Hi there! My name is James and I live in Sydney, Australia and was born 10 days early on the 26th of April 1979. I'd guess I just couldn't wait to get into this world and watch Motor Sport.

As a child I was easy going and had a distinct lack of long term attention (for a 4 year old) and so had to repeat pre school. In Kindergarten I had the blondest head of hair you could ever imagine, so every body called me Sunny. At first I hated it, but after a while I got used to it, and it became my nic name until I moved house at the end of year 5. Most of my high school years were spent at Epping Boys High. It was at this time that I really discovered who I was, a Motor Sport Freak. In year 11 I failed a few subjects and couldn't go on to year 12, so I repeated (again), this time at Pennant Hills High School where I regained my Sunny nic name, and came out of year 12 with a score good enough to get me into a Science degree majoring in Physics and Maths. I also did second year Mechanical Engineering Units in my Science Degree which I completed in 2005. I have been working as a Mechanical Enginner for a large Infrastructure company since feb 2006.

Why I like Motor Sport

Many people say Motor Sport is boring, just a bunch of cars, going around in circles, and those drivers, they have it easy, well the Sport, and yes I mean Sport is not what it seems. For one, racing is a team Sport whether you are driving Formula One or Clubman Sportscars or Go Karts. Racing is also full of Strategy and compromise. Do you go for top end speed down the straights or pack on the down force for good mid corner speed, and so compromise your top speed? Every circuit has it's own set of magic figures. There are many other compromises like this, and finding the right one will take seconds off your lap time. There is also an incredible amount of forces that take their toll on man and machine, as they attempt to conquer the Mountain, which inevitably strikes back.

Lets take the Bob Jane T-Marts 1000, one hundred and sixty one laps of gruelling race, along one of the most punishing circuits in the world. How do you win the race? The classic strategy is 4 pit stops, on laps 32, 64, 96, and 128. Do your brake pad change early so as not to be affected as much by safety cars, which inevitably come. Five years ago Jason Bright and Steven Richards won the race from 15th on the grid with a first planned pit stop on lap 15. It is a technique commonly used by Indy Car Drivers to try and take advantage of Pace Cars and fresh air. But on any other day it wouldn't have worked. Having the right strategy does not guarantee you the race, modifying it to take advantage of certain circumstances with the final result in mind gives you a shot at winning, but your equipment still has to make the distance. Mark Skaife, in the final stages of the race, collected a second plastic bag in the radiator of his VX Commodore. An occurence which had wiped out many other competitors in the field. There was 15 laps between him and the chequered flag, and he had to keep the engine temperature down whilst maintaining the lead from an unrelenting attack from Ingall and Richards. In the end, the radiator cap was seconds from blowing, and the gap just 3 seconds. Nothing is certain in this race, you can go into the race with 5 Aces, but that doesn't guarantee a win.

Compromise is every where. We make compromises in our lives, with our schedules, our friendships and many other facets. Motor Sport is no different. Every where you go you have a decision to make, two options to weigh up. Sometimes even more than two. Take suspension for example, Suspension has to be soft to absorb the bumps, but hard enough to keep the grip levels from fluctuating too much. Each tyre however has a different interaction with the road to the others. The way each tyre grips has an effect on the net forces on the car during cornering and braking. What may work for each tyre individually over the lap may have an effect on the way the car brakes into corners. Having soft suspension on the right and hard suspension on the left will pull the car to left, which may be advantagous on anticlockwise circuits, but individual tyre setups may not always achieve this results. Suspension is at least a three way compromise. Aerodynamic grip and top end speed also compromise each other. The more downforce you put on a car, the more drag it creates meaning the car has to generate more power to reach the same speed. As this is not possible, the gear ratios are reduced to allow the engine to red line in top gear, thus making full use of the ratios, despite a lower terminal speed. Tyres and race pace are also connected. The harder you push the car, the faster the tyres wear out and reduce their maximum grip levels. You can take care of your tyres and make less stops, or go hard to get an advantage which may be harder to defend when the tyres wear out. Compromise can not be avoided, setups must be explored to find the best possible mix of variables to keep the car on the track.

Forces on the a race car are immense, amongst the biggest are in the engine itself, with shell claiming forces on bearings can rise to four tonnes. That is an incredible pressure to with hold. Let us have an educated guess at the key forces on a V8 Supercar. The car alone weighs 1350kg. the driver and 120 litres of fuel adds another 170 netting 1530kg race car when fully fuelled. The car approaches Murrays Corner at 95km/h or 26.5 m/s, the lateral forces can only be figured out if we derive a relation between track width and the inside radius of the turn, and is as follows. Let us assume that car width (t) is 2m, Track width (w) is 12m, inside corner radius (r) is 6m and angle between bisector and pit straight is 45º. Then from the formula, turning radius (R) = 44.556m. If we take this value, put it through F=mv²/r we get the F=24,000 N thus under nominal conditions, tyres can sustain around 24,000 N of force, which is shared among the four tyres. During cornering the bias is shifted toward the outside and front tyres respectively, so from this you can see why it's so hard to heat up the rear tyres in a front drive race car for example.V8 Supercars regularly go up on to two wheels meaning the 24,000 N is split between the two wheels, giving 12,000 N each which is incredible. with this value we can also calculate braking distances. Through F = ma, we get a = 1.6g or 15.7m/s². Using v² = u² + 2aS we find that the car takes 160m to slow from 285km/h to 120km/h. A feat that can't be matched by too many road cars.
    And so you may still say that Motor Sport is boring, but you certainly can't deny all the hard work that goes into making a car do the things it does to win a race