rfn026

I'm fascinated by this. We all know saving fuel has become a major deal in racing. Audi, and probably some NASCAR teams, are running simulation programs to identify the best place on the track to lift.

Audi has also created a new engineering group within the race team. They're call efficiency engineers. The mission is to identify areas where the cars can make it to the finish using less fuel.

Drivers are now selected on the basis of lap consistency - not speed. When it come to the Corvette team Fehan has total control over driver selection (Gary Pratt likes it that way). Doug has never felt the need to explain how he selects drivers though. I suspect he's deeply into simulation programs and the driver's ability to match the simulations.

Richard Newton
Car Tech Stuff

Don Keefhardt

^^^This^^^.

When I was seriously running long endurance races (DK and his enduro buddy have done 26+ twelve-ish hours and 3 twenty-four hours as a team), we would sweet-talk the Chief of T&S into downloading us a copy of the transponder "passings" file, and do some analysis ourselves, post race. We always knew who our real competition was going to be at races based on the smallest delta in the co-driver's times.

Some teams lap graphs would look like a porcupine on crack...and some would jump from "crack" to "smooth" at a driver change. Even dealing with faster/slower traffic, those smooth guys would always finish laps up on the "crack" guys...less stupid moves, less "excursions", etc. etc. etc.

We were Smoothy McSmooth. Owned our class in endurance races for a bunch of years. Weren't the fastest. Just the best.

Saving fuel and saving the car (brakes / tires) is an art. Short-shifting and backing off 1-2 secs a lap could save us 15+mins per tank. Proper enduro brake technique could make pads last 2x over the "hammer the pedal" guys. "Lean it, THEN turn it" entry put more laps on the tires before we got down to the wires.

Most often repeated radio call from Pits to car - "Slow down".

YMMV.

rfn026

When I was running an endure team i would go crazy if a driver set fast lap 6 hours into the race. A few did exactly that - but they never did it twice.

Here are Doug's 2 new drivers for the Corvette team.

Richard Newton