porsche had changed since I raced my Super, which had the four-cylinder engine. Boy, it’s changed. Road noise used to be a problem with that rear-engine location, but on the 911 I got very little noise. The old Porsches had that violent oversteer tendency, and they would get out of whack with no warning. You’d be hung out and locked in your steering with nowhere to go. We used to decamber the rear wheels 2½° to 3½°, so they kind of looked like somebody had sat on them, and toe them in half a degree to get a certain amount of stability. Now the problem has been corrected. The 911 was a very neutral-handling car, very docile, very pleasant to drive, and the five-speed gearbox sure was easy to use. The brakes were just fine. Once a gust of wind caught me on the back straight and slid me over a few feet, but the car didn’t get radical in its handling.
There is a four-cylinder Porsche—the less expensive 912—and I imagine it has a little more snap at low RPM than the 911 but not as much top speed. With that six the 911 honks right along.”
Steve McQueen
There you have it, the cooler king’s impressions reacquainting himself with Porsche, which of course worked out splendidly for the next few years. After all, like the poster says, McQueen drives Porsche. All that and a bonus handling modification tip for 356 drivers.
Thanks, Steve.
Here’s an even earlier glimpse at the Porsche factory, this time from the 356 era. When did TV announcers stop having that voice?
One of my favorite eras of the 911, and seeing this many together is a real treat. I love that the Porsche factory still has a bit of grime to it, not like the current photography you see of the facility with the line workers in white lab coats and the highly polished floors. This is no operating room, this is a sportscar shop.
See the complete set, it’s wonderful.
Found via A Continuous Lean.
The barchetta equation (small displacement + light weight = good fun) works for motorcycles too.
What I think I like most about this ad for Dunlop R5 Racing tires is the photograph of a formula car wheel. No tire manufacturer today would have anything less than the very top-end wheels showcasing their products. They would be highly polished, and the photo retouched to absolutely scream “shiny and expensive”.
For this racing tire ad though, it’s just a simple stamped wheel with dull, dirty paint — looks like a Lotus “wobbly web” to me. Fantastic.
Although the Vaca Valley Raceway would later incorporate a drag strip and oval track into it’s road racing configuration (a very early example of a multipurpose motorsport park), I quite like this early description from the May 1960 California Sports Car Club newsletter about the upcoming 1961 races.
“The course, a new one for most Cal Club drivers, is a special built road race circuit with a smooth blacktop surface. It is 2.1 miles in length, there are seven turns, the main straight is 3700 feet long and the course is run in a clockwise direction. It is a true road race course that has everything from a big 1000 foot radius banked turn to a slow twist-back corner and has been very popular with drivers who appreciate something more challenging than a flat airport circuit.”
Sounds pretty good right? Sadly, the track only lasted until 1972. Usually when we look at some of America’s forgotten racetracks, they invariably have been torn down and replaced with housing developments, shopping malls, and (worst of all) golf courses. Vaca Valley, though, might be even sadder. It has just slowly faded away. Nothing new has been built on it’s property. No encroaching suburban sprawl and angry homeowners drove the track to shut down. If you look at this Google Maps view, you can still see the bones of the old asphalt surface, slowly being perforated by nature.
Apparently the asphalt was never of the highest quality, and subsequent resurfacing did little to correct the problem. Once the surface deteriorated, the owners nor the SCCA was able to pony up the $15,000 needed to bring the track up to par and it just wasted away.
$15,000! Sounds like it would have been money well spent. In the meantime, there have been a few attempts to re-open the facility, but encroaching neighbors objected in the early ’90s, killing the plan. Later investigations as late as 2003 deemed the project too costly. It seems that for the time being, Vaca Valley Raceway will continue to crumble.
Update: Racing simulator designer and developer Rudy Dingemans has built a raceable version of Vaca Valley for the rFactor and GTR2 racing simulators, see our post on his efforts here. Rudy has commented on this post as well and included links to the tracks in the comments below.
UK auctioneers Barons might not have the international caché of some of the larger houses, but one lot in particular from their upcoming pre-holiday auction could change all that. This ex-Jo Siffert Chevron B19 is a drop-dead stunner. The B19 on offer, chassis B19-70-S-10, has an interesting relationship with Siffert. He is known, according to Chevron’s racing records to have driven the car, but only apparently in a few events.
Chevron’s records establish provenance, but the scenario is a bit interesting because in addition to Siffert’s racing relationship with Chevron, he also helped facilitate the sale of a number of privateer cars. Imagine a contemporary racing driver doing that! This car was an example of Siffert selling the car on Chevron’s behalf, if I’m understanding the relationship correctly. The original owner was Cyr Febbraïo, who competed in a number of hillclimbs largely in France, but also in other parts of mainland Europe. The car was also piloted by Febbraïo and co-driver, Jean Ortelli, in the 1971 2Liter race at the Paul Ricard circuit.
Barons estimates the car will fetch between £80,000 and £100,000 when this B19 crosses the auction block on December 8. I’ve seen Chevrons with less interesting history command similar amounts. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an ex-Siffert example to hit the upper end of that range if not exceed it. One top of it all, she’s absolutely lovely and looks like an absolute blast to drive.
More information at Baron’s lot detail page and supplementary details on Old Racing Cars .
Update: This car sold for £80,800 which seems like a reasonably good deal for a Siffert car. Lots of cars seem to be selling at the low end of their estimates this season.
This video of the 1966 Can Am race at the Vegas Stardust track starts off with a bang, showing onboard footage of the track from a variety of the competitors’ cars.
Sadly, the rapid expansion of the Las Vegas area in the decades since means that the Stardust raceway has been razed and the land is now a housing development. At least the videos still survive.
And the cars.
I’ll always have an appreciation for Chaparral’s gigantic winged beasts, but the Lolas in this clip really do it for me.