Guest Mic Drop – Vahok Hill

guest

MIC DROP

By Vahok Hill

A CALL FOR SUPERIOR

MECHANICAL KNOWLEDGE (AND TO STOP CHEATING)

Racing is difficult enough without the people who feel obligated to cheat. There is this romantic notion that if the rule book doesn’t say you can’t do it, that makes it OK to fill in the blanks. Cheating is a vicious cycle of romanticism, lying, feeling superior to the tech people and your competition and ultimately yourself. If you are cheating and someone beats you, they must be cheating, too. Talk about the ultimate in a condescending thought process.

I don’t care if it is tires, engines, weight or fuel capacity; cheating is wrong and if you get caught you should pay a heavy penalty. Tires are a particular hot spot for me. Yeah, I get that people want to win and, if they don’t get caught, it is all good. Tires have a special impact in that some of the chemicals used to soften tires are very toxic. Some are proven to cause specific types of cancer and when a team treats tires with dangerous chemicals, they are not only placing their team at risk but other competitors and the fans in the stands. I feel that this type of willful antisocial behavior should be rewarded with lifetime bans. Not to mention that these same chemicals have been proven to be damaging to the tire from a physical perspective. So now we have a treated tire outgassing toxic fumes placing the crews, drivers and fans at risk and they may also compromise the tires from a physical perspective.

It goes way past just trying to trick the tech guys, who are usually volunteers and not professional tech people. It shows a huge amount of disrespect to your fellow competitors. If you cheat, who are you really beating? If racing is a test of mechanical and driving skill, you are taking the mechanical beyond the technical means of the acknowledged boundaries of the series you are racing, you are cheating. I am specifically talking about engine, tires, specified materials, i.e., are you using materials that are specifically not allowed - that would be tubing that is too thin or exotic materials that are called out as, not allowed? If so, you are cheating. CHEATING SHOWS A HUGE AMOUNT OF DISRESPECT TO YOUR FELLOW COMPETITORS.

I am not saying that all cars have to be vanilla. There are always areas where you can expand the norm but there are limits. The rule book is there for a reason. The World of Outlaws had a very slim rule book in the early years. As racers pushed the envelope, rules became more defined. The goal was to develop a set of rules that would allow for innovation but not outright development of cars that would outpace the current economic development of the cars to be economically limiting. In the early years, there were cars with a good deal of titanium and aluminum where previously steel was utilized. Much effort and money has been spent on reducing weight by ounces for a negligible or imaginary gain in time. Does it really work? On paper, maybe, but in the mudcoated world of dirt racing, not so much.

So, the car is defined from a mechanical perspective, the engine and fuel are defined from a mechanical and chemical perspective. Stay within the limits of the rules and adjust the car within the given allowable parameters. I would hazard to say that most racers do not even know what the top three adjustments on their car really are, that is which adjustments have an impact on lap times and which adjustments really have a minimal impact on lap times. Many racers do not use a stop watch to gage performance.

Stop cheating and learn what you can do to make your car faster within the rules.

Vahok has spent 30 plus years writing technical articles exploring the ins and outs of mechanical processes as applied to race cars. He has traveled the world looking at mechanical and machining processes. He has been actively involved in racing for 40 plus years in off road racing, kart racing a variety of short track racing from cars to motorcycles to sprint cars. He was involved with the introduction of computers to race cars when that form of data acquisition was still something that was not the accepted norm. He lives and breathes all things mechanical. Check out Vahok’s Tech column in this issue on page 68.