My New Favorite T-Shirt

Move over, Dragon and Risi Competizione shirts.  Who says you can't get great graphic design on tees?  Available from
Vic Elford's website.

Thoughts On Almost Three Years Of Blogging

The "country source of blog hits" map from today.

This blog needs more posters--that was my original idea, and the reason for the plural title.  More voices!  Any regular reader who wants to give it a whirl can be set up as a poster.  My only request as Moderator is that the subject matter stay near the subtitle's... title... : sports cars, road racing, and the Tail of the Dragon.  Leave a comment on any post if you want to contact me.

I'm running out of useful things to say, at least on a regular and frequent basis.  A couple of regular readers have taken a pass on posting.  And I'll be the first to admit that it can be time-consuming.  The more you care about your writing, and finding good pictures to go with it, the longer it takes.

About a year and a half ago, I had what turned out to be a minor problem with my iMac.  It was quickly and satisfactorily solved by Apple's help people (in a store).  I mentioned that I thought the source of my problem might be a worm/bug/bot attack from overseas, probably Russia.  My Apple helper pooh-poohed this idea (and it was not the cause of my problem).  No functionality problems since.  I keep my software enhancements and antivirus rigorously up-to-date.

But I remain convinced that blogs are a primary target of hackers.  How else to explain the map above? Aside from the usual suspects like the U.S., France, Germany, and Britain, by far the largest number of hits are from Russia, the Ukraine, and Bulgaria.  None of those places strike me as passionate about this blog's topics.

Interestingly, Russia appears sporadically but with huge numbers of hits.  The Ukraine is slow but steady, punching far above its presumed weight.  China isn't really on the radar.  This is consistent with what I've read about worm/bug/bot attacks.  The Russians tend to be state-sponsored and heavy-handed, leaving a strong evidence trail behind them.  Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans tend to be freelancers, like those Nigerian Princes who want us to send them money.  The Chinese are also state-sponsored, but very sophisticated about who and what they target, leaving little evidence of their activity.  China has bigger fish to fry than "sports cars, road racing, and the Tail of the Dragon."

Not Your Customary Porsche Cruise Night

I love a picture of a rally car hustling through a hairpin on opposite lock--but especially an original Porsche 911, at night,
with a bank of lights on the front.  Can you hear the driver goosing and feathering the throttle of that flat 6, trying to
get all the power down?

When Vic Elford, theretofore a rally specialist, won the 1968 Mote Carlo Rally for Porsche, it launched an association in
sports car racing that helped to take both Quick Vic and Porsche to the top.  Elford was always the man to beat at true
road races like the Targa Florio and long circuits like the Nurburgring.  But he was fast everywhere. 

Spring Is Here!

Hotshoe and I have come to regard our club's Indoor Driving School as the official advent of spring. Members are incentivized to "work" it with conga line laps in our street cars behind an experienced wheel-to-wheel racer (in his street car).  That's a chance to recalibrate our brains from snow and ice to normal braking points and heel-and-toe downshifts.  It has become our tune-up for our spring Tail of the Dragon run.  And a chance to reconnect with our gearhead buddies who race or work race events.

After 16 laps of Blackhawk Farms, speed-limited to 50 m.p.h. but with the corners taken at 7-8/10's, I returned home to catch the last four hours of live-streamed Sebring.  It's a reality-check to push your own street car (and yourself) hard and then watch GTLM BMW's, 'Vettes, Ferraris, and Porsches corner dead flat at over twice your speed.  Long before I joined this sports car club, Sebring was the signifier of spring for me.  For some, it's baseball training camps.  For some, it's Daffodils or Dogwoods.  Once a gearhead, always a gearhead, I suppose.

Kurt Vonnegut working on a novel, or maybe an English Professor working on a
lecture, right?  Actually it's Scott Durbin, my club's President, setting up the vids
and slide show for the morning part of the Indoor School.  Scott knows whereof
he speaks: he took a Formula Ford that was an also-ran before he owned it to
the sharp end of the grid and a club championship.

John Saccameno, Scott's co-presenter in the morning session, holds forth to the assembled multitude (about 30 newbies).
John is also an excellent journeyman driver who's lovely Alfa GTA/GTV has appeared in this blog more than once.

Run Whatcha Brung I: a sample of the daily drivers owned by people who show up at the Indoor School, interested in
High Speed Autocrossing: a late-model Mustang, a BMW Z, a Chevy Cobalt, a Porsche, and all manner of Japanese
sedans.

Run Whatcha Brung II (not the trucks...).

Run Whatcha Brung III: a C 3 Corvette, a Chevy Vega-Cosworth, and a Miata.

The Vega-Cosworth caught Hotshoe's and my attention.  Hotshoe owned and loved one; I've always thought that it was one
of the lovely cars that General Motors did when John DeLorean was President.  This one has had its problematic o.e.m.
fuel injection replaced with one huge side-draft Weber carburetor.

Ahead of its time: if the Vega-Cosworth had been done right in the specification and assembly quality departments, it
could have preceded the Golf GTI as the First Hot Hatch.

False-gridded for conga-line laps of Blackhawk Farms, surrounded by my fellow Run Whatcha Brung-ers (a corner of the
purple Dodge Challenger, the late-model Mustang, a Triumph TR-4, and the Vega-Cosworth are in this shot).  My line's
leader was driving the Infiniti G-35 in front of me, and he did know the lines around Blackhawk Farms.  This old dog
learned a couple of new tricks.

"...That's Not A Knife... THIS Is A Knife..."

2015 Mustang Shelby GT 350 nose.

2009 Honda Civic Si nose.

OK, yet another post with an admittedly personal slant. ;-)   I asked an acquaintance what he thought of the Chicago Auto Show.  Actually, he didn't have a lot to say.  He enjoyed the Show (always goes, always does) but, aside from being knocked out by the new Ford GT, his only comment was "I liked the new Mustang Shelby GT 350.  I'm getting used to it.  I even like the slope nose."

One of the many things I like about my '09 Honda Civic Si is its front end styling.  I didn't recall the latest Mustang as having a sloped nose.  So I looked it up.  And now I wish I'd had the presence of mind to respond like Crocodile Dundee: "That's not a sloped nose, this is a sloped nose."

Boredom & Surprise (2015 Australian GP)

2015 McLaren-Honda: so far, "not with a bang, but with a ffsssssttttt."

Mercedes ran off and hid from the rest of the field, taking up where they left off as 2014 Champions--except by an even bigger margin.  Lewis Hamilton came close to lapping the 5th place car.  Ho, hum...

But Ferrari appears to have something for Williams to think about, and a much more driveable car for Vettel and Raikkonen.  Even the Ferrari-engined Sauber had pace.  The TV presenters said Ferrari has found 80 more horsepower.  How is that possible?  Even Lotus had pace, with Romain Grosjean toward the sharp end of the starting grid, until the team imploded (again) with various mishaps.  So the race for "best of the rest" will be interesting this year.

The astonishing news, for me, was that the Honda power train in the McLaren has way sketchy reliability.  Jensen Button's last-place finish was a result of the longest time the Honda has been able to run to date.  The TV presenters said the problems center around overheating and the KERS system, which is blowing seals, and which result from tight packaging of the power train.  It's a giant heat sink (well... as giant as any components in F-1 get...).

Well... OK...  But Honda's specialty is engineering, especially engines and power trains.  Everybody had problems with power trains and KERS last year.  Honda had a year to watch and learn.  I expected much more from them: fast and reliable out-of-the-box.  Oh, well... it's fun to root for underdogs and I'm a Honda Fan in the First Degree.  Also, Jensen Button was retained for 2015 after very shabby treatment about his contract by McLaren at the end of last season.  I smell Honda's influence there (Jensen still has a ride) and am a big Fernando Alonso fan as well.  So there is plenty of reason to watch the races this year.  I just hope McLaren-Honda doesn't turn out to be the Chicago Cubs or Cleveland Browns of F-1.

A Shout Out To The Mazda Miata

Above and below: The Gen 4 (2016) Miata remains state-of-the-art for a small-bore high-production roadster.

The previous post about the new Fiat 124 Spider, and the recent Top Gear piece on  the new Mazda Miata, remind me to give it a shout out.  Richard Hammond said the new Miata is still great fun.  Duh.  He made a point James May has made several times: that a rear-drive car with 50/50 balance on narrow tires is a hoot.  He also said that it weighs 200 lbs. less than the previous generation and remains the same size as the original Miata.  That's quite an accomplishment in an era of crush zones, door beams, and airbags.

The Miata anchored the low end of my "bang for the buck" spreadsheet in the aughts, when I was thinking about new cars to buy.  I couldn't find a better low-cost benchmark car until the Gen 8 Honda Civic Si came out.  At the time, I knew a guy who loved his Gen 3 MazdaSpeed (turbo) Miata.  He said it had a lot of grunt.  (It was, however, too expensive to anchor the low-price end of the spreadsheet.)  For that matter, back-in-the-day, I thought the Gen 1 Miata was a much better car than its closest competitor, the Toyota MR 2.  I drove a Miata only once.  City streets didn't allow me to push its envelope.  But the ergonomics, controls, and steering lived up to their rave press notices.

I'll be the first to admit that the Miata isn't a great road trip car.  But it's no accident that a Tail of the Dragon "local" bought a used one to build into his new slayer--on the recommendation of another local. Killboy's new FR-S might be a better platform: it has the rigidity of a coupe.  But then you can't put your coupe's top down.

So the Miata is still going strong after almost 20 years (and donating a platform to the new Fiat Spider). It has an undeserved reputation in the U.S. for being "a girl's car."  Were British and Italian roadsters of the '50's and '60's girls' cars?  Is one of the best affordable slayer platforms a girl's car?  The Miata has always been macho enough for me...  See, for example, Spec. Miata, where "rubbin' is racin'" and corner workers dread the carnage.  Come to think of it, two of the better club racers I know are women.  Neither is dumb enough to sign up for the rebuild costs of the Spec. Miata class.  Maybe women are smarter than men.   ;-)