Cost of Sponsorship (1 Viewer)

[clwill]

I just don't understand what "fool an ECU" means. You and I have identical boxes, if you figure out a way to make your car faster with that box, then you deserve to win.

The boxes are spec boxes that are serial numbered and designed to limit what you can change. The sanctioning body has many spares, and has the complete right to walk up to you within minutes before a run and swap out your box for a new one and to confiscate and examine your box at any time. The boxes have fully encrypted and secured safety checks to insure that the software has not been fiddled with. The only things I can change are the various engine parameters, which you can download onto the box in seconds. And the sanctioning body can download the contents of your box to check it against spec within seconds after a run.

This is how it works in F1 and in NASCAR, the boxes from McLaren do this today. And if you don't think those guys, especially F1, are dependent on thousandths of a second for things to happen, you need to take another look.

 

[Justin@NRE]

I just don't understand what "fool an ECU" means. You and I have identical boxes, if you figure out a way to make your car faster with that box, then you deserve to win.

The boxes are spec boxes that are serial numbered and designed to limit what you can change. The sanctioning body has many spares, and has the complete right to walk up to you within minutes before a run and swap out your box for a new one and to confiscate and examine your box at any time. The boxes have fully encrypted and secured safety checks to insure that the software has not been fiddled with. The only things I can change are the various engine parameters, which you can download onto the box in seconds. And the sanctioning body can download the contents of your box to check it against spec within seconds after a run.

This is how it works in F1 and in NASCAR, the boxes from McLaren do this today. And if you don't think those guys, especially F1, are dependent on thousandths of a second for things to happen, you need to take another look.

lol.. You're right. I give. Road racing engine acceleration and engine management is identical to drag racing.

 

[Justin@NRE]

ADRL did it last year with the Mountain Motor boys, XDRL is doing it this year.

There doesn't seem to be any major factory support there, nor are the sanctioning bodies afraid of teching/policing the cars.

As an aside, I have long made my feelings known about Pro Stock on this board. I want EFI, factory looking cars, stock displacement and true stock blocks ... but we are never going to see that. I get my kicks watching the CoPo's, CobraJets and Challengers in Stock/Super Stock these days, which are basically what was described above. Fun to watch!

Probably every Turbo car has it too now in drag racing backed by a mechanical fuel pump.. And this is to no intended offense to ADRL or XDRL, but a mountain motor guy could probably have a nitrous system on there plain as day and they wouldn't get caught or penalized.

I'm with you on the factory hot rods. Carl Tasca's Super CJ is a BMF.

 

[clwill]

lol.. You're right. I give. Road racing engine acceleration and engine management is identical to drag racing.

I didn't say identical. I meant at least as sophisticated. F1 engine management makes any level of drag racing engine management look like play toys. When you get a drag race engine running at 18,000rpm you let me know.

But thanks for playing the game.

 

[vegasnitro]

I didn't say identical. I meant at least as sophisticated. F1 engine management makes any level of drag racing engine management look like play toys. When you get a drag race engine running at 18,000rpm you let me know.

Pneumatic valves, 4 valves per cylinder ... think about the management on that for a second ... WOW.

Also, 18,000 RPM was mandated as the "rev limit" when they brought in the standard ECUs. Prior to that, Ferrari and Mercedes were pushing 22K. I was sitting at Indianapolis Turn 1, road course turn 13 in '06, and there was a very noticeable audible difference between Ferrari/Mercedes and the rest of the field when they went by. Now they all sound the same

 

[Toejam]

I didn't say identical. I meant at least as sophisticated. F1 engine management makes any level of drag racing engine management look like play toys. When you get a drag race engine running at 18,000rpm you let me know.

But thanks for playing the game.

What do F1 motors stroke out at 1.8-2"? Let's see them turn those R's with a 4" stroke!

 

[mick]

.....I never take stock in what the Neilson ratings say.......

sam, in this weeks sports business journal there is a stapled insert by
the nielsen company titled 'state of the media 2012 year in sports'.

they provide statistics from NFL / NBA / MLB / NHL / MOTORSPORTS / GOLF /
SOCCER / NCAA SPORTS / UFC / Other Marquee Events / Summer Olympics /
International.........in that order, one page of statistics per category.

Motorsports
- nascar.com visitors are 63% more likely to own luxury sports vehicle
- one mention of American LeMans Series(10% viewers likely own 2 autos)
- top 4 viewership races: nascar races top 4, indy 500 the 5th
- list of top national TV adv'ter's - indy car series Q42011 - Q32012
- list of top national TV adv'ter's - F1 Q42011 - Q32012
- list of most exciting nascar drivers in 2012
- 46% of nascar viewers watch entire race
- 3.1M average monthly unique visitors to nascar.com during their season

no mention of nhra or any other american series

 

[clwill]

What do F1 motors stroke out at 1.8-2"? Let's see them turn those R's with a 4" stroke!

Oh, you'll get no argument from me on that point. There's a reason that car in my avatar has a BBC, with 622ci. As the saying goes, there's no replacement for displacement.

But in engine management the hard part is number of parts and rate of speed. And there's no question that problem is much more complex in an F1 motor than a drag racing engine.

 

[Toejam]

But in engine management the hard part is number of parts and rate of speed. And there's no question that problem is much more complex in an F1 motor than a drag racing engine.

How much does an F1 motor cost, over a Million I bet!

 

[HEMI6point1]

That sentence explains a whole lot...

Um.... it explains that I'm not like a lot of those other young punks who chose to be oblivious to the older technologies.

 

[Justin@NRE]

I didn't say identical. I meant at least as sophisticated. F1 engine management makes any level of drag racing engine management look like play toys. When you get a drag race engine running at 18,000rpm you let me know.

But thanks for playing the game.

it's not a matter of RPM, nothing to do with being sophisticated. Everything in F1 engines is pretty much light years ahead in it's precision and construction. And engine management has only to do with the speed of sampling and speed of adaptation. And even then, I think you're giving F1 engine management a little too much credit. They don't have variable cam/valve timing to control or variable anything for that matter, just fuel based on RPM/Load/temps, ignition and regulating nitrogen pressure into the pneumatic valve spring system(springs themselves are still mechanically regulated). Ignition timing is probably the hardest thing it has to keep up with at those engine speeds. The rest of the time it isn't doing anything a brand new street car ECU doesn't do, and they don't even have traction control anymore.

Here's the other thing, F1 doesn't just hand out the same box to everybody.. You buy an approved box and your management software is submitted, approved and monitored through the season. Any changes have to be submitted and approved before use. They just set a rev limit along with engine specs. Something NHRA isn't setup to handle at this point in time.

Give em overhead cams and pneumatic valve springs and I don't think it would be long. Already topping 11,000 with pushrods, rockers and springs. And if the springs would last longer than 3-4 laps, they probably would be revving them even higher. Slap pneumatic springs in Ford's new 5.0 and it wouldn't be long and you could probably use the same ECU.