Water-filled tyres, five-gallon fuel lines, wafer-thin body panels, nitromethane boiling out of the engine oil and into the air intake, cars that can run just fine when their engine isn't meant to be able to get any air at all, and apparently pretty much everything Smokey Yunick ever did.
If you're not doing something that makes them change the rules next year, you'd better be doing something that at least forces them to clarify them. Angrily.
27 March 2007 at 5:16 pm
Classic, Such a shame that racing rule makers fear "innovation" so much that they seem ban all the most interesting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_56) developments.
30 March 2007 at 12:40 pm
I've heard of two sleazy tricks being used by car manufacturers to pass emissions testing or get a good fuel economy figure.
The first trick was to program the engine controller to recognise the sequence of engine speeds/road speeds etc. in the standard fuel economy test and switch into super-frugal mode.
The second trick was to have two fuel/ignition maps, one which made the engine run efficiently and the other which made it pass emissions testing. The state of the drivers side door switch determined which map was used. The reason for this was that emissions testing was done on a dynamometer, during which time the dyno operator would sit in the drivers seat with the door open.