I do balance of performance for a relatively large series and am incredibly bored

I do balance of performance for a relatively large series and am incredibly bored.

Anyone interested in an AMA?

what do you do about sandbagging. Do you think BOP is a good idea or should racing find another way to make it competitive.

post waifu or gtfo

IMSA or FIA?

You do what?

How many maths are involved in balancing the performance of a race series? Is it a metric fuck-ton or an imperial shit-tonne?

I do data analysis for the series. It is rather obvious when a team is sandbagging we do a pretty good job of managing it. Unless a team cheats. Then there isn't much we can do but try to catch them.

I feel like it is a necessary evil. I get why we do it but part of me wishes we could just let the engineers on the teams go at it.

I wish we could just do budget caps, but the logistics of that are just crazy.

We are so fucking secretive with everything I am not even comfortable saying in case it comes back.
We are currently at a metric fuck-ton.

do you have any interesting stories?
seen any cheats?

>We are so fucking secretive with everything I am not even comfortable saying in case it comes back
sounds like FIA then

Can you help us BoP our next /ovg/ GT3 series?

>metric fuck-ton.
Imsa being Nascar would use buttload as a measurement so I'm guessing euro

It isn't as interesting as a lot of people would expect. I would say the most interesting cheats have to do with changing chamfer angles on restrictors. Scrutineering has gotten through enough teams don't pull many things with tuning.

Additionally, due to most cars being bought straight from the manufacturer there typically isn't much teams can do tricky these days.

I think the most interesting story was meeting a guy who was part of the scrutineering team for FIA for 30 some years. He was the one who discovered the Toyota turbo cheat, banned the twin chassis Lotus car, he is also the guy who investigated the crash that basically ended Group B.

The most interesting story is that during the investigation on Senna's death it was discovered that another team was heavily cheating. There was a large meeting on it within the FIA and it was decided not to do anything about it. "One hero has been lost that day, let's not ruin another" was the logic there.

I met a hero of mine within a month of working in this position. Allan Mcnish is a really cool guy.

Thank you for the offer, but no thanks. I work so much with cars it has kind of made me lose interest in it as a hobby. No car stuff outside of work for me.

The amount of cloak and dagger is ridiculous. Even how we correct vehicle speed for wheel slip is proprietary and secret.....given out method is a bit more complex than typical but it isn't a secret how you do it. Even basic text books tell you how.

What do you think of displacement restrictions get tighter and tighter to the point where the corvette downsized engines several times (from 7 liters to 6.2 to 5.5 maximum currently allowed)

...

I have nothing to do with homologation. I didn't know engine limits were a thing honestly. I kind of just do BoP. However if you look often times the larger NA engines are the most fuel efficient. Fuel Capacity is balance to make similar stint lengths so the fuel capacity is inversely related to fuel mileage.

Ignoring the Ferrari, whose minimum lambda is 1.1 the most fuel efficient car is the vette in GTE.

In DPi there is a great example. The Cadillac has 68 liters capacity and the Mazda has 77.

It is kind of a silly limit if it is a real thing.

Do you collect data at races only, or do you also get it from tests?

How far back in time does collected data get used in your decision-making process? ie do you care about 2015 right now?

How did you get into it? Some people's dream is to work for a racing team doing whatever job however shitty, but surely you didn't wake up one day and say "when I grow up I want to be a balancer of performance"

I was watching a race one day and the owner of the car races just walked up and asked me if I wanted the job.

sandbagging is cheating. like dropping weight in a fight for the weigh in and putting it back on in one night.

do you know anything about combat sports?

Do you have a balanced diet?

mma would be far more entertaining roided. same goes for racing. They banned all of the good shit for the everyone get a trophy mentality that ruined our culture.

i feel like i know you irl

do you bop v8 supercars nascar or porsche cup?

>Ferrari, whose minimum lambda is 1.1
really? that's incredible. how do they get it that high?

how do i get a job

Phd in math

How do you decide whether to add ballast, change allowed wing angle, change restrictor size, or ride heights? Is there some type of checklist, or do you have options you can go down and attempt to optimize until you get at the result?

Some of the changes seem to have heavy knock-on effects on the others that I've never been able to make much sense of it other than to assume it's all really convoluted, unproven algorithms.

Why did the FIA get the Ford GT and 488 so wrong last year? There doesn't seem to be any excuse when compared to IMSA's BoP.

You might not be able to say what software you use, but what software do you use or is similar to what you use in the field of work?

We have data for years. We only use it for reference. If something strange comes up we look back. But realistically no, we don't care. Especially since most of the cars we are working on getting proper BoP are new cars this year. (New Porsche GTE, Acura etc GT3)

I worked in motorsports a few years and learned the ins and outs. Teams come and go and are often run by rich pricks. Working for a sanctioning body allows for more job security, better pay, and honestly getting to peak into every teams data and figure out exactly how they do things. Crazy valuable for someone earlier in their career like me (I am under 30).

Yes it is per regulations. We handle it a bit differently. If you blatantly cheat it is a huge deal. If you sandbag we pull your car for a period of time. Most every team does it. I only respect those who do it in a very difficult to discover way. Hammer down on people who just lift. It is a fucking joke.

Absolutely not. I eat like a pig.

None of those......

I know right! Really it is crazy. I spoke to their engineer about it when I first looked into it. They are doing some amazingly tricky stuff to keep everything reliable. I wish could say more but it is one of the things I can't really talk about.

This dude isn't me. I got the job through working for free and doing a shit ton of internships. The pic I posted in the original post is a picture of a car I designed the suspension for for free (it all fabbed up. Has 12 in of travel with amazing camber curves and almost no bump steer)

See above, start with working for a small team for free and work your way up as you learn. Get to know the right people and with hard work and luck you get a good job.

Sorry for the long delay I got busy.

How has IMSA not caught the Cadillac sandbagging, you have dataloggers for this shit. You guys have done a pretty great job on GTLM so far though.

I know how. Should I blow the lid off the whole operation and let this user be a hero?

>Has 12 in of travel with amazing camber curves and almost no bump steer)
>12 in travel
>no bumpsteer
Tell me more.

Also, how do you feel about the general stability of the Porsche on corner exit?

Fortunately I had nothing to do with the FIA Ford GT and 488. I won't speculate on what happened there.

I use Bosch Windarab and Racecon. It is a great system. Every system has some pros and cons. I also like Pi Toolbox. I haven't used it much but my experience with motec has been good. Not quite as powerful as Bosch. I wish I could use Magneti Marelli's software more as the math channels seem rad. In addition we use some internally developed simulation software. It isn't hugely sophisticated but it works just fine for our application.

We work as a committee when deciding what to change. Ballast is typically for low to medium low speed lateral acceleration and braking. Additionally if a car's suspension is exceptionally good adding some mass can accommodate it. Wing angles are incredibly complex and we have aero people who specialize in figuring that out. The only thing I was involved in with aero was figuring out top speeds for a high speed track and balancing the cars to have similar trap speeds. We take all the cars to a wind tunnel and the engines to a dyno so we have accurate data to put in our simulations. We rarely mess with ride heights. When we do it often has to do with aero. But it can also be used to raise the cog if nothing else is working. Restrictor size is pretty straight forward we have all the data based on dyno sweeps. We also have sensitivities for various tracks on time and speeds due to power changes and adjust accordingly.

Every change does have effects on close to everything else. If it wasn't for all the time and effort we spend getting proper starting data it would be near impossible. Fortunately we spend weeks in the wind tunnel and dyno getting our own information that we can trust as a starting place.

I forgot to answer some questions somewhere on whether we get data from tests, but sanctioned testing we do. We use the data but understand it isn't the most accurate due to teams being more willing to manipulate data.

almost no bump steer*

You want some bump steer to make the driver feel the car is a bit more neutral. Toe in on bump just a little.

The only thing still a part of that car factor is the skin, floor pan for the seats and the main frame rails from a little bit behind the drivers seat forward. Let me find a pic or two.

...

Well I am off. Thanks for asking questions, it was fun!

n/a or forced induction

As a profession or personal taste?

Professionally turbo. We have full control over torque output across rpm range. Personally? Na all the way.

You're one of the few names around here who knows his shit. If you have knowledge, sharing is caring.

What kind of degree do you have?
And how did you actually get the job?>

I have a degree in automotive engineering. I volunteered to sweep a race shop for free while in school to get experience that wasnt fsae. I ended up working for a team that was in a feeder series that used bosch systems for scrutineering. Ended up working for that series and the bosch guys there liked me and recommended me for this job.

Doing a relatively small track for time attack coming up pic related is layout. Is it worth it upgrading my brake fluid to something like motul 600?

Or should I just use fresh dot 4 ?