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Buttonwillow Weekend

Monday, June 7th, 2010

After going through many of the initial setup issues on the Seven and giving it a quick shakedown at Laguna Seca, I decided that it was time to take it on my first road trip. I drove it down to Buttonwillow Raceway Park to join a group of other Se7en owners for a track weekend. The fact that there were going to be other owners there made me feel more confident that there would be enough mechanical expertise to solve any mechanical issues that may crop up. Having been to Buttonwillow once before, I knew that the heat would be brutal and was glad to pitch in with the other folks to share a couple of garages with the other folks.

The drive down was uneventful and took me a little over 4 hours to complete. The fact that I was using my cool shirt on the drive down meant that I was extremely comfortable on the drive despite the high temperatures (80+ in Santa Clara to 98 in Buttonwillow). I even got to stop at the San Luis reservoir for a couple of great pictures.

There were 6 different Sevens taking part in the event including a Birkin, a Superstalker and 3 Caterhams (including the only R500 in the country) and we even had another Ultralite owner drop by to to say hi. The coolest car there was this maroon Caterham whose owner had put 70,000 miles on the car over 11 years but still had its looking like new. The even more amazing part was that he drove the car up from LA, completed a 2 hour enduro in it and then packed up and drove it to Lake Tahoe the next morning.

The track action was organized by NCRC and was up to their usual excellent standards. All of us had a blast and got to spend some quality time studying each others cars and talking to fellow Seven fans. As a bonus, Vanhap Photography got some excellent shots of the track action including a couple of staged shots of us together on track.

My favourite part of the weekend was a 4 lap sequence where I was tryng to keep up with the Caterham R500 above. The car has only slightly more power than mine (263 bhp Vs 240 bhp0 than mine but is significantly lighter (1200 lbs Vs 1400 lbs) which makes it much faster in straight line. The video below (watch it in HD) shows the action from my point of view and you can see that every time we get onto a straight he is able to pull away from me. the only reason I was able to keep up at all was because he would have to wait for point-bys from slower cars while I could just stream through the openings he made. Might be a good excuse for me to get that supercharger after all

The car performed very well on track and only had a couple of minor electrical issues. I had no heat issues and the coolsuit helped keep the driver cool as well. The tires performed very well and the only real problem was the too much rear bias in the brakes. Since the Ultralite has equal size brakes front to rear and equal sized master cylinders for each as well, the rear brakes are much too powerfull and will lock up way before the fronts even with the balance bar set all the way to the front. This means that I have to brake very early to prevent locking the rears and unsettling the car. I will likely be getting wither a smaller master cylinder or a smaller rear caliper before the next track day.

After packing up early on Sunday after I headed out early hoping to make it home before dinner. I was just over the half way mark when the car suddenly started producing a loud clunk from the rear when I either accelerated or decelerated. I pulled into the nearest gas station and looked under the rear to find that one of the two bolts holding the differential in place had backed out and that the diff was actually twisting around the remaining bolt and hitting the chassis to make the clunking sound. Unfortunately replacing it will require removing the gas tank which is not the kind of job to be done by the side of the road. Luckily I was less than a hundred miles from home which meant that AAA towed me back home for free

All in all it was a fun trip and I’m surprised at how happy I am despite having being towed back home I had a great time at the track and made some great new friends. The car was fast, fun and fairly reliable on the course. I may have broken down at the end but its an obvious problem and should be easy enough to fix in time for the next event. In the mean time you guys can check out the rest of the pictures below:

Tags: Buttonwillow, photos, racetrack, roadtrip, Setting up a Seven, trackday, video
Posted in WCM Ultralite S2k, photos, track days, videos | 7 Comments »

Picked up some Lotus History

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

The mailman just brought me this amazing piece of Lotus F1 history: a piston from the Cosworth DFV engine #339 used in the Lotus 81 Formula 1 car.

In the 70s and 80s, Team Lotus was in the habit of keeping the pistons from rebuilds to use as VIP gifts. Each engines pistons were labeled and stored but not all were presented. With reference to the teams archives, Classic Team Lotus is able to identify the detailed competition history for the engines in which the pistons ran. A great deal of polishing, then mounting on a wooden plinth, complete with presentation plaque, makes a rather special item of memorabilia.

Now while a piston from an F1 engine is amazing in itself (Ferrari charges >$600 for a 2000 piston), this particular engine has some additional history that makes it even more unique. The DFV 339 was used by not one but two F1 world Champions: Mario Andretti used it in his final season at Lotus while Nigel Mansell used it during his first two seasons in F1.

The piston comes with documentation of the engines usage and you can see that while it was used primarily in practice and testing, it was also used by Andretti in the 1980 USA GP West where he retired after a first corner accident.

If you’d like to get your hands on some original Team Lotus history, head on over to the Classic Team Lotus webstore and be prepared to fight the temptation to buy out the entire store.

Tags: Cosworth, DFV, F1 memorabilia, history, Lotus, piston, Team Lotus
Posted in motorsport, personal, photos | 1 Comment »

The Mallya Collection

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

As an Indian, I had heard of Vijay Mallya long before he hit the Formula 1 spotlight as the owner of the Force India F1 team. A true captain of Indian industry, his other hats include accomplished businessman (chairman of United Breweries group and Kingfisher airlines), former politician and enthusiastic sports fan (owns the Bangalore Royal Challengers cricket team, the East Bengal football team and the URB Breeders). While I always knew that he was fond of cars, I did not know that he was in fact a serious car collector and his Mallya Collection includes nearly 300 vehicles spread through 4 locations around the world. SFF1 recently organized a tour of his Sausalito warehouse that contains about 30 vehicles and I jumped at the chance to join the tour. I also have to thank the curator, Malcolm Page, who gave us access to this fantastic collection and was at hand to answer all our questions.

The first thing that struck me about the collection was just how many cars are crammed into such a small space (larger panoramic shot). The cars are so tightly packed in that it was actually quite difficult to get photographs that show the whole car. Every time you try to step back you would find your way blocked by another piece of classic motoring history . Unlike most other museums there are no glass screens or velvet ropes, the cars are essentially just parked on the garage floor and you can walk all around the cars and look at them from any angle you wish. In fact you were even allowed to open up the cars and sit in them if you wished. The picture below is the drivers eye view of the dash of a Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing.

The other striking thing is that many of the cars are in unrestored condition and have license plates which allow them to be street driven (imagine this Le-Mans veteran D-Type Jaguar as a street car ). These cars are actually driven around and are not the usual “concourse quality frame-off restoration” cars you usually see at Pebble Beach.

The collection is a very eclectic mix and goes all the way from bicycles to some very pedigreed racecars including an OSCA Tipo S driven by the Rodriguez brothers at LeMans and an Ensign F1 car driven by Patrick Tombay, Jackie Ickx, Nelson Piquet (his first F1 drive) and Derick Daly before being campaigned by Mallya himself in the 1980-81 races at Sholavaram. One highlight is the 1913 Silver Ghost that the Rolls Royce Owners club describes as “the most original mechanically correct veteran ghost we know of”. The following picture shows the engine controls on the steering wheel from the days where the driver served as the cars “ECU” and had to manually adjust things like the fuel mixture and the timing.

Apart from cars, the collection also houses some very nice memorabilia with paintings, a land speed record timeline, a DFV engine block coffee table, model cars etc… My favourite piece would have to be the letter below in which the FIA grants the Force India team its official F1 Super-License for 2008.

As you would expect I did take a lot of pictures and captured most of the cars. The collection is so incredible that I actually forgot to photograph some pretty significant cars like the Jaguar XJ220, Ferrari 365 Spyder and Jaguar E-type.

Click here to view all the pictures as a single collection. You can also use the following links to directly view pictures of a specific car (opens in a new window):

While the current location of the Mallay Collection is a temporary warehouse, they are looking to build an official museum in the city of Sausalito. Please join their Facebook Group to show your support and convince Sausalito to give them the appropriate permissions.

P.S.: I did ask about Lotus content in the collection and was told that as of now it is limited to a Seven and a Europa, both of which are in India. They may in future add an F1 car to go with the F1 exhibit he is building in the UK.

Tags: classic cars, Mallya Collection, SFF1, tour, Vijay Mallya
Posted in cars, photos | 2 Comments »

Goin’ For A Win – recap of Lemons Reno 2009

Friday, May 29th, 2009

The Goin’ For Broken race at Reno Fernley raceway was the 5th 24 Hours of LeMons race for the Formula BMW team and the debut of our new Pink Pig race livery. Additionally the car was quite a bit lighter than the last race with the sunroof, dash, heater core and inner door skins being removed. We cracked our windshield during the dash removal which we replaced with a sheet of lexan to further drop weight. We were going with our regular driver lineup of Guy Argo, Gabriel Matus. Rob Dietsch and myself. Since the racedays were of unequal length (8.5 hours Saturday, 5 hours Sunday), our plan was to have Guy, Rob and myself run a single 3 – 3.5 hour stint with Gabe splitting his stint between the two days. The long stints would minimize our driver changes and would allow us to pass people in the pits and finish higher than the 10th place we recorded at Thunderhill 08.

I was driving the first stint for our team and got off to an inauspicious start when I had to pull in to the pits just before the green flag (Lemons has a rolling start) because of a loud noise and vibration from the right front on right hand turns. It turned out that our new wheels were rubbing against the right front strut while at speed. We had test fitted the new wheel on the left front tire where it fit with no issues but we had forgotten that we had bent our struts for extra camber at Altamont 07 which meant that while they fit fine on the left there was rubbing on the right which was aggravated on right hand turns. Luckily we were able to borrow a wheel spacer (Thanks Squirrels of Fury!) but by the time we put that on we were already 2 laps down on the leader without having driven a single lap.

When I first went out under green my immediate impression was that we were waaaay faster than most of the cars out there and was passing several cars at each turn. This was probably down to my familiarity with the track and the car because after about 5-10 laps the cars became more difficult to pass as the other drivers became more comfortable with the track. About an hour into the race I noticed that the fuel gauge on the car was still registering full despite having plenty of hard racing laps in that time. This meant that our gauge was broken and we would have to time our pitstops based on fuel starvation. At about the 2 hour mark the car started fuel-starving on the fast right of turn 14 but was still doing pretty well elsewhere on track. We decided to keep going as long as we could and/or to wait for the next yellow. I kept driving the car in higher gears to help with the fuel economy but after about 5-6 laps the fuel starvation was getting bad enough that we were sputtering on the straights after right handers and i brought the car in for a green flag fuel and driver stop. It was about the 2.5 hour mark when I came in and despite the fact that my long stint had put us back on the lead lap (9th overall), we were still well short of the 3+ hour stint we were originally planning on. The good part was that we knew that we could use the right hand turn fuel starvation as a gas gauge to decide when to time our next pit stop.

Photo by Jeff Balliet/ASK photography

Guy drove the next stint and kept in touch with the leaders. At this point we knew that we were in the top ten and were basically trying to put in reasonable laps without doing anything crazy. Guy drove for about 3.5 hours before the fuel starvation became bad enough that we were forced to do another green flag stop. At this point we were 4th overall and just 5 laps behind the race leader despite having the slowest “fastest lap” of any car in the top 15. Gabe got into the car with about 2.5 hours left in the day and was putting in some excellent lap times when he had an unfortunate spin at turn 15 which brought us in for a black flag penalty. Since we had been good racers for most of the day (and bribed the judges with some excellent Guatemalan rum ) we were let off with a driver change penalty which put me in back in the driver seat for the final 10 laps of the day.

At this point the traffic had thinned considerably and I was able to able to drop my fastest lap down from a 2:51.844 to a 2:46.177. Right about this time the #72 E30 of the B-Team (who I knew from Lotus Talk) pulled up right behind me and tried to get past. I knew that I wasn’t racing them for position so I did not try to block, but I certainly wasn’t going to move aside and let them past either. They tried a few different attempts at getting past but I hung onto the inside line and was able to stay in front. About 5 laps into the battle they came right alongside me on the front straight which led to the action you see in the image below.

Source photos from Jeff M/The B-Team. Animation by Rahul Nair.

This moment started as we were coming onto the main straight when I got a bad run into the corner while the B-Team got a great slingshot out and pulled alongside me down the straight. This had happened a couple of times before but since I always held the inside line into the esses they had had to lift in the end and tuck in line behind me. On this particular lap the #26 Team Carpet Pissers CRX was pulling out of the pits and made it into the first bend of the esses right just before the two of us. Normally I would have tucked in line behind the CRX and passed them going into turn 2 but on this lap I spotted an opening and decided to pass them between the 2nd and 3rd esses expecting that the B-Team would get boxed in behind them which would give me some more breathing room. As luck would have it the B-Team driver decided to do the exact same thing on the outside and suddenly we were three wide through the turn at about 95mph. I was up on the rumble strip on the left while the B-Team was on 2 wheels in the gravel on the right. At this point the driver in the CRX sees the B-Team on his right (and I suppose didnt see me on his left) and jinks left to avoid them. The front bumper of his car hits my right front wheel and leaves a black line down both doors. The impacts pushes my car to the left but I am able to maintain control while the CRX unfortunately spins out. Amazingly both B-Team and I are still side by side entering turn 2 and I am able to get ahead under braking. While it looked (and was) pretty exciting it was still a dumb move on my part especially since we were not racing for position and the next day both B-Team and I went up to the driver of the CRX and apologized for putting him in a difficult spot.

At the end of day one we had completed 129 laps and we in 4th place overall, 6 laps behind the Eyesore Racing FrankenMiata. We were still the second slowest fast lap in the top 10 but we used our long stints to make up for our wheel issues at the start as well as 3 green flag pit stops. Now we just had to keep on doing more of the same for day 2 and hope that the leaders would trip-up enough for us to pass them in the pits.

Day 2 started with Gabe driving the car. It was obvious from the lap times that we had no chance on catching the FrankenMiata with speed alone. They were pulling away from us at 10 seconds a lap when they suddelny spun and stalled on course on lap 5. As they were being towed in we began to push like hell to make up laps and we got back 4 of the 6 laps before they got out on course again. Gabe kept putting in consistent laps but the FrankenMiata was back on pace and was consistant pulling out 8 seconds or so per lap. Both teams came in for a driver swap just a lap apart which kept us 3 laps behind with 3 hours to go. Rob put in some stellar laptimes including our fastest race lap of a 2:42.809 but in the end it just was not enough to catch the FrankenMiata.

We ended finishing first in class and 5th overall just 4 laps behind the FrankenMiata which hung on to win the race. We did get a nice trophy to stick on the mantel place but I personally am still annoyed at some of the mistakes we made which cost us a possible win. The good part is that we know what to fix and we know what we need to do at Buttonwillow in 3 months. We wont rest till we get some nickels (Lemons cash prizes are awarded in nickels )

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, E30, formula bmw, Lemons racing, race review, reno-fernley, Reno-Fernley Raceway
Posted in 24 Hours of Lemons, photos | 6 Comments »

Lemons Penalties 101

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent most of the Lemons South Spring race as a guest judge. This meant that I not only got to decide and hand out penalties, but I also had a chance to document them. So now for your viewing pleasure, I present my guide to the penalties from Lemons South Spring 2009

Studs and Spurs
While in Texas, the Judges found a calendar that Lemons drivers love to emulate. Judge Jonny will lead you through a mock photoshoot in your pink cowboy hat

Studs and Spurs penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Marcel Marceau “Mime Your Crime”
Offending driver must put on a French striped sailor shirt, a beret and paint his/her face white. Then the driver must mime their stint in the car – starting with putting on the helmet and gloves, driving around the track, the incident causing the black flag, the drive to the pits and the spin of the wheel.

Marcel Marceau “Mime your Crime” penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Taiwanese National Anthem
This penalty was dreamed up by Judge Phil and qualifies as truly cruel and unusual punishment. While he explains it best in his post, the short version is that the team must wire a six tone car alarm into their car and the alarm must play constantly until the car comes off the track. As an added bonus the team must warn competitors of their bad driving by attaching a Taiwanese flag to their car. My thanks to the #56 Blind Rodent Racing team for demonstrating this penalty so that future lemons racers can understand just what fate awaits them.

Taiwanese National Anthem penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Follow the Leader
This was an impromptu punishment dreamed up by Judge Lieberman when a seven car incident filled up the judging area with multiple miscreants. Rather than dealing an individual punishment to each team, all the drivers from each team were required to line up behind the Judgemobile and follow in single file while they took a slow lap of the paddock. They then had to warn other teams of their behaviour by shouting “We’re bad drivers!” every time the Judges honked the horn.

Follow the Leader penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Butter and Moonshine
One thing the judges can always be counted on to do is to come up with creative punishments using locally available materials. In this case they pour liquid butter into the crankcase of the car followed by adding some local moonshine into the gas tank. This was particularly ironic since the team in question was the one that bribed the judges with the moonshine in the first place.

Butter penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Moonshine penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Three Legged Race

Three-legged race penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

This is a special penalty for the cars that are involved in metal to metal contact. Both cars are black flagged and since the drivers obviously like each other they are tied together for a three legged race around the paddock. The best part of this penalty is that it can be applied to any arbitrary number of drivers. In the video below we have 4 drivers from the same team taking a 5 legged lap of the paddock.

Three-legged race team penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Bobby Bosch Relay Race

Another diabolical creation from the twisted mind of Judge Phil, the Bobby Bosch Relay Race is an E30 special penalty where the teams are handed a bag of Bosch relays of which one has been tampered with. They then have to go figure out which relay is the defective one before they are allowed to rejoin the race. And in case you were wondering you can tell by any external marks since Judge Phil opened the casings on all 10.

Preaching to the converted
Driver must stand on the hood or roof of his car and read “Pinto with a Pedigree” and the following chapter “Rescuing a Red Farmer Rust Bucket” from Tom Cotter’s book The Hemi in the Barn alound to his team, gathered around the car.

Preaching to the Converted penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Paint your whip with Bob Ross

Bob Ross was a well known american painter who was famous for painting landscapes using oil paints. Teams that get this penalty must put on the Bob Ross wig and paint a serene landscape from the Paint with Bob Ross book on the hood of their car. This particular example was painted by #32 Superkak racing team.

Bart Simpson
Write your penaly on your car 100 times – “I will not pass under yellow” for example

An E30 edition of this penalty requires that you write the penalty in German

Barnyard
The Arc Angel attaches a metal farm animal or the “Move Over Dick” mirror to the offending car.

Graffiti your Ride
You must graffiti your car with reasons why you wish you were driving a different marque. This particular example from the Crown Victoria of #60 Pleasant Valley Racers includes “I wish I was driving a Honda”, “Nascar Sux”, “Honda Rules” and even a Japanese flag on the roof.

Stay with Your Ride
If a team follows the judges around with too much whining the whole lot is duct taped to their car for the duration of their punishment.

The Pacifier
Drivers that whine at the judges have a baby bottle taped to their hand and must gnaw on a pacifier for the duration of their penalty.

Close Shave – Shave your way out of it
Have a beard or a goatee? Shave your beard or goatee off – as soon as its gone you and your car can return to the track. No facial hair/. How about shaving the legs from the knees down?

Shaving facial hair to avoid a penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Why am I Upside-Down?
You’re upside-down because you have no business being out on a racetrack. If a car rolls at a Lemons race it is immediately done for the rest of the race. Unfortunately this is one rule that I am very familiar with

Photo stolen from Jalopnik

Peoples Curse
And finally the ultimate Lemons penalty – utter devastation of the peoples curse car at the hands of the excavator. The second car in this video is from another team (#85?) which was sick of working on their car and asked Jay to crush it along with the peoples curse.

Peoples Curse – Lemons South Spring 2009 from rnair on Vimeo.

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, Carolina Motorsports Park, judge, judging, Lemons south, Lemons South Spring 09, penalties, penalty
Posted in 24 Hours of Lemons, photos, videos | 2 Comments »

Lemons South Race Recap

Monday, April 6th, 2009

This is going to be a very short recap since we didnt really get very far in the race. I flew into South Carolina and made it to the track on friday. The Schumacher Taxi Service Corolla FX-16 had already been teched and looked pretty well setup. I didnt get to drive the track or the car so instead walked the track to get an idea of the flow of the track and see where our likely passing zones were. The interesting difference from previous races thing the lack of temporary chicanes, we were going to be use the full west course of the Carolina Motorsports Park with no changes whatsoever. Another change new to Lemons was that the corner workers were going to throw local yellows instead of the full course yellows we’ve seen at the previous events. It looks like Lemons is growing up and looking more and more like a real racing series.

On raceday I was the first driver and also one of the first car on track. This was super helpful since I then got to do 3-4 laps under yellow which helped me get used to the car and the track. Once the green flag went out It took me another 3-4 laps to get comfortable with the dynamics of the Corolla before I really started pushing the car. It turns out that the car had no power or torque but it did have excellent brakes and pretty decent lateral grip. The best way to pass people was under braking into turns 1, 11 and 14 though I did manage to pass a fair number of cars around the outside of turns 1 and 12 as well. Since the start of Lemons is really chaotic (92 cars on a 1 mile course) I got almost no “clean” laps and was dicing for position on every lap. In the end my laps times were pretty competitive (best of 1:08.9 at a time when the fastest cars were in the 1:07s) and I managed to get us up into 7th place at around the 90 minute mark.

This is when things start going wrong – I was trying to pass a car into turn 13 when a Miata hit my from behind and spun me around right at the apex. I got a black flag for spinning (the Miata got away scot free) and we spent about 20 minutes in penalty area before the next driver was allowed out. The new driver had no track or racing experience and about 5 laps into the race managed to do this:

Photo stolen from Jalopnik

Yup that’s our car on its side. He came into turn one too hot with one wheel off inside the rumble strip. At this point instead of just going straight off the track he tried to make the turn and caught a wheel on the curbing which led to a roll-over. Video of the roll below:

The driver was fine and the car was in surprisingly good shape. However Lemons has a “Why am I Upside-Down?” rule which says that if a car rolls it is done for the race. So that was the end of the race for us just 2 hours into the event. Luckily the 2 other guys on the team got 45 minutes of track time each with the other cars on Schumacher Taxi Service so at least it wasnt a total waste for them. I still had a day and half to go before my flight so I ended up becoming a guest judge for the event – more on that in my next post.

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, Carolina Motorsports Park, CMP, flip, Lemons south, Lemons South Spring 09, racing, rollover, Schumacher Taxi Service
Posted in 24 Hours of Lemons, photos, review, videos | No Comments »

Winner

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

I just won the first race of the inaugural GGLC Winter Karting series. We had some 25+ folks shop up at LeMans Karting in Fremont for a fun afternoon of pizza, karting and a little competition. After a series of 10 heat races we were split into 3 semi-finals which were won by Jordan, Jay and me respectively. However because I started the lowest in my semi, I was on pole for the finals with Jordan and Jay right behind me. I knew that both of them were about half a second a lap faster than me which meant that I had no chance of beating them on pure pace. So I went to my “pole position plan” which is to make a good start and then drive a super defensive inside line – this meant that my lap times were crap compared to the others but I was still quick enough that they couldn’t pass me around the outside. Plus this has the effect of bunching up the field so that the people behind couldn’t try too adventurous a pass because it meant that they would lose a spot if they made a mistake.

Photo by norcalturbo

In the end I was able to hold both of them off and won the race despite having the second slowest quick lap of the field. Jay has taken to calling me “Captain Slow” for winning at the slowest possible pace. I’ll point him to the following quote from Alain Prost: “I always say that my ideal is to get pole with the minimum effort, and to win the race at the slowest speed possible.” What’s good for a four time Formula 1 World Champion is good enough for me

Photo by norcalturbo

Update: LarryB just posted this awesome video of the final race.

GGLC Karting Race- 1 from Larry B on Vimeo.

Tags: GGLC, gokart, karting, racing
Posted in motorsport, personal, photos | No Comments »

How good is the N95 camera?

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

I was recently at the WOM World get-together in SF when we started discussing the some of the ways that Nokia should market the N-series devices, specifically the N95 vs iPhone issue. One of the things we all agreed on was that the camera on the N95 is a huge differentiator that Nokia really hasn’t been pushing as much as it should. People are so used to seeing crappy photos from devices like the Razr and the iPhone that they dont expect phones to have good cameras. I, on the other hand, have been using various variants of the N95 for well over a year and the camera is so good that I can honestly say that I will never buy a point-and-shoot camera again. People who see the shots are blown away by the quality of the images and often wont believe that they are from a cameraphone. Additionally the fact that I can use ZoneTag to upload, tag and geotag photos directly from the phone means that I upload way more photos from my phone than I ever did with my point-and-shoot camera.

So anyway, I had a quick look at some of the photos I’ve taken over the last year and have pulled out a few of the really outstanding shots to demonstrate the quality of the N95 camera – hope you like them.

One of the first really great shots I took with the phone was this shot of the wreck of the Peter Iredale of the coast of Oregon. I took a bunch of photos of the wreck but I particularly like the contrasting colours in this picture. You can also see that the photo has been automatically geotagged using ZoneTag which allowed me to do 2-click upload the photo while on vacation while also suggesting the tags “shipwreck” and “beach”.

In case you have any doubts about the print quality of the images you should check out this photo of mine that was used in a full page advertisement in SportsCar magazine. The photo was taken with an N95 classic after I spun out at the track.

One of the things that people forget is that not only does the N95 take great photos but it also shoots 640×480 video at a full 30 fps. The above video was taken at a BMW club autocross using an N95 8GB (N95-2) on my homebrew track video setup. As you can see the picture is clear and skip free. The loud rustling sound is the wind noise from the air entering the cabin once you go above a certain speed. Also check out this trackday video that I made at Reno-Fernley Raceway using the same camera setup.

The two photos above are part of a set that I took from the front row of an Iron Maiden concert in San Antonio using my N95 classic. The concert environment with its combination low light, moving subjects, backlighting and audience jostling is pretty hostile to cameras and makes it super challenging to take clear photographs.

The biggest issue for me was the time it takes for the N95 camera to both switch on and also focus on its subject. I would often click the button to capture an interesting moment but the moment would be well past by the time the camera actually took its shot. I took about 150 photos on that day and roughly 40 were worth putting on Flickr with another 40-50 worth saving. Not a very good ratio but since people were having worse ratios with high-ish end cameras I certainly cant complain. Also being a cameraphone means that there are zero questions asked when you take it into the venue

The last thing I want to share is some video that I shot from another Iron Maiden Concert (this time in Concord). This was from an N95 8GB NAM and as you can see the video is pretty damn good despite the tough camera conditions. The sound is once again the biggest issue – it just cant handle the loud noise and ends up clipping most of the audio.

All in all I can say that the N95 has a truly spectacular camera (for a phone) and it can easily be a replacement for a point-and-shoot camera. Plus if Nokia can fix the sound/clipping problems on the phone they should seriously market the N95 as a full-on camcorder replacement as well. The addition of easy uploads to Flickr and YouTube (the current Flickr share SUCKS!!!) would make this the perfect point-and-shoot photo and video capture device.

Tags: camera, cameraphone, N95, Nokia, photos, video, wom world
Posted in mobile, photos, review, videos | 7 Comments »

Recap: Lemons SF 2008

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

Its been almost a month and I’ve finally sat down to write a recap of Lemons SF 2008. We entered our trusty #56 Formula BMW E30 with the only changes being the addition of an LSD ($65 from the Pick-n-Pull) and putting in some stiffer springs ($200). We also put in a new (junkyard new that is) left rear hub ($150) to replace the one that led to our crashing out at Thunderhill. All in all we put in 2-3 days of work and we had the car back up and running for well under the $500 limit.

We originally planned to have a Max Mosely mannequin bent over the trunk (pants down of course) but we ran out of time and as you can see the car looked pretty much exactly the way it did at the end of Thunderhill (apart from the aforementioned left rear hub).

Since there was no practice day this time we all just showed up on Saturday and got ready to race. Rob took the first stint and was making excellent progress through the field. It was about an hour into the race when we looked at the scoreboard and realised just how excellent the progress was – WE WERE IN THE LEAD!!!

Photo by jyri1

We were trading back and forth for the lead with car #65 (a green MR2) with our buddies at Team Red Bear just half a lap behind us. Coincidentally all three teams were pitted next to each other making it the fastest section of the pits. The original plan was for each driver to drive stints of 2-2.5 hours so we we immediately knew that something was wrong when Rob pulled into the pits at about the 1.45 mark. It turns out that the heat from the exhaust had literally melted the engine mount which is never a good thing. Luckily we had a spare and we were able to replace it and send Jyri out for the second stint.

At this point we had fallen out of the top ten but we were only about 20 laps down on #64 who was leading. Jyri kept up a steady pace and about 1.30 hours into his stint we had made up a few of the spots when tragedy struck Lemons and driver Court Summerfield died on track. The rest of the days racing was immediately cancelled and we wet to the hotel wondering about the future of Lemons. After battling with it overnight and talking to Courts family, Jay decided to continue on with the race in Court’ memory. The Lemons organizers have organized a memorial fund in Court’ name and I encourage readers to donate what they can. The next morning the organizers made this statement:

A California Highway Patrol investigation was undertaken at the track. The CHP informed us that there was no mechanical failure or unsafe track conditions and that no other cars were involved. The CHP also informed us that, based on physical evidence and witness statements, it appears that the driver was not conscious prior to impact.

The race was now down to 6.5 hours and we had 3 drivers who hadn’t turned the wheel yet. Gabe got to take the start and despite a couple of scary moments kept up decent pace. About 2 hours into his stint he came into the pits for the scheduled driver change when we noticed a crack in the oil pan. At some point the oil pan had struck something on the track and developed a crack that was furiously leaking oil. This was heroic fix time and like last time Rob came up with another winner. He used a drill to drill a small hole in the center of the crack and then used a screw to attach a Gatorade bottle tap filled with red silicone. Amazingly enough this bottletop fix not only lasted over 4 hours at race speed but also took a couple of heavy wall impacts without coming loose.

At this point we were some 60 laps down and had fallen all the way to 37th place. It was time to get back on track and put in steady laps. While that sounded great in theory it was further complicated by our shifter mounts breaking. This meant that the entire drive train would move under braking and resulted in our car popping out of second gear under anything resembling heavy braking. Since there was no time to fix that we just had to drive around the problem and drove the entire lap in 3rd instead. This meant that we were very slow coming out of corners but once we got into the working range of the engine we would take off. This must have confused a lot of our competitors who would come alongside by the midway through the banked turns only to be left behind when the car hit its stride It also made the car much more of a momentum car – I found that I could take the esses quite a bit faster than the other cars out there but would usually have to brake to avoid hitting the car in front only for the other car to out accelerate me coming out of the turn.

Guy and I put in some steady laps and which pulled us back into the top 25 before handing off to Rob for the final stint. He putting in some excellent times when someone put him into the wall just 2 laps from the end.

Photo by Murilee Martin

In the end the car went through a lot and kept on running. We finally ended up 20th and were some 50 odd laps behind the winner. The 2 laps we lost in the end were crucial since we were just 2 laps behind Red Bear who finished 18th. All in all it was a fun event though the tragedy did bring home the dangers of racing. Formula BMW will definitely be back for Thunderhill.

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, bmw, E30, Lemons SF, Lemons SF 08, recap
Posted in 24 Hours of Lemons, photos | No Comments »

GT5 Vs RL

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

Jalopnik just posted this incredible screenshot of a Ferrari F40 from Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.

Compare that with this photo I took at Canepa Design using my 5MP Nokia N95.

Not only does the GT5 shot have much better colours, the details (check out the wheels) are truly spectacular. With the recent Blue Ray win I think I might just have to buy a PS3 after all

Head over to Jalopnik for more GT5 info.

Tags: F40, ferrari, graphics, gt5, gt5 prologue
Posted in cars, photos | No Comments »

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