bollocks another points!

Apr 06, 2008 22 Replies

My dear friend: the best tire is that one which at that point in time gets you the fastest round the track using the means you have.

We build a car back then with nothing, the 1992 championship was won on the racebudget of 1 (ONE) factory build race engine. In pounds and coins: about 12000 UKP for 18 races, fees and fuel included. Of those 18 races 16 were won.

We build a car strong where it had to be , flimsy everywhere else. The flywheel of a standard 2cv weighs 11 kg, ours was 2,75 kg...

A shaved junkyard-salvaged tire goes better than the junkyard-tire as it is. I don't know that from a European Streekbike Champion, I know that from experience.

We still race now: grasscart, the fast ones, Yamaha R6-engine, full spaceframe, home build from scratch, not using fancy steel only soft construction steel, 300 kg, 0 to 100 kph on dirt in 2.9 sec. There were have now Gold Speed Red Tires, which even on dirt heat up and become very sticky. 1 tire costs more that 16 2cv-tires (rims included) back then, I would even mention the magnesium rim of our racer now. We can afford it now but then we hadn't the money but we had the time. Now money is not the problem, time is...

Our crosscart can not be bought nor sold: in one chassis goes about 700 hours of work. It is CAD-spacial calculated in such a way that every part of it is as strong as it needs to be. That chassis weighs 29 kg, the commercialy for sale weighs 45 kg.

If you fight factoryteams and win, you don't win by buying "the good parts" or the top motor, you win by being smart and *making* the good parts. You can do that 1 year maybe 2 and then the factory will give you the options: get out or work for them.

I -even then- never quite liked to work for a boss. I also found out pretty quickly that in Belgium it was not possible to life form racing unless you sold yourself either to a manager either to a company.

Tom De Moor

I guess you don't know them but for you too compare: those 2cv's were (are) dedicated racecars and the best of them were finished to extremes. You needed to have vagely the 2cv-shape, an engine based on the citroen

2cilinder boxer engine and keep the orginal chassis (or better said the suspension arms because the is no real chassis in a 2cv)

An engine of a Proto (unlimited class) delivered 100 Hp (at the wheels!) during 24 Hrs. This starting from a Visa-origine 2 cilinder boxer with

35 HP at the crank and having got thrown everything possible to it: twin sparks, EFI, water injection, big oilcoolers, aeroflowed crankshafts etc etc.

You like your V6, but even Senna or Schumacher would not be able to drive your standard car faster around Spa than a top Proto-2cv driven by any driver who has done a championship with it. Yes : Eau Rouge was flat, around 180 kph, if you were alone not when you were in company or in the wet. The end of the straight saw max RPM (around 9.450 which was 220-225 kph). The NSX (on street tires and with some safetymargin)can't get the times of our proto then.

Weight and the lack of it: there is no substitute for.

2cv-racing in the beginning of the 90-ties was like the UK 750-club with the Reliant engined homemades. There was no money but you could venture as much as you liked. Each year budgets rose however, about on par with the numbers of rules. Then a few big dealers came into the game, they lost out heavily, went weeping at Citroen and by 1996 there were motorhomes in the paddock for factory-paid racers (Marc Duez and the likes) and it became all horrible expensif with international visits, big budgets and close to no return.

Now you go the the 24HR Spa for 2cv's and there is no one pilot who hasn't a big BMW, Porsche of Mercedes as personal car. It was somewhat more down to earth then :-)

Tom De Moor

The image I had in my head was standard 2CVs, wood effects panels and all :-)

Every part of that story is just awesome :-D

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