And You Can Drive One, Just In Case You Did Not Know

This is a shameless advert for the USBOSS series.

I got out of bikes and into historic car racing seven or so years back. One day I saw Duncan Dayton come down the hill at Atlanta in his 95 Reynard IndyCar. It changed my life.......... and I was campaigning a 90 Chevy Spice GTP at the time!

Thus it came to be that the very first open wheel car I drove was Scott Pruett's 95 Lola IndyCar. I now run a 99 Lola ChampCar.

The moral of all this is that anyone with a functional brain (and the means, of course) can drive some of the fastest stuff on the planet. On the low end of the spectrum are F3000s and the high end are things like the later Ferrari, Jordan and Benetton F1s. We cheapos in the middle drive Indy/Champ cars and spank most of the F1 guys on a regular basis.

You can find the USBOSS schedule at www.hsrrace.com. It includes tracks like Watkins Glen, Mt Tremblant, Road America and Road Atlanta. I've got a good bit of technical stuff at www.lolachampcar.com if you’re interested.

If you are even remotely interested, please drop me a line. We are always looking for good sensible people to run with.

 

Obviously I am cheating just a bit when I say spank. I do it because my cars tend to run most of the time and the F1s are a little finicky and hard to keep running. I have passed Larry Connor's Bene a bunch of times as he was sitting on the side of the road. In short, I drive customer cars that were designed to do 500 miles flat out in pros hands. The F1 guys drive, or at least the 90s and 00s, drive cars that were designed to do two hours and be rebuilt. When I beat them, it is mostly because of an unfair hardware advantage.

With respect to comparable drivers in the two cars, the best would be to point to Duncan Dayton and Larry Connor. Duncan drives the championship winning 95 Reynard IndyCar while Larry had a 91 (or 92?) Bene and now has a 94. They were swapping the outright track lap record at Atlanta (in the 10.7 range I think) and one of the two of them had it right up until this last ALMS race. They were knocking on the door at VIR and the Glen (up until the IRL ran there and did not bother to lift for any of the corners!).

I am just an average driver with a best at Atlanta of a low 13. Other examples are-
Track Larry/Duncan The rest of us
Road America low 50s high 52s to mid 53
Watkins 35ish mid 36s

My point is, and I am a good example, you can run one of these cars, do 4G lateral through the kink at Road America at 172 mph lap after lap and not kill yourself or others. Again, this assumes you have half a brain (which most people do) and are willing to creep up on the deep end. You can do it, survive the experience and have a very good time in the process.

I just want to get the word out so that others that have the same interests know that there is a place to give it a go.

As for budget, I probably spend about $8K per race including engine time but does not amortize off season crack testing. It would be a bit better if I split my trailer with someone as I currently take one to run and one to show. If you have ever looked at an SCCA Atlantic budget, it’s not half bad for significantly more bag.

Lastly, Toad Hall rules. Those guys are great. I took a year off last year to follow up on a fuel injection project. I have gotten done what I needed to and am looking forward to running the rest of this year. I would have been at Atlanta but found that everything goes to hell and a hand basket when you do not run for a year. Even my golf cart would not start!

 

With respect to costs, I guess it is all relative. I've been told a competitive Atlantic engine from Hasselgrin (sp) is over $1K an hour to run! For me, that makes XDs a bargain for the HP you get. The far extreme are things like the 3L Cosworth in the 94 Bene. The guy from England comes over every time it runs and I would suspect they only see 500 miles between rebuilds. At an average lap of 125 mph, that is a little over three hours of run time. I divide $35K (a guess on my part for shipping and a refresh) by 3 hours and have a heart attack. Again, it is all relative.

Street cars are definitely a lot more cost effective per track mile. I suspect they always will be.

With respect to support, I run my own cars from the fuel control to the engine refreshes to the crack testing. It's a hobby for me and I am a nut for all things technical. I have had full time help when I have brought in several new cars to the shop but, once you have gone through them and have them set up properly, they are not that much trouble to run.

Lastly, I lift because I just do not have the stones of someone who does it for a living. Most people do not understand just how good someone is who does it (successfully) for a living really is. Just do a quick lap time comparison between a very good pro and his gentleman counterpart in something like a P1 in ALMS. It is not uncommon to see three, four or five seconds difference and that is an eternity!

The hair on the back of my neck stood up watching Dario approach the bus stop at the Glen. He was hitting 179 mph, lifting to set the nose to turn in then getting back on the throttle. I am doing 190, standing on the brakes, dropping a gear and cursing through. I just could not believe how well the road course Indy configuration rotated. Its no Williams but it definitely gets though the bus stop a lot faster than I am willing to go. It is worth noting that my car does 36s at the Glen and NEVER moves and I leave a foot or two on track out. I suspect Dario's car is moving a bit. Again, there is a huge difference between someone who does it for a living and hacks like me. It does not me us hacks do not have fun as well.

 

The key is to get a handle on the engine refresh activity. We made some changes to the valve train to improve spring and gear/chain life. That moved me away from the $15K Cosworth refresh every 500 - 750 miles.

Beyond the engine, there are just four corners, a box and a turbo. The Garret ball bearing turbo is good for 5K miles if you keep the incoming air clean. The corners and gearbox are overkill for historic road course stuff and thus they last much longer and require much less maintenance then something like an Atlantic or F3000 (which are much closer to their design limits).

Pickling is a twenty minute pain every weekend but that about sums it up...

 

Shell on the 99 and Visteon on the 96. Take a look at www.lolachampcar.com

 

Don't get me wrong. ChampCars will never be the 500 pound lighter carbon brake equipped monster that a modern Ferrari F1 is. We just have the benefit of dialing down the rpm and upping the boost to keep the same horsepower while improving engine life. Dial the rpm down on a modern F1 and you are hosed for power.

Maybe one day I'll have a chance to drive a modern F1. Until then, I just need to be happy with what I have.

 

Let's say someone gets to drive one of these machines.

Let's say Mikeeee likes it. Well, there you go, we just might have a BOSS convert. I am all for it...