FASTVOICE
NSX files, project Germany:
Track days at
Hockenheim GP 17./18. march 2005
(for a 56 MB H264.MP4 video (PlayStation 3 and Apple
iPhone
compatible) click here,
more
movie links are below)
Some
serious society at season
start 
What the hell is this behind me? The
Fastvoice NSX ahead of a Ferrari 360 GT race car who really
didn't want
to
pass for a while - unbelievable...
All
track
pics: R. Lipp, still pics: me
What a
big luck to start the season 2005:
After a long cold and snowy winter the sun and warm
temperatures came
just in the week of our 2 days track event with the swiss Race
Car
Promotion in march, the NSX had recovered from a mysterious power loss and seemed
to be well
prepared for new adventures with a new cable between a
camshaft sensor
and the ECU (connnection has been broken during a previous
head gasket
renewal operation), a new windshield, some minor new parts for
the
suspension and optical finish, 4 new race slicks and fresh red
paint
for the 4 Brembo brake calipers. As nearly always at the Race
Car
Promotion events there where two run groups - one for the
single
seaters and another much bigger group for the rest - about 60
cars -
street legal and race only - from Honda Civic over a lot of
Porsches to
some exotics like a Dodge Viper, a Callaway Race Corvette, a
brand new
Ferrari F 430 and -
unexpected: One of the 400 existing Ferrari Enzos.
Two beasts waiting
for the
track: A Ferrari Enzo and the Fastvoice NSX - now without
the previous
front side canards.
And this is what they look like together exiting Sachs
corner in
Hockenheim (don't miss the incar QT video of this scene here):
As my run group contained so much cars we where given a bit
more track
time - besides the usual 30 minutes stint we had another
"long
run" with one hour each day. The morning started with some
warm up for
the car and driver after the long winter break - it was dry
but a bit
cold so I started slow to gain confidence again in the car and
the
track. And of course I had to break in the new race slick
tires and
check if the car still has reduced upforce at the front
without the
side flaps of last year. Luckily it seems that the vented hood
alone is
just enough to keep the aerodynamical balance in fast corners
together
with the rear wing. On the first day there was a lot of space
on the
track to try things out because some of the other cars
appeared only on
the 2nd day. Everything seemed to be fine - but only for about
15
minutes. First bummer: Laptimer doesn't work. Second bummer:
Water
temperature did rise again way too high when I pushed the car
for more
than 2 laps - and we thought we had solved the problem. My
techie
wanted to join the party anyway so he had some work when he
finely came
to the track with a lot of tools, instruments, spare parts and
ambition. He checked water temperatures front and rear, the
hoses and
tubes, the overflow bottle and it's cap, the radiator, the
radiator
fan, the thermostate, the cables and found no problem.
The
"rat
pack":
Frank
Sinatra, Dean Martin (red nose) and Sammy Davis jr.
(apparently black) duking it out in the Sachs corner (left
pic).
The right pic shows Oprah Winfrey with some heavy spoilers
and a loud
turbocharged voice - one of the fastest beasts during the
event.
This Porsche from the Alzen Brothers with 4WD and over 600
PS finished
in the top 10 at the 24 hours of Nuerbuergring later in
May.
While my techie worked on the
overheating
problem (with many efforts but without success) I checked my
laptimer
infrared receiver and display and saw - nothing. The two small
batteries in it (very rare flat type) didn't survive the
winter. Two
days without lap timing? Unthinkable! So I begged my
girlfriend to take
the Ford, drive into town and search for some of these
batteries. She
needed about the same ambition as my techie but she had
success after
more than one hour of asking and searching. She had finally
found the
only
store with the right batteries in this small town called
Hockenheim -
and they where cheaper than ever - miracle! In the 1st stint
after the
lunch break I tested the laptimer and the car. Result:
Laptimer works
great, car doesn't. I could only push the engine for two hot
laps and
then had to shift at about 6000 rpm instead of 8000 to cool
the water
down again. I even had still warm air from the air supply
inside the
car although we had disconnected the heater. And another good
portion
of warm air went through the Taitec CF
vented hood
to the outside as we
checked later
with the active radiator fan on the standing car - so that
hood does
it's job really well.
One of the many cool
down
laps for me - cruising behind a Dodge Viper which was usualy
much
slower than me in the corners
because it ran on street tires. Of course it always gained a
lot on the
straights.
So once again (for how many times
now?)
the engine did get too hot (and lost a bit of it's maximum
power in my
opinion), the driver did get too hot and I saw the result on
the
laptimer - way too much seconds on the display. The problem
for a
weekend warrior like me is: If you have only two hot laps in a
row you
can't get used to the car's behaviour when it's pushed hard.
So you're
not able to reach your personal 100 percent - you're stuck at
maybe 95,
at least after a 4 months track pause. Last year I was able to
break
the 2 minutes barrier on
this track
after nearly a whole day of trying,
this year my best times where in the 2:04 region - still not
that slow
but a huge disappointment for me. That means again: Back to my
techies
R&D department to find the cause for the overheating. The
next
events on my track schedule will be cancelled until further
progress.
I'm just tired to drive with a car that worked nearly perfect
for many
years and now has such problems for the last 5 events or so.
Some veterans in
the pack:
A heavily modified Porsche 911 (left) and a Ford Falcon
Sprint ahead
of some P-cars and a Renault Clio Cup car.
On the other side it was not all
bad
during these 2 days: It was also some fun to cruise behind
some slower
cars and try my small new Sanyo Xacti Digital Movie C2 video
camera for
the first time in the NSX, fixed on a Hama suction cup mount.
This
tiny MP4 cam with built in stereo microphone stores on SD
cards
and works astonishingly well - I can record more than 45
minutes of
TV ready quality on a 1 Gigabyte card - the only problem is
that the
small rechargable battery is down after a bit more than 30
minutes. So
I have 3 of them to change during the day. Bummer that I can't
show you
the whole quality because the data amount would be too huge
for the net
so I
always have to downgrade the edited movies drastically. You
can see a
90 MB QT movie with some minutes of the track day here, a
shorter movie with my car following the Ferrari Enzo here, a 56 MB movie in H264
compression
and MP.4 format (compatible with PlayStation 3 and Apple
iPhone!) with
12 minutes of pure driving here and
a
short 38
QT MB movie (less compressed
with
better audio and video quality) with one lap passing a Porsche
here - have fun!
That's
about
the
maximum
g force and body roll of the Fastvoice NSX - man,
that's fun to show a race Ferrari what a Honda can do!
As the car burns up to 35
liters of 95
octane gas per 100 track kilometers I needed nearly 2 full
tanks for
this 2
days. Fortunately the gas station has reasonable prices so I
didn't
have to use my gas
spare tanks. With a non street legal car you can't just drive
to the
next less expensive gas station in the town to fill up your
tank -
although I did that
one time - with race slicks in a foreign country a long time
ago - call
it a youth sin.
Another
veteran:
A
race
prepped Ford Mustang (left) and a "Sportscar-Burger"
(right): A tasty NSX between two halfs of a P-car roll.
When you want to see a NSX passing a Porsche, you may watch
this 38 MB
QT movie with extended quality here.
To speak of some more
positive things:
Even
after two days with multiple hard braking (e.g. from 240 km/h
to 60 at
the end of the long straight before the hairpin in each lap)
the brake
pedal felt still stiff and showed no signs of fading, the
Yokohama
tires had maintained their grip very well and I had no spin,
only some
small drifts (one a bit too wide but with no wall contact)
exiting the
hairpin because I was bit early on the gas - okay, I sometimes
provoked
it. Besides the overheating thing I had not experienced other
technical
issues - everything seemed to work fine - only the driver had
lost some
of his already small physical condition over the long winter
break.
After these
2 first days of the season I felt some muscles I already had
forgotten
that they where part of my body. Believe it or not: Tracking a
car is
not only hard for the car but also for the driver.
A "V8 Star" car from a
previous
championship with big Rouch engine from USA and a Opel
silhouette
(upper left).
The Fastvoice NSX
entering the Sachs corner, photographed from different angles
(upper
and
lower right). A
3series BMW and a Renault Clio Cup car (lower left).
A
Motorsport
Elise
as
it ran in a british championship (left) and the
Fastvoice NSX braking before the double right hander before
the finish
straight.
One of my favourite
pics: A lonely NSX
under the early morning sun on a long and winding road
with no
traffic
(the advertisement banner says: "Reward for success" - which
driving a
NSX definitely is, don't you think?).
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Rhin
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