Your favourite 'cheats' in motorsport
Discussion
Running in a series with some other "identical" ex one make cars a few years ago ( on a gentlemans agreement and handshake )I couldn't work out why I could never catch the two front runners who always ran within a few 10ths of each other, unless it was wet !
Spotted an ad for one of the cars recently with the complete list of mods and dyno sheets from several seasons to prove 30+ horses over standard.
Feel better now, sort of
Spotted an ad for one of the cars recently with the complete list of mods and dyno sheets from several seasons to prove 30+ horses over standard.
Feel better now, sort of
I heard a few years back that during the height of the 90's BTCC racing that teams were using mobile phone technology to "phone in" traction control software for the race, then once the race had finished, they then "phoned it out" of the car......I was told this by a certain BTCC team manager who believe me - he had some good spies.
also in the 2001 season I know of a privateer BTCC team who blatantly used a 2.2 engine, and were playing games with the MSA seals.......the team owner even had the balls to ask us to give him a 2.2 but we flat refused.
also in the 2001 season I know of a privateer BTCC team who blatantly used a 2.2 engine, and were playing games with the MSA seals.......the team owner even had the balls to ask us to give him a 2.2 but we flat refused.
robwales said:
Also I read somewhere that Ford did something on the Escort WRC that got around the rule that said that "all air going into the engine must pass through the restrictor" (or similar wording).
So while the car wasn't flat out, air was drawn through the restrictor and stored in a compression tank in the rear bumper, to be used when needed.
That was brilliant reading of the rules. It was not cheating as all the air went through the restrictor. As you say when not flat out the restrictor has spare air flow so why not pass air through and then store it for when it is needed. So while the car wasn't flat out, air was drawn through the restrictor and stored in a compression tank in the rear bumper, to be used when needed.
BigBen said:
A couple of F1 teams used a launch control system based on the EM pulse from the jump start detectors on the grid, i.e. driver could floor it but go no where until the jump start detectors were switched off which happened to coincide exactly with the lights going out, rather than the several hundered milliseconds later it took other drivers to react.
Renault was one.Ford "Allegedly!!"
GT40 at Le Mans had a false set of Piston crowns that allowed them to run a larger capacity engine, that when measured gave the correct stated capacity, any one hear of this?
RAC Rally in the mid 80's. All the sierras had a clutch or gearbox problem just after the start and just before the finish, requiring gearbox removal. The in car video showed 6 speeds in the so called 5 speed homologated box!
Best of all was the Mk2 Escort Tarmac Rally cars that were built to slightly larger tolerances??? Teams were told not to park them next to a normal Group 4 Escort,as the size difference would show!
GT40 at Le Mans had a false set of Piston crowns that allowed them to run a larger capacity engine, that when measured gave the correct stated capacity, any one hear of this?
RAC Rally in the mid 80's. All the sierras had a clutch or gearbox problem just after the start and just before the finish, requiring gearbox removal. The in car video showed 6 speeds in the so called 5 speed homologated box!
Best of all was the Mk2 Escort Tarmac Rally cars that were built to slightly larger tolerances??? Teams were told not to park them next to a normal Group 4 Escort,as the size difference would show!
JPBailey said:
I've heard of one privateer rally driver who had an impressivly big fire extinguisher in his car. It was usually filled with NOS. He believed that he wasn't the only one using that trick.
I've heard a few stories about Lancia doing that with the Integrales, the old 'extra fire extinguisher because we're safety conscious' line.Allegedly the Lancia 037, and later the Delta Gp.B cars had to have their fire extinguishers changed at every service point. Odd that.
And those three letters.... T and W, plus R. Well, his boy is living up to his father's name, and is making plenty of enemies in the Ginetta Junior series. It appears his car was made by Caterpillar and has a bulldozer blade fitted to the front, or at least and imaginary one that only he see's, yet many others feel.
One cheat which probably still goes on today for those who know. A 5p piece (or small washer) dropped into the planetary wheels in the diff of a formula car which has to run a std diff. If done properly, it will lock the diff up allowing for superior traction away from the line, etc.., and coupled with plenty of wing up front, will allow for a good fast time with a "tuned driver". To un-trick it, roll the car backwards. The coin falls out. Diff now works properly and passes scrutineering.
Oh yes, and don't forget your "Pre-Baked Tyres". A must for a fast lap time in qualifying.
And those three letters.... T and W, plus R. Well, his boy is living up to his father's name, and is making plenty of enemies in the Ginetta Junior series. It appears his car was made by Caterpillar and has a bulldozer blade fitted to the front, or at least and imaginary one that only he see's, yet many others feel.
One cheat which probably still goes on today for those who know. A 5p piece (or small washer) dropped into the planetary wheels in the diff of a formula car which has to run a std diff. If done properly, it will lock the diff up allowing for superior traction away from the line, etc.., and coupled with plenty of wing up front, will allow for a good fast time with a "tuned driver". To un-trick it, roll the car backwards. The coin falls out. Diff now works properly and passes scrutineering.
Oh yes, and don't forget your "Pre-Baked Tyres". A must for a fast lap time in qualifying.
Was going to mention the lancia stories. I've heard a few versions and remember reading an interview with an old lanica engineer somewhere where he told of how they were running nitrous through the roll cage and had hidden fuel tanks for some events as the car couldn't do some of the distances required on the amount of fuel set by the fia. Not sure how much truth there is in them but I know there was some speculation that one of the above may have contributed to Henri Toivonens accident.
knighty said:
I heard a few years back that during the height of the 90's BTCC racing that teams were using mobile phone technology to "phone in" traction control software for the race, then once the race had finished, they then "phoned it out" of the car......I was told this by a certain BTCC team manager who believe me - he had some good spies.
Not Alfa Romeo in 1994, was it? I have always been puzzled as to how the 155 was so quick that season. Its splitter would have been of little use in the slower corners, but they seemed to generate phenomenal traction when compared to the other FWD runners.
another ive read, is that in the 70's single seaters (could have been F1, cant remember) had the engine capacity checked at scrutineering. some were using larger displacement engines for qualifying, so filled the cylinder head combustion chamber with some wax to offset the displacemnet gain. mechanics pushed the car in and out of scrutineering so the engine wasnt started. when it was started it smoked a bit as the wax was blown out. Scrutes found out and ensured that cars were driven in and out of the scrutineering bay.
wasnt it Colin Chapmans Essex F1 Lotus' that had the adj height side skirts for the ground effect? when banned, they had the skirts raised in the pits and then released by a lever when on track. it was obvious as the rubber skirts left black marks on the track surface, but magically retracted when entering the pits ;-)
wasnt it Colin Chapmans Essex F1 Lotus' that had the adj height side skirts for the ground effect? when banned, they had the skirts raised in the pits and then released by a lever when on track. it was obvious as the rubber skirts left black marks on the track surface, but magically retracted when entering the pits ;-)
i was told a related story, but legal at the time, from a fuel engineer that used to supply F1 in the turbo 'rocket fuel' era. due to the secret nature of the blend etc, only a select few of the firms engineers were allowed to have anything to do with it, 8 guys from memory. 6 are dead before they saw their 50th birthdays...
often worry about the wheel changing mechanics in the F1 pitlane with all the black clouds of brake dust. Carbon aint nice in the lungs...
often worry about the wheel changing mechanics in the F1 pitlane with all the black clouds of brake dust. Carbon aint nice in the lungs...
flemke said:
BigBen said:
A couple of F1 teams used a launch control system based on the EM pulse from the jump start detectors on the grid, i.e. driver could floor it but go no where until the jump start detectors were switched off which happened to coincide exactly with the lights going out, rather than the several hundered milliseconds later it took other drivers to react.
Renault was one.Regarding launch control, there were rumours kicking around on he WRC circuit a few years back that a certain team were using GPS clocks to launch the car.
As you know, they all start at the top of the minute and all the time controls run from embedded GPS clocks, so not tricky for the driver to press a magic button ten seconds before he starts, bury the throttle pedal and let the ECU perform the start for him.
I won't name names, but I was privvy to the raw timing data and we could see there was one top team that consistently broke the start line timing beam way quicker than any of the others.
Not sure if it was cheating or not, but interesting what lengths teams might go to to gain a slight advantage.
As you know, they all start at the top of the minute and all the time controls run from embedded GPS clocks, so not tricky for the driver to press a magic button ten seconds before he starts, bury the throttle pedal and let the ECU perform the start for him.
I won't name names, but I was privvy to the raw timing data and we could see there was one top team that consistently broke the start line timing beam way quicker than any of the others.
Not sure if it was cheating or not, but interesting what lengths teams might go to to gain a slight advantage.
CNHSS1 said:
another ive read, is that in the 70's single seaters (could have been F1, cant remember) had the engine capacity checked at scrutineering. some were using larger displacement engines for qualifying, so filled the cylinder head combustion chamber with some wax to offset the displacemnet gain. mechanics pushed the car in and out of scrutineering so the engine wasnt started. when it was started it smoked a bit as the wax was blown out. Scrutes found out and ensured that cars were driven in and out of the scrutineering bay.
wasnt it Colin Chapmans Essex F1 Lotus' that had the adj height side skirts for the ground effect? when banned, they had the skirts raised in the pits and then released by a lever when on track. it was obvious as the rubber skirts left black marks on the track surface, but magically retracted when entering the pits ;-)
That was well known- Chapman had developed a "twin chassis" car, where the inner chassis had driver, engine, suspension etc but the outher chassis sat on top of this (with the logos, etc) and was pushed down to give the advantage. He was quite open about it, but they were still banned.wasnt it Colin Chapmans Essex F1 Lotus' that had the adj height side skirts for the ground effect? when banned, they had the skirts raised in the pits and then released by a lever when on track. it was obvious as the rubber skirts left black marks on the track surface, but magically retracted when entering the pits ;-)
Another famous Lotus cheat was Rindt's Lotus, where after the race the mechanics slighly bent the rear wing supports, so the car passed scrutineering.
As someone else has said, he even tried to pass off cardboard, painted silver, as a fireproof steel bulkhead
Not really a cheat more an interpretation of the rules but wasn't there one with the Le Mans Toyota GT1's. Pretty sure I read about it in Auto Sport many years ago. The rules required a certain area in the car to simulate a boot or luggage area, I'm guessing this harks back to earlier days when mechanics and tool kits rode with the cars. Toyota duly obliged but instead of leaving it empty like the competition decided to use it as most of use a boot and put things in it. In this case a fuel tank. Looking at the car it was incredibly well packaged compared with the opposition of the time.
David
David
Brabhams 'watercooled' brakes where all the water mysteriously vanished by the time the car left the pit lane, but was allowed to be replenished post race.
Tyrrells, balls in the fuel tank for which their entire seasons results were expunged
Tyrrells, balls in the fuel tank for which their entire seasons results were expunged
Edited by freedman on Thursday 19th June 10:02
In classic car racing you get to see all sorts of wonderful tricks.
One particularly fun one was hiding nitrous in your rollcage, not so much fun if you have a big enough shunt to crack the pressurized pipework mind.
Still on nitrous, when one competitor in an Alfa Romeo GTV ran a hillclimb time just one and a half second off the winning Osella prototype he was sent to scrutineering, when they opened the boot they found that it was filled with a MASSIVE nitrous tank.
The driver's explanation?
'It's me LPG tank.'
One particularly fun one was hiding nitrous in your rollcage, not so much fun if you have a big enough shunt to crack the pressurized pipework mind.
Still on nitrous, when one competitor in an Alfa Romeo GTV ran a hillclimb time just one and a half second off the winning Osella prototype he was sent to scrutineering, when they opened the boot they found that it was filled with a MASSIVE nitrous tank.
The driver's explanation?
'It's me LPG tank.'
davidn said:
Not really a cheat more an interpretation of the rules but wasn't there one with the Le Mans Toyota GT1's. Pretty sure I read about it in Auto Sport many years ago. The rules required a certain area in the car to simulate a boot or luggage area, I'm guessing this harks back to earlier days when mechanics and tool kits rode with the cars. Toyota duly obliged but instead of leaving it empty like the competition decided to use it as most of use a boot and put things in it. In this case a fuel tank. Looking at the car it was incredibly well packaged compared with the opposition of the time.
David
Yeah that was legal but the other teams didnt like it much. Wonder where the fuel tank was on the road version, unless they put it in the luggage space then as well and just called it luggage space still lol.David
Other ones I like similar to this are the Merc 190 Evos. The rules states that a rear wing wasnt allowed to obstruct the view for the rear screen, so Merc built the cover you can see over the top couple of inches of the screen and had the massive wing in line with that.
Also the entire development of the Moby Dick Porsche is fairly interesting.
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