In a bittersweet move, the Formula BMW team is officially retiring from Lemons racing and we are putting our “Pink Pig” lemons car for sale. After 3 years of successful racing the team is splitting up and the members are moving onto other pursuits including Spec Racing. As a result we are selling the Pink Pig as a fully setup turnkey LeMons car for teams who want to get into the series without going through the hassle of building their own car.
Car info:
1986 BMW 325 E (E30)
Class winner at Reno-Fernley 2009
2 Top 5s and 2 Top 10s in the last 4 races
Excellent handling and fast lap times
Ultra reliable – no major breakdowns in last 5 races
Click here to follow the history of the car and its racing efforts
Car package includes all safety gear, radios, wheels, tires, drinks systems, fuel filler hoses, etc… – just add gas and race!
The car is located at Dietsch Werks in Santa Clara and we are happy to show it with an appointment. For pricing and more information please leave a comment below or call Rahul at 510-439-7265
Polyphony Digital has announced a new feature in Gran Turismo 5 which will allow you to upload data from an automotive data logger and recreate your laps within GT5. The technology currently requires the use of the CANBUS data along with a Denso GPS controller and will initially be built into the Toyota FT-86G. As the owner of a Race Technology DL1, I can only hope that one day we might be able to use this technology with existing track day dataloggers.
In the meantime check out this video of a Lexus IS-F lapping the Fuji circuit with its virtual recreation side-by-side.
A couple of days before my scheduled return flight from Chennai to SF I was thinking about the wonderfully uncomfortable economy seat and decided that it would probably be worth it to pay a fee and upgrade to business. This was on a Friday night (flight was on Sat night) and the Cathay Pacific office in Chennai was already closed so I went to their website to see if I could upgrade online. After spending some 20 minutes looking through their website I had to admit defeat and decide to instead give their office a call on Saturday morning to see if I could do the upgrade over the phone instead.
So on Saturday morning I give the Cathay Office a call and ask them how much they would charge to upgrade me. The woman on the phone takes my ticket number and a couple of minutes later comes back saying that is not possible to upgrade me. When I ask why she says that while there was room on the flight, tickets that have been booked via the SFO office can only be upgraded from SF. At which point I incredulously asked her if she understood that I actually wanted to give the airline some extra money for a flight that I was going to be taking anway. By giving them the $$$ I would get a little more comfort and they would get some more money for transporting the exact same person on the same route. While she did understand my point she claimed that the rules were iron clad and that there was no way to actually upggrade without getting approval from SFO which would take at least 2 business days. In the end I just had to give up and put the phone down – no point talking to someone if the rules prevented her from taking my money.
So on Saturday night I finally get on the plane and midway through the Chennai-Hon Kong flight the stewardess comes over to me and says that I have to talk to the ground staff after we land. Apparently there was room on an earlier flight from HK to SFO anf they were moving everyone to this flight (and saving ppl 3 hours off the stopover). Eventually after we land the ground staff collect the 200 odd folks who were moving the the earlier flight and escort us over to the ticketing area to get a new boarding pass. Since I was getting a new boarding pass I decided to once again ask if I could be upgraded. This time the ticketing agent says that while it is possible I would have to pay for upgrading all 4 flights (SFO-HK, HK-MAA, MAA-HK and HF-SFO) even though 3 of the legs were already complete. I ask her how much this would be and she quotes me $4400 to upgrade. This is at a time when I could have purchased a brand new one way MAA-SFO business class flight for just over $2000. Cursing the dumbass airline rules I say I’ll just stick with economy at which point she informs me that all the window and aisle seats are already full and I’ll have to be content with a middle seat. Now at 6ft 1 inches tall I cant really fit in a middle seat so I ask if it would be possible to get an exit row seat. She says that there is a $100 charge for exit row seat which I gladly agree to pay to get some additional leg room. I pull out a crisp new $100 bill from my wallet (long story but I did not have my credit cards with me) to pay for he upgrade when the ticket agent tells me that they cannot accept $100 dollar bills and that $50 is the largest US bill they will accept. Quite annoyed by this new wrinkle I ask for the way to the nearest money changer so I can convert the $100 bill to either smaller USD for to equivalent HK$ when she tells me that all the money changers are behind the security wall and I cannot get to them without a boarding pass and I wont get the boarding pass till I pas the upgrade fee. Incredibly for the second time in 24 hours I had come up to a situation where I had money that I was willing to give to the airline for more comfort but the airline was refusing to take my money!!!! Despite all my pleading there was no way around this new wrinkle and in the end I had to accept a boarding pass for a middle seat. The ticketing agent did take pity on me and said that she would make a note in the system so that her colleagues at the boarding gate could change me to window or aisle seat if they found a vacancy.
When I did go to board the airline the stewardess there stopped me and gave me a new boarding pass for a window seat. I was pleasantly surprised by this change and was absolutely blown away when I get to the seat and find that it was actually a window exit roaw seat. After twice pleading with the airline to take my money for an upgrade I ended up getting upgraded to a more comfortable seat on an earlier flight for free. While I can complain about the upgrade I can only hope that Cathay Pacific realizes that occasionally you will have passengers who are willing to pay for upgrades and they need to make it easy for them to get those upgrades. It is absolutely ridiculous to refuse to upgrade a person because they bought their ticket from a different office or are paying with $100 bills. By upgrading they get some extra money for zero additional fuel spend while the customer gets a more comfortable seat to travel in. By refusing to take my money on an empty flight you just irritated me for no reason and made it very unlikely that I will ever fly Cathay again.
Judge Murilee over on Jalopnik just posted a list of his LeMons Legends for 2009 and the Pink Pig was on his list. This is what he had to say about us:
Formula BMW, BMW 325e
An E30 becomes a LeMons Legend? In this case, you’re looking at one of the all-time legendary LeMons cars. Notice how every body panel seems to have been hit hard, repeatedly? That’s because this car is a veteran of the early races at Altamont, including the notorious “Demolition Derby” race of October ‘07 and the not-much-less-brutal May ‘08 race. With seven LeMons races to its credit, the Formula BMW E30 has finished 44th, 44th, 20th, 10th, 5th, 10th, and 6th during its career… and been hit approximately 8,000 times (7,997 of those at Altamont).
While I love the write-up, I do have to point out that we actually finished 44th, 44th, 19th, 10th, 5th (class win), 10th, and 5th. Our average finishing position for the 2009 races was 6.67
I recently switched to a new unibody Macbook Pro and while I love the keyboard and the battery life I have had major issues with the multitouch keypad. My usual method for using the trackpad on the old Macbook was to rest my thumb on the button while using my index finger to move the cursor. On the new buttonless Macbook the computer keeps interpreting that as a two-finger pinc zoom and as a result I keep resizing my brower text every 15 minutes or so. Unfortunately Apple in its infinite Jobs-ian wisdom has decided that no one will ever want to live without this feature which means that there is no official way to turn it off from within system preferences. So after a bunch of searching though various forums I’ve stumbled across this method to disable the two finger pinch zoom feature within Firefox. This will require changing the firefox config file to use at your own risk:
1) Open Firefox
2) Type in “about:config” in the address bar and hit enter
3) Hit the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button to get into the actual config
4) Type “gesture” in the “filter” field. This should give you a list of all the supported gestural interactions
5) Double-click on “browser.gesture.pinch.in” and delete the value in the text box that pops up.
6) Repeat for “browser.gesture.pinch.out”
7) Close the tab and you no longer have to deal with inadvertant pinch-zooms in Firefox
This will only affect html pages within firefox. Other mac applications will still have the pinch-zoom feature as will PDF files you open within Firefox using the PDF plugin.
Fatigue – that’s a word you hear being thrown about a lot at endurance racing events. We know that as drivers do long stints behind the wheel, fatigue starts setting in and the lap times start to drop steadily. But the $64,000 question is how long can a driver stay out on track without compromising the performance of his/her car or the safety of the other competitors. People keep throwing around the statistic of F1 drivers having an average heart rate of 170 bpm for the 90 odd minute duration of the race. That data might be useful for a young fit F1 driver who spends the entire duration of the race on the ragged edge, but is not very relevant to the average Lemons driver who is generally older, considerably less fit, often drives longer stints and (speaking for myself) is generally well under the limit?
In order to learn more about the physical demands of Lemons racing, I decided to wear a heart rate monitor during my driving stints behind the wheel of our #23 Pink Pig E30 at the 24 Hours of Lemons race at Buttonwillow this past August. Our friends at Chasecam lent us a PDR100 video kit and copy of their Dashware software that allowed me to sync my heartrate to both the video stream and the in-car telemetry collected using my Race Technologies DL1 data logger. The following is a summary of what I learned with some things being as expected and some things decidedly unexpected.
Current Fitness Level
I’ll start by giving a quick baseline values for my current fitness levels. I have a resting heart rate of just under 50 bpm and I run between 10-20 miles a week which puts me in the above average range of physical fitness. Click here to see an example heart rate trace from my last long run (outdoors, 85 F, 8.5 miles in 84 min, avg heart rate of 164 bpm).
Additionally since Buttonwillow in August is brutally hot (temps of 110 F are quite common) I did hot weather training (outdoor 10k twice a week at 2 in the afternoon) for a couple of months to help prepare for the heat stress. The temperatures during the race ended up being about 100F and I did wear a Cool Shirt which I used intermittently for the first hour and then continuously after that.
Data summary
The graph above shows my heart rate during a 2 hour 50 minute recording window. My average heart rate during this entire period was 120 beats/minute with a maximum of 165 bpm. As you can see there are several distinct segments where my heart rate varied significantly from the average. By syncing the heart rate data to the video I was able to find that each segment points to a specific event during the race.
Specific instances
Looking at the first 25 minutes of the data you can see that my heart rate initially hovers around the 90 bpm mark. At this time I was lined up in the pitlane and waiting for the cars to slowly get released onto the track. The small spike at the 4 minute mark happens exactly as I get out of the pits and onto the racing service. I should add that I had never driven a single lap of Buttonwillow before (mechanical issues on Friday) and was very nervous about going blind onto a new track. As I start doing the yellow flag laps you can see that my heart rate starts dropping again and stays that way for the next 7-8 minutes as I slowly learn my way around the track. The next spike you see is at the 12 minute mark and is shown in this short video below which has my heart rate in the top left corner.
As luck would have it the car right behind me was given the green flag which meant that I had zero warning of the race start. As the cars behind start passing me on the straight my heart rate starts rising from the low 90s and hits 129 bpm in the middle of turn 2.
The graph above shows the last 90 minutes of my stint. There is a gradual drop-off in my heart rate starting at about the 1:21 mark. This corresponds to a long full course yellow out on the track. The heart rate initially does not drop by much as I am staying close to car in front so that I can pass it at the next green flag, but as I drive further along the course I realize its a full course yellow and start relaxing which drop my heart rate to just over a 100. You can see another example of it in the video below which shows a yellow flag segment from my second stint on day 1.
The second dip you see towards the end of my day 1 stint happens when our car breaks down on the exit of turn 1 and I pull off the course and stop. While I’m initially quite agitated as I try to restart the car, I quickly realize that the car is dead and my heart rate starts dropping to the 100 bpm mark. About 5 minutes later the tow truck pulls up to the car and tows me back to the pits. Once I get there my heart rate once again starts rising and goes well past the 150 mark as I get out of the car to try and help fix the problem. It goes back down to the 140 mark as the problem is found and fixed but then rises to a peak of 165 as I am refueling the car (a 40 pound fuel can on your shoulder will do that).
As I went through the data, the most surprising fact for me was that the heart rate does not seem to have much correlation to the speed, g-force, laptime, etc… In fact it seems more psychological than it is physical. While there are some small changes over a lap, there are no significant bumps going through particular turns or even when passing individual cars. Instead the most pronounced changes in heart rate happen when you come up on a large group of cars and are unsure of how to pass them. The following video is a great example of this. Initially my heart rate is in the 115-120 bpm range as I go through the sweeper by myself. As I catch up to a group of five cars it rapidly rises and peaks at 144 bpm as I pass the last car. As soon as I pass them it starts dropping quickly and levels back down at the 120-125 bpm range.
For comparison here is a clean air lap where it drops as low as 97 bpm with a temporary spike at 131 bpm but spends the majority of the lap between 115 and 125 bpm
Summary
My stint in this case was for 2.5 hours in 100 degree weather and I could probably have driven for another hour. One thing to note is that I have plenty of experience driving on track (karting enduro, HPDE, Lemons) and can tell when my performance level goes down. If you are not familiar with driving on track and/or are driving at 10/10ths you will get mentally drained well before you get physically fatigued. If you dont take car to monitor your concentration you will start making more and more mistakes. The optimal stint length can and will vary dramatically even for the same person depending on their mental and physical state – I did a 4+ hour stint at Lemons Thunderhill 07 with no problems but when I drove a Spec Miata there I was wiped out in just 45 minutes.
In summary I can say that while Lemons is indeed quite strenuous, the mental aspect is more taxing than the physical. If you are used to good cardio workouts and can monitor your own concentration levels, it is possible to safely to do long stints. All this of course only applies to me and the way I drive – your mileage WILL vary and I make no statements about your driving abilities
Bonus video
And finally as bonus here is a 15 minute battle I had with the Itallion stallions Fiat X1/9. It starts off with them passing me on the run up to the hill and I then spend the next 15 minutes trying to get the position back. I’ve speeded up the sections where I am trying to catch up to them while the close quarters action is at regular speeds. Total run time is a little over 10 minutes. My favourite section is at the 6:20 mark where I pull alongside on the exit of the bus stop and we go side-by-side for 3 corners till I finally have to give up because they have the inside line over the hill. In case you are wondering they have modified the X1/9 to run motorcycle carbs which is why they were able to stay ahead on the straight. Plus this is within the first 10-12 laps on track so I’m still not very familiar with the track which I hope excuses the bad driving
At the last GGLC autocross Alex and I decided to try out a little experiment to see how your heart rate changes during the race. We used a Polar S720i to record his heart rate, an iPhone for video and a DL1 data logger to record G-force and speed readings. I used some simple PHP magic to sync the two data files together and used the Chasecam Dashware system to create this finished video.
You can see the speed, heart rate (BPM), longitudinal G (acceleration + braking) and lateral G in the dashboard on the top of the video. His average heart rate was in the low nineties while on the grid and rises to to 101 just before the start of the run. As the run progresses you can see it quickly rise all the way to 145 bpm by the end of the 45 second run. Just as interesting is the way his heart rate falls as soon as the run ends and drops to the low 130s just 10 seconds after the run. So now if anyone asks you why you autocross just say its for the health benefits
Unfortunately the video quality is not as perfect and the heart rate only updates every 5 seconds but all in all it was a successful test of the system. I have already ordered a Polar RS800CX (1 sec resolution) and I plan to run this same setup for the duration of the Lemons race at Buttonwillow next month. So stay tuned for the health benefits of endurance racing
Sticking with the map mashup theme of the last month, I’d like to unveil a new mashup map of all the restaurants featured in Food Networks new show “The Best Thing I Ever Ate“. The official blurb is as follows:
Ever wonder what the biggest food stars and chefs eat in their free time – when they’re paying? Find out on The Best Thing I Ever Ate! It’s the ultimate guide to the country’s most amazing meals, eats, and treats as told by the pros who spend their lives obsessing over food.
Since a good number of these restaurants are in the Bay Area I decided to make the following map of all their restaurants that will keep updating it as the show progresses. Click here to view the map in a full screen view along with a list of all the restaurants and their dishes. This should help all you foodies out there plan your trips accordingly – personally I think I’m going to start with the ones in the Bacon episode
Update (21-July-2009): I got a call from David Hoffman who produces the show thanking me for making this mashup and they have now posted it on the official The Best Thing I Ever Ate blog.
One of my favourite food network shows is Throwdown with Bobby Flay where he goes around challenging various chefs to a cook-off with their signature dish. Seeing the show really makes me want to go and try out some of the dishes but unfortunately there is no single list of all the restaurants and their locations. Seeing that my last mashup map of the Dinners, Drive-Ins and Dives locations is the most popular page on my blog, I decided to put together a new mashup with the locations of all the Throwdown restaurants.
The map includes the name, address, phone number and URL of each restaurant along with the name of the chef, dish, winner and a link to the episode page on food network (contains recipes, etc…). It only includes proper restaurants and/or home delivery services and does NOT include the one-off challenges with local residents. Restaurant that have multiple locations are only mapped once and their URL will point to a list of their locations. As always this is purely a mashup and has no guarantees – use at your own risk.
You can also view a larger map (with list) or use this link for a Google Earth version. Also I spent a lot of time converting the data into machine readable CSV – if any other hackers out there would like to play with the data just leave a comment and I’ll be happy to send you the data.
Running its first competitive race after 28 years, the Porsche 917/20 “Pink Pig” made a triumphant return to endurance racing at the Reno event of 24 Hours of Lemons vintage racing series. A lack of power at altitude combined with niggling fuel and wheels meant that the car could not compete on outright pace and instead had to depend on strategy to make its way up the field. Ultimately the Formula BMW team fell just short and had to settle for a class win and 5th overall instead of the overall victory they were aiming for.
The Formula BMW team has since been working hard on upgrading the car and fixing the fuel issues. With the next race being run at sea level, the turbo cars will no longer have an advantage and Pink Pig will finally be able to compete on raw pace as well as race strategy. All race fans are invited to come out and support the Formula BMW team and the “Pink Pig” as they go for an overall win at the Buttonwillow event of the 24 Hours of LeMons racing series.
Click here to read more about the history of Team Formula BMW at the LeMons racing series.
Our average finishing position for the 2009 races was 6.67
