Home » Photography (Page 3)

Category Archives: Photography

Archives

Peterson Automotive Museum Visit

While in Los Angeles last week, I dropped by the Peterson Automotive Museum on Wilshire Blvd. I didn’t have time to visit the vault, but now I have a reason to go back. Check out the amazing collection in the gallery linked below.
Peterson Automotive Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Lotus Renault F1: An In-Depth Look at the R31

The Total Company had a Renault F1 car at their booth during the SEMA show in Las Vegas. There wasn’t even a plaque saying what it was. I guess since SEMA isn’t really about F1 they figured nobody really cared. After all, you’d be hard pressed to find double-dubs that would fit.

Lotus F1 R31

As best I can tell by searching the Google, this is the R31 from the 2011 season. It isn’t the most recent car, but it was completely unguarded so I took the opportunity to get some detailed photos. Though the names on the car are of the current drivers, this was the car driven by Nick Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov to two surprising 3rd place finishes at the beginning of the 2011 season. The car went on to place Lotus Renault 5th in the constructor’s championship, which given the size of their budget that year, was a good accomplishment.

Lotus F1 R31 Head-on

Mostly I was interested in the complex aero-bits that you really can’t see on television. I always marvel at the intricacy of design of the various trim tabs and wings that define the current state of the art. I think about the engineers who spend hours in the wind-tunnel and CAD systems designing these wings, only to have the driver’s knock them off with no apparent effect on performance.

LotusF1 007

The degree to which they are trying to bend the air around the disturbance of the front tires and place it better for use further on in the chassis is amazing. I was especially interested in the details of the so-called “Tea Tray,” seen here below the suspension pick-up points on the body.

Lotus F1 R31 Tea Tray

I always though the Tea Tray was flat, but the sides are sculpted and shaped to move the air along the edges at different speeds than underneath. Something you can see in detail on the side of the Tea Tray.

Lotus Tea Tray Left Side

The openings in the side pods are quite small compared to previous years and the aero sculpting continues to feed air from the front of the car to the rear floor.

Lotus F1 Side Pod

The engine packaging is also very tight.

Lotus engine housing

This was the year before the blown rear diffuser, even still, the shape of the diffuser is very complex and fragile-looking.

LotusF1 016

It’s interesting to compare the rear of this car to the DW12 Indycar — a contemporary design — in this case, the number 3 Indycar of Helio Castroneves.

LotusF1 017

LotusF1 018

DW12

LotusF1 006

The Indycar seems positively old-school, especially in the low down-force configuration seen here. The funny thing about this display is that just across the floor from it was a contemporary Cup-car. Talk about old-school: the best in 1950’s technology, only now with fuel injection I suppose….

Cupcar 008

Porsche by Design

On the way to Hilton Head Island this past week, we stopped by the North Carolina Museum of Art which is hosting “Porsche by Design: Seducing Speed” through January 20, 2014. The show presents 22 Porsche automobiles going back to 1938 including the 1949 356 Gmuend Coupe (above) as well as Steve McQueen’s 356 Speedster and Janis Joplin’s art car. The collection includes 5 cars from the Porsche museum — a first for a North American exhibition — including the single ugliest Porsche Prototype we’ve ever seen.

concept

This car was presented to Ferry Porsche as a birthday present in 1989. Sort of the ugly sweater your aunt gave you, he drove it a few times and then found a safe place to “preserve” it in the museum. The coolest feature of this car was the Porsche Crest tread pattern in the tires.

cool tires

Steve McQueen’s 356 Cabriolet is still owned by his son, Chad.

356c

And the Janis Joplin car is very, er…. unique. I guess if you can’t recall the Summer of Love, you just don’t get it.

summer of love whatever

I enjoyed seeing the 917K, 962C, and IROC RSR race cars, but my favorite car of the show was the 1963 901 Prototype that started the life of the 911.

901 prototype

The full set of photos from the show is here on Flickr.

Baltimore Grand Prix

Labor Day weekend brought what is likely to be the last Indycar Baltimore Grand Prix to the streets of Baltimore. For the past 3 years it has been an enjoyable way to spend the last long weekend of the summer season. The city never really embraced the event, however, and didn’t do much to improve the racing surface. Most of the events were marked by brief periods of intense racing followed by tedious caution periods to pick up the pieces. But, it did make for an exciting photo opportunity. Many more photos here.
Race

Low Cost Video Telemetry Solution

GeorgeCo was at the track again mid-November for the NCC BMW CCA Fall HPDE at Summit Point Motorsports Park. GeorgeCo drove the MINI on Friday/Sunday and the Porsche Saturday in between. This was GeorgeCo’s first drive of the Porsche at the track. The car is larger and heaver than the MINI, but really accelerates well out of the corners, even on the not-so-grippy full-tread summer tires that came on the car. We still have some issues to sort out, but the car is progressing nicely. More on that later. First the MINI.

We’ve been working on a (relatively) low-cost video telemetry system and have finally worked most of the bugs out of our set-up. The video above uses an iPhone 4, Optrix-HD iPhone Mount, Harry’s LapTimer software, External GPS sensor, and a PLX-Devices data-interface. The iPhone is used for video capture and accelerometer function. It captures OBD-II data from the PLX-Devices Kiwi WiFi and combines it with 1 meter accurate GPS data from the external GPS device via Bluetooth. Ho, ho-ho, ho…. The iPhone does the post-processing and overlays all of the data on the video. In this video, I’m tracking down my friend John who is in the red E30 which is prepared very similarly to the old GeorgeCo E30. I like this video because you can see the driver’s hands, whether he’s looking ahead into the corners, and the telemetry shows revs as well as how much of the lap is spent on full throttle (less so in traffic.) I need to work on getting a brake sensor.

The second video was filmed in the Porsche 996 Carrera using a ReplayXD camera mounted on the sunvisor. This is an example of how you can combine video from external sources. The initial video was exported to an iMac and then uploaded to the iPhone via iTunes. It was then imported to LaptimerPro for overlay with Laptimer data. We didn’t have the OBD-II data connection working on this day, so the only data sources were the accelerometer and external GPS. The key to this process is to find the key video frame at the end of the timed lap so LaptimerPro can match the data-stream correctly. In this video, the Porsche is on Summer Street Tires which have no grip on the cooling track.

This third video shows the value of video as a learning aid. I followed my friend (and newly minted instructor) Dave for a few laps. He eventually went off in turn 1 when his tires gave out, got a nice mud bath, then almost went into a tank-slapper when he came back on. Fortunately he got his act together and we had some distance between us. The final shows what it must have felt like from his point of view…