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I suck at Grand Turismo. I got stuck in a sand pit and could not figure out how to reverse.
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My favorite part of the museum was dedicated to F-1 technology. You actually get to see and handle F-1 parts close up. F-1 cars are amazing, they more closely related to aerospace than automotive in technology.
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Can you figure out how to start it?
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This multi disc carbon carbon clutch is around 4″ in diameter and weighs less than 4 lbs. It must contain 700-800 hp. Amazing.
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These Brembo calipers are machined from metal matrix composite and are really light, probably 40% less than a regular monoblock shape optimized racing Brembo.
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The disassembled F-1 car was my favorite display. You could closely examine the parts. Let me tell you that nothing comes close to an F-1 car for engineering coolness. Not IRL, Daytona Prototype or anything in the states. It’s pure beautiful form follows function.
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Various winners of the 24 hour race through the years.
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More bits of the F-1 car, everything is autoclaved carbon, metal matrix composites and alloy. Every little bit is designed to minimize mass without sacrificing strength or to do the best job possible without compromise. Look at that ductwork shape to fit in the space available in the pod perfectly. Then look at the heat exchangers fitted perfectly in the duct.
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Jay and I sitting in the IMAX 4D theater. We could not exactly figure out what the 4th D was. We watched a cool movie that shows the spirit of the 24 Hours of Nurburging. The movie was about a girl who builds a touring car class E36 M3 in her garage with her friends and enters the race and barely finishes. Any grassroots racer could have related to this.
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The mall part of RingºWerk. A big rollercoster and other rides were in here but we didn’t have time to check them out as the race was about to start and we had to hurry to pre-grid.
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This car was some sort of promo for a stunt show by Top Gear.
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Many manufacturers had boutiques selling stuff but we didn’t have time to check any of them out.
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Ferrari, Aston Martin, Bentley, BMW and other prestigious manufactures had stores in RingºWerk. Then there was Nissan. Nissan’s are really expensive in Germany though. Japanese cars are not popular in Germany. We only saw a handful of Japanese cars in the week we were there.
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Nissan had a band in Ring Werk playing some American pop song–I forget what it was, but I remember it being really ghey.
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| On to pre-grid for the start of the race. Look how many people pack the grandstands. Amazingly, race fans are allowed to walk on pre-grid and the crush of the crowd is horrible. Imagine a really packed club. That’s what pre-grid is like with thousands of people. The race had 240 entrants and about 260 thousand spectators! It was the biggest single event I have ever seen in my life! Tens of thousands of fans line the 16 mile long track and camp in the woods. The magnitude of this event is staggering. |
