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Before his recent victory at Pocono, Bobby Labonte was missing in action. A 24-race winless streak for the defending Winston Cup champion? Who would have believed it? After all, in 2000, Labonte and the No. 18 Interstate Batteries team were a model of consistency.

Just look at the stats from last season: four wins, 19 top fives, 24 top 10s and no DNFs (did not finish). Labonte finished all but nine of a possible 10,167 laps, an amazing 99.9 percent. Even after Labonte totaled his primary car during practice for the Southern 500 last year, he won his third race of the season.

My, how things changed during the first half of the 2001 season. The difficulties started right away, at Daytona, where Labonte was involved in an 18-car pileup and finished 40th. A second-place finish at Rockingham a week later seemed to right the ship, but success was illusory.

“From last year to this year, we were confident that we would come out here and run pretty well,” Labonte says. “But really, your confidence only runs from week to week sometimes. If you don’t run well and you screw up three or four times, it takes your confidence down for the next week. Then if you run well, it’s back up there.”

It took the team 14 races to climb into the top 10 in points. Labonte rose as high as seventh after the Pepsi 400 in early July at Daytona, but the team’s third blown engine of the season sidelined Labonte at Chicago.

That’s when the team finally took the hint and began re-evaluating its engine program.

Last year, Labonte ran conservative engine setups in his quest for the points championship, while teammate Tony Stewart ran a more aggressive package and won two more races than Labonte.

This year, the No. 18 squad, like the Penske and Yates teams, is attempting to take its engines to the ragged edge. But that’s a gamble. If Lady Luck smiles on your team, it could mean a visit to victory lane. On the other hand, the engine might blow, which Labonte can’t afford.

“You look at Yates, Penske and Hendrick, and they’re all going forward, making more horsepower,” says Jimmy Makar, Labonte’s crew chief. “If you don’t try every day to make a little more, you get behind in a real hurry.

“We sort of had to back up when we had our problem and fix it, and now we’re a couple of steps behind on horsepower because of what happened earlier in the season. We haven’t stopped trying, but right now we need dependability before we have horsepower.”

Labonte also is one of the drivers whose teams have had problems getting used to the new Goodyear tire compounds. Most of the racing notes from last season are useless, as far as chassis setups are concerned, and the team didn’t adapt quickly.

Besides the mechanical maladies, what went wrong? Labonte hadn’t changed. Makar hadn’t changed. But during the offseason, competing operations pirated team personnel, stealing such key members as engineer Derek Jones.

Still, the core was intact.

“When you go to Daytona, the championship is behind you,” Makar says. “You’re starting from scratch. Maybe mentally the expectations of yourself are higher, and expectations from others may be unrealistic, but we’ve had problems that anybody can have, and when you’re running for a championship, you can’t have DNFs. You’ve got to have races that you don’t have problems with mechanically or you’ve got to have luck. You can’t get caught up in accidents.”

So, are the engine problems in the past? Has Labonte’s team figured out the new tires? Can Labonte–eighth in points, 466 behind leader Jeff Gordon–move up the standings, perhaps to the top? The 15th-place finish at Indy didn’t help.

“If you run well and win races, the points will take care of themselves,” Labonte says. “If you don’t, you’re going to finish wherever. For the most part, if we can go out and be competitive and be consistent–not have any problems like we did at the beginning of the year–who knows where we can end up.”

In the last decade, only the late Dale Earnhardt (1993-94) and Gordon (1997-98) produced back-to-back titles. Winning the title in 1999 certainly took its toll on Dale Jarrett and the No. 88 crew during the 2000 season, when they struggled to finish fourth in points.

Since 1993, the driver who led the points standings halfway into the season won the championship. This year at the halfway point (after 18 races), Labonte was hanging on to 10th place, 403 points out of first place.

“We know how to be consistent,” Labonte says. “We just weren’t through the first half of the season. We have to work harder and harder to overcome what we did in the first part of the year, which wasn’t very productive, and try to find the right sequence of things we need to do to make things better. We haven’t found that success throughout the year, but at Pocono we definitely found it.”

Mathematically, Labonte is not out of the points chase yet. But Makar might have the toughest task, keeping the cars humming and the spirits high.

“For some people, it’s easier,” Makar says. “They don’t have a problem with morale because they understand the ups and downs of sports. Others rise and fall with success and failure. Those are the guys you have to work on a little bit harder to prove you’re not always in control of everything.

It’s been said that “racing improves the the breed. “Diesel engines are perhaps not as developed as gasoline engines partly because they have not had to meet the rigors of high-speed, endurance racing. Automakers from Chevrolet and Honda to Ferrari and Porsche have used motorsports as a way to quickly develop engines. Now, Audi is doing it with its diesel-powered R10 that will be campaigned at the 24 Hours of Le Mans this month. The R10 will compete in LM P1 (Le Mans Prototype 1) Category, the top class at Le Mans offering the greatest opportunity to develop new technology, especially engines.

The R10 has already made racing history, as in March it won the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, becoming the first diesel car in the world to win a major sports car race. Audi used Sebring as a test for the 24 Hours of Le Mans race.

Prior to the R10’s debut, the most successful racing diesel to date was perhaps the Cummins Special that won the pole position at the 1953 Indianapolis 500. Although a factor in the race, the car did not finish.

Another reason Audi is going racing with a diesel is the “race on Sunday, sell on Monday” philosophy. Like many other European automakers, 50% of the Audis sold today have diesel engines. Finally, the 4.2 L gasoline V8 engine used in Audi R8s that have dominated Le Marts for the past six years have been made obsolete because of rule changes. Thus, a new engine was needed.

Incidentally, that V8 racing engine played a significant role in the development of the Audi’s industry-leading FSI, direct fuel injection, spark-ignition technology now offered in Audi’s latest 2.0 L turbocharged and 3.2 L naturally aspirated FSI gasoline engines.

The R10’s 5.5 L, twin-turbocharged and intercooled, high-pressure, direct-injection V12 diesel includes some leading-edge technology. For starters, the engine has both a lightweight aluminum engine block and aluminum cylinder heads, a rarity for diesels. It features twin overhead camshafts, four valves per cylinder and a cylinder bank angle of 90[degrees]. The displacement of 5.5 L is the maximum displacement currently allowed by Le Mans’ rules.

As with the case of the turbocharged direct fuel injection TFSI gasoline engine, Audi worked with Bosch on the R10’s TDI (turbocharged direct injection) engine. Engine management is performed by the Bosch Motronic MS14 system, which controls the latest generation Bosch common rail fuel injection system. Though some engine details are proprietary for competitive reasons, the injection pressure easily exceeds the 23,000 psi typically used in production cars.

Racing rules limit the boost of the twin Garrett turbochargers to 42.6 psi, while the diameter of both engine air intake restrictors is also restricted, to 2 x 39.9 mm. The dry sump lubrication system uses Shell oil.

The engine produces in excess of 650 hp and more than 811 lb.ft. of torque. “This engine is specifically the (for its size) most powerful diesel there is in the world and, up until now, the biggest challenge that Audi Sport has ever faced in its long history,” explained Ulrich Baretzky, head of engine technology at Audi Sport. “There has never been anything remotely comparable.”

The engine’s usable power band lies between 3000 and 5000 rpm, an unusually low range for a Le Mans racing engine that typically runs at 10,000 to 12,000 rpm, but less than the screaming 18,000 rpm of Formula 1 cars.

Because of the very favorable torque curve, gear changes in the R10 occur less frequently than in the R8. The huge amount of torque produced places a tremendous demand on drivetrain and transmission. Power is transmitted to the rear wheels via a ZF Sachs ceramic clutch; X-trac pneumatically actuated, sequential race gearbox and viscous-mechanical locking differential. Bosch’s Acceleration Slip Regulation (ASR) traction control reduces the high loads created by the torque fed to the wheels and helps the driver modulate the V12 TDI engine’s power delivery, particularly under wet conditions. This represents a new challenge even for experienced drivers.

Something else unfamiliar will be the low noise level and, unique for a racing engine, the smooth running of the engine. At high speeds, the engine cannot be heard from the open cockpit and there is hardly any vibration. Indeed, the new R10 can only be recognized as diesel-powered during the warm-up or in the pit lane. Its exhaust will also be invisible since a pair of diesel particulate filters are fitted. And unlike spark-ignition racing engines, there are no flashes of flame from the exhaust created by unburned fuel.

The longer R10 engine required radical changes to the chassis. The R10 has a significantly longer wheelbase than the R8, yet weighs in at 2039 lb.

Brent Singleton from Ogden, Utah, spent most weekends during high school burning rubber at the racetracks.

Strapped into his gray-and-blue junior dragster, named “Electric Jaws Jr.,” Brent would compete in the National Hot Rod Association’s Junior Dragster leagues for 8-to-17-year-olds. When the starting light flipped from yellow to green, he would push the pedal to the floor and race 201 meters (660 feet) to the finish line. His goal was not only to reach the finish line first, but to stay just below the league’s speed limit of 137 kilometers (85 miles) per hour.

Like his dad–who also raced dragsters–Brent feels a need for speed. But, at the same time, the teen is passionate about protecting the environment. Like all race cars, junior dragsters run on fuel made from petroleum. Brent was aware that burning petroleum produces pollution. And he knew that petroleum is a finite resource. “It’s going to be only so long before we use it all,” he says.

So when Brent was 14, he started a science project to design an electric dragster. Instead of relying on a petroleum engine, his dragster would cruise to the finish line powered by an electric motor that converts electrical energy into speed-boosting energy of motion. Other racers were skeptical. “There’s a myth that electric cars are slow,” Brent says. “I wanted to show that they could be just as fast–or even faster–than a car that runs on petroleum.” To prove that a car can be fast and environmentally friendly, Brent had to figure out how to maximize the speed of an electric car so that he could leave the gas-guzzling competition in the dust.

FOLLOW THE COURSE

Brent realized that there were many factors that would affect the performance and speed of an electric dragster. To stay on track during his project, Brent relied on the step-by-step process that scientists use to design and perform experiments. “Using the scientific method helps you to solve any problem,” he says. Read on to learn how Brent followed the steps of the scientific method to create a high-speed and environmentally friendly dragster.

STEP ONE: RACING RESEARCH

As with all science experiments, the idea for Brent’s project came from an observation. When Brent was 14, his dad bought a hybrid vehicle. Brent and his dad modified this combination of an electric car and a traditional gas-powered vehicle to run at a racetrack. The hybrid easily reached speeds of 155 km (96 mi) per hour. Brent was surprised at how fast the car could go.

That discovery spurred Brent on to do some background research to learn about the factors that could affect the speed of an electric car. In addition to searching the library and the Internet for information, Brent asked for help from engineers at Weber State University, near his home in Utah. “My project wouldn’t have worked without the help of others,” he says.

Brent learned that one factor–voltage–may significantly affect an electric dragster’s top speed. An electric motor runs on energy created by the flow of negatively charged particles called electrons. And an increase in the motor’s voltage could boost the strength of this electric current. Brent suspected that a stronger electric current running through a motor could help power an electric dragster to higher speeds.

STEP TWO: BUCKLE UP

Brent’s next step was to write a research question. He wanted to find the ideal voltage for his electric dragster. That voltage would help him crush the competition by zipping away from the starting line faster than any other car, while staying within the racetrack’s speed limit. So Brent wrote this question: How does the voltage of an electric dragster affect the car’s speed?

Brent did not have enough information to answer his research question. He had to come up with a hypothesis. Knowing that this possible explanation for a set of observations must be testable, he stated his hypothesis this way: Increasing the voltage of an electric dragster will increase the car’s maximum speed.

STEP THREE: START YOUR ENGINES

To test his hypothesis, Brent designed an experiment. Like all good experiments, Brent’s project included a well-thought-out procedure. This step-by-step plan contained clear instructions to test the effect of one or more variables (characteristics) on another variable.

Based on his research, Brent determined that his independent variable, or the factor he would change on purpose during the experiment, would be the car’s voltage. At each voltage, Brent would race the electric dragster at the racetrack and monitor his top speed. That speed would be his dependent variable, or the variable that responds to a change in the independent variable.

STEP FOUR: WATCH THE CLOCK

Brent and his dad worked on the junior dragster together. They adjusted the motor’s voltage and then entered the car, recording the junior dragster’s resulting times and top speeds. After studying these data, Brent reached a conclusion for his experiment. His hypothesis was correct. A summary of his results showed that each time he increased voltage, his top speed in the race also increased.

I don’t mean that in a mean-spirited way. He’s just different. Where many of us have trouble finishing what we start, Newman can’t seem to start what he finishes. He’s hell on wheels in the last half of the season, but by then, he’s too far behind to contend for the championship.

Newman, the 2002 Rookie of the Year, is the best qualifier in Winston Cup racing, bar none. And so far this season, he has four victories, more than any other driver.

But Newman started the season upside down–literally. A wreck in the Daytona 500 sent him barrel-rolling down the front stretch, and his No. 12 Dodge came to rest on its roof in the infield grass.

Suddenly, he was at the bottom of the barrel–last in the Daytona 500 and the points standings.

With five finishes of 38th or worse in the first 11 races, Newman kept slipping further behind points leader Matt Kenseth. Though Newman won March 30 at Texas and cracked the top 10, he fell out until winning July 27 at Pocono–13 races later. With two wins in the last four races, Newman has climbed to fourth in TSN’s Power Poll, which puts a greater premium on race victories, but he’s still ninth in the Winston Cup standings, 654 points behind Kenseth.

We’ve seen this before. After the Pepsi 400 in July 2002 at Daytona, Newman accumulated 2,725 points the rest of the season–more than any other driver–and moved from 16th to sixth in the final standings. So why can’t a team that blows away the competition in the summer and fall get off the starting line in the winter and spring?

It’s not for lack of brainpower or horsepower. Newman, 25, is the only driver in the garage who has a degree in vehicle structural engineering. It’s not just a piece of paper. Newman is an intellectual, and there are times when he’ll let you know it.

In January, he greeted a large group of writers on the Winston Cup media tour with a question: “How many of you know the difference between an engine and a motor?” Four hands went up. “Thought so” he said. In case you’re wondering, Newman says an engine runs on fuel and must go through a combustion cycle.

His crew chief, Matt Borland, is an egghead, too. He also holds an engineering degree. But they couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again after the wreck at Daytona, and the widely varied results flowed from there. An example: For 13 straight races, stretching from Las Vegas through Michigan, Newman didn’t start worse than eighth but managed only four top five finishes.

Newman is the only Dodge driver to win this year, so it’s safe to say his car owner, Penske Racing South, has a better handle on the car than the other Dodge teams in the garage. But that hasn’t prevented the oddness of 2002 from carrying over.

Newman says he learned “two big things” at Purdue that aren’t necessarily linked to engineering: time management and problem solving. So why didn’t he share what he learned with the team earlier in the season?

“We struggled at the start of the season with a couple of crashes here and there–a blown tire, a failed rear gear at Richmond while we were leading” Newman says. “Part of that is racing luck. Part of it is lack of preparation.

“The bottom line is you don’t change your luck. You create your luck. People use luck as an excuse or reason sometimes.”

Though Newman says there’s not just one reason behind his mixed results, he is convinced the engine-building part of the switch from Ford to Dodge was the most difficult task.

Newman has praised the power and reliability that engine builder Scott Carriher has provided, and the team lost just one engine during a race, June 15 at Michigan. Newman then posted top fives, including two wins, in four of the next five races and landed in the top 10. A nice recovery, but again, it took him too long. Newman won’t win a championship until driver, crew chief and crew find a consistent rhythm for most of the 36 races.

With the trend in NASCAR favoring teams that make aggressive and analytical calls from the pits, there’s no doubt the Newman-Borland brain trust will win races. They proved that as a rookie team and are proving it again.

But to win championships in November, they need a better game plan for February.

TSN’s POWER POLL

Rank  Driver              TSN pts.  Winston Cup pts.

1.   Matt Kenseth         2,144       3,152 (1)
2.   Dale Earnhardt Jr.   1,878       2,866 (2)
3.   Jeff Gordon          1,789       2,834 (3)
4.   Ryan Newman          1,772       2,498 (9)
5.   Bobby Labonte        1,659       2,642 (6)
6.   Kurt Busch           1,579       2,569 (8)
7.   Jimmie Johnson       1,572       2,656 (4)
8.   Kevin Harvick        1,496       2,623 (7)
9.   Michael Waltrip      1,459       2,653 (5)
10.   Tony Stewart         1,379       2,420 (13)

Through race No. 21, at Indianapolis. For a complete TSN
Power Poll rundown and an explanation of the points breakdown,
go to www.sportingnews.com/nascar/poll.

Car Audio at Home

Car Audio at home you ask? Why the hell would you want that? Number one reason, bragging rights! Actually it’s not a bad idea if you require a test bench.

Reasons:

A couple of applications for doing this are:
1. Testbench for Parts
2. Cheap Home Stereo (Gets pretty loud)
3. MP3 Stereo (When hooked to Computer)
4. Great for Movies
5. Vast selection of parts.

Running car audio at home is good if you have a few spare parts lying around. It does come with disadvantages. The first is not having all the channels that Dolby Home units boast. I suppose with a digital input, and RF 5.1 car audio system, it can be done. The second is, how do you power the gear, that 12V shaver adapter is not going to cut it for a 50 AMP amplifier.

Ratings:

If you notice I never refer to amplifiers or head units using their Wattage Output. The reason is pretty well known. I don’t call liquid nitro-freezing MOSFETS and driving transistors into over-voltage under one hundred percent laboratory control a fair test. Neither is measuring amplifier output power using a 20Hz single tone signal.

Thus, I use the amp rating. It’s a no-brainer that a 1000W Orion HCCA with 100AMPs worth of fuses is going to push more power than a 1000W Pyramid Amplifier that has a single 25AMP fuse. For car audio, power is generated by the transistors or tubes using DC electricity. Since components are voltage sensitive, the input voltage to 12V electronics has regulators that clip the voltage to certain values. So the other method is to push current like a bat out of hell. What do I mean? Think about it, SPL vehicles have multiple alternators, and stacks of batteries. What’s their system voltage? 130VDC? No, there voltage hovers around 14.4V, with some variance. But they can dish enough current to arc weld I-Beams if you short their supplies.

Home Power Source:

There’s a couple of ways to come up with a stiff 12V power source:
1. Make one (Huge Thyristors, Diodes, Heat Sinks, Transformers, Ripple Filters, Brown Out Caps, voltage regulators)
2. Use a Car Charger and Car Battery.
3. Buy a 14.4VDC wall Supply

I did the latter two choices. I weighed the options, the money to build a 12V high current supply would kill me just buying a massive transformer, and trying to stuff my Home Improvement project into a big box, all this to say, ‘hey guys look what I made.’

So since the price of building a supply died, I pulled out the car trickle charger, and a spare car battery. I think the battery had 600CCA, and was pretty big. At full charge (10 hours plus), it can run two amplifiers, over 7 speakers, including a subwoofer for six hours at a room shaking level. This includes a head unit.

What you need is to build an enclosure that looks like an electronics store display to house a set of components, a battery, amplifiers etc etc, whatever you want to install. Charge, Fuse, Wire, and you’re good to go.

Later I replaced the car battery with a 14.4VDC – 50AMP, 120VAC supply made by Tripplite (They make UPS supplies, ,Part: PR-50). The supply is CSA approved, cost $350 CAD, and pushes alot of power. The specifications say I can start a car with it, and also charge battery banks. To make the power switch more convenient, I purchased a remote outlet from the local hardware store. I can turn the supply on and off using a remote control across the room.

Wiring:
Everything is the same as if it were in a car. The only difference is if you decide to use a different input source other than a head unit, like the TV or computer, you do a wiring mod on the amplifiers. The remote pin should be tied to +12V to trick the amp’s power relay. That’s it. Everything should still be fused, because at 50 AMPs DC from a wall supply, wires will singe.

Using an old Fosgate Parametric Controller, I control the volume via a wired remote. This allows full volume control over the amps.

Test Bench:

The system is great when it’s too hot or cold outside when you need to test equipment. On a regular occurrence I test amplifiers, subwoofers, head-units, and sub enclosures in my basement. it’s hard to rewire your car just to test one sub, or another amp, so maximum access, is two thumbs up.

Testing Subwoofers:

I test these for damage and performance. Having the audio source being a computer I can run tone generators and fully control test wave magnitudes, and frequency. Can’t really do that with a head-unit in your car can you?

I first run a couple songs into the sub (crossed-over for protection) to listen for an obvious problem. I then go to the tone generator, and range a low magnitude wave into the sub from 2 Hz to 100 Hz. At 6 Hz or so, I can watch the sub go into full excursion very slowly, and rhythmically. If the coil is messed up, you can move the sub around like on it’s side to hear if the coil scratches the internals etc, etc.

Testing for blown coils is a pretty simple too, since indoors, you have access to the speaker posts, so for DVC subs, you can switch leads pretty easy, and test for failed coils.

Testing Amplifiers:

Again with the tone generator, I can test the performance of cross-overs in amps, and whether or not the amp has problems. Same goes for head units

Head Units:

You can completely test a head-unit on the power supply. Access to the twelve volts is clean and easy to get at. This is good if you want to map the harness. Power is pretty simple to pick out, but speaker outs, and speaker phasing is a little trickier. It’s much easier to do this with the use of a test bench in a warm indoor environment rather than in the car during the winter, when your hands are crippled, and your sitting on a screwdriver, balancing the deck in your lap, holding ten wires, nursing a leg that fell asleep, and trying to hold two wires together while turning up the volume with your tongue.

Future Improvements:

The lack of channels sucks for DVDs. However, when I muster the cash to go Home Audio, I’ll have an 11 speaker center channel.

The number one reason to do this for home audio purposes is if you wire in a volume controller to you amplifier inputs, you can run any Car Audio Subwoofer you can afford for Sub Bass instead of the limited selection of Home Audio Subwoofers. There is no way a Home Audio sub could out perform Car Audio SPL equipment in your basement. This is also your only chance to run JL/Vega Strokers/Soundstream Subs etc etc for Home Audio Subs.