RE: Aston F1 drivers help out Valkyrie testing

[macky17]

threespires said:

napoleondynamite said:

That F1 input will be absolutely critical for negotiating the tricky apex on the gravel drive between delivery truck and air conditioned storage barn.

A silly remark.
What the owners do with their cars is up to them. So they might sit in air conditioned luxury alongside the owners other hypercars, only to be driven occasionally.
That's the reality of having a car collection. All the cars in the collection cars only get driven occasionally. It's impossible to drive them all at once.
There are dozens of P/Hrs who have a nice car tucked away in a garage for high day and holiday use only. Me included.

I bet you’re a whizz at parties.

[WCZ]

threespires said:

A silly remark.
What the owners do with their cars is up to them. So they might sit in air conditioned luxury alongside the owners other hypercars, only to be driven occasionally.
That's the reality of having a car collection. All the cars in the collection cars only get driven occasionally. It's impossible to drive them all at once.
There are dozens of P/Hrs who have a nice car tucked away in a garage for high day and holiday use only. Me included.

there's always a minority of owners who us them lots too.

[cookie1600]

jakeb said:

is anyone an Aston F1 driver?

Caroll Shelby or Roy Salvatori?

[Ahonen]

threespires said:

napoleondynamite said:

That F1 input will be absolutely critical for negotiating the tricky apex on the gravel drive between delivery truck and air conditioned storage barn.

A silly remark.
What the owners do with their cars is up to them. So they might sit in air conditioned luxury alongside the owners other hypercars, only to be driven occasionally.
That's the reality of having a car collection. All the cars in the collection cars only get driven occasionally. It's impossible to drive them all at once.
There are dozens of P/Hrs who have a nice car tucked away in a garage for high day and holiday use only. Me included.

It was called a joke or a bit of light-hearted observational humour. It was also rather funny and probably very close to the mark because no one will want to put any miles on it for fear of ruining its investment potential.

For the record I also have an old car, fairly recently restored, which has completed only a handful of miles in the four years since it was finished. It too lives in a garage where the humidity is managed constantly. My friends regularly rib me about it too but I don't get prickly about it because I know it's a slightly daft situation.

[anonymous-user]

Csb-1 said:

Why would they need approval? I have metal pressed plates on my car now; they are 100% UK road legal as the text etc conforms to the regs.

That's one to ask the designers and type approval bods, I'm not very techy when it comes to cars.

take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey said:

Surely a fat talentless individual would be a better development driver. The last thing I'd want is a car set-up to the driving preferences of someone in the 99.999999 percentile of ability.

As was indicated in another bit of PH a while back, Aston Martins are only driven "by the old and the bald".

[RacerMike]

WCZ said:

RacerMike said:

Having seen/experienced the type of feedback you get from the majority of racing drivers, these sorts of things make me laugh.

Engineer: “So what do you think?”
Driver: “Yeah good”
Engineers: “Any particular comments?”
Driver: “No not really. Seems good”

30mins later looking through data

Engineer: “Driver....did you feel like it was maybe a bit loose?”
Driver: “Ah yeah. Maybe?”
Engineer: “Yeah. You had two broken rear dampers and a snapped anti roll bar”

Generally there’s a reason why you have Vehicle Dynamics engineers drive cars. And it’s not usually because they’re rubbish at driving....quite the opposite in fact. This is very much a PR exercise to hype it up. And I don’t disagree with it!

I'm not sure about the majority but F1 drivers are very aware of the science and setup behind cars and will be able to give constructive feedback

I was generalising of course, and I've played both fiddles so my comment was slightly tongue in cheek. My day job is as a vehicle dynamics engineer, and I did some reasonably serious racing for a bit in the first half of the last decade.

Generally, apart from a few individuals who have a good engineering background or an in depth knowledge of vehicle dynamics from a great deal of practical experience, few racing drivers have the breadth of experience (least of all two sub 25 year olds who have spent their entire childhoods driving exclusively single seaters) to realistically give particularly relevant feedback for a road car....even an extreme one like Valkyrie.

I'm sure they can probably direct the team to some sort of fairly extreme track biased setup, but the reality of road car development is not limit handling chassis balance. You can do that sort of thing in the space of a couple of days, but the difficult bit is making a compromise with ride, durability and wet handling. I strongly suspect they won't be sitting in the cars for 10 days straight trying to assess whether one damper setting helps reduce head toss on the B4100 (outside Aston's factory). Sure....that attribute will be low on the list for Valkyrie, but it may well still come into it.

More likely is Max and Alex will drive the thing for a day, with a film crew present, say 'wow it's just like a racing car' for the camera, and then fly back to their home. They'll probably be filmed talking about chassis balance and power delivery (most of which the vehicle dynamics team will probably have already assessed) and then that will be that.

The ultimate fact is....if you really want useful data, there are enough guys out there who the public won't have heard of who are perfectly experienced enough to drive something like Valkyrie fast who's names aren't Verstappen or Albon.

[clarki]

Well, suppose it better be fast. 'Cos it looks terrible.

[Fishlegs]

threespires said:

napoleondynamite said:

That F1 input will be absolutely critical for negotiating the tricky apex on the gravel drive between delivery truck and air conditioned storage barn.

A silly remark.
What the owners do with their cars is up to them. So they might sit in air conditioned luxury alongside the owners other hypercars, only to be driven occasionally.
That's the reality of having a car collection. All the cars in the collection cars only get driven occasionally. It's impossible to drive them all at once.
There are dozens of P/Hrs who have a nice car tucked away in a garage for high day and holiday use only. Me included.

Hook, line, sinker, rod, and copy of Angling Times.

[jhoneyball]

News just in -- aston to cancel the Valkyrie racing program?

https://racer.com/2020/02/18/aston-martin-set-to-c...

[Mannginger]

I just saw that, that's a crying shame if true

[RacerMike]

Seems they already did the video bit...

https://youtu.be/BZP-XgaiaJM

[bobo79]

Nice bit of distraction Way from the rather bigger story that they have axes the Le Mans programme - and with it a big chunk of the interesting provenance of the car.

Not a looker either, is it?

[jakeb]

And there goes the only vaguely attractive bit. The stickers.

Does F1 really sell high end sports cars? Its all about brand and all that wk. Sticky people wandering around the pit lane.

[pacdes]

threespires said:

napoleondynamite said:

That F1 input will be absolutely critical for negotiating the tricky apex on the gravel drive between delivery truck and air conditioned storage barn.

A silly remark.
What the owners do with their cars is up to them. So they might sit in air conditioned luxury alongside the owners other hypercars, only to be driven occasionally.
That's the reality of having a car collection. All the cars in the collection cars only get driven occasionally. It's impossible to drive them all at once.
There are dozens of P/Hrs who have a nice car tucked away in a garage for high day and holiday use only. Me included.

Cock.

[MikeT66]

jhoneyball said:

News just in -- aston to cancel the Valkyrie racing program?

https://racer.com/2020/02/18/aston-martin-set-to-c...

Yes, saw that on a few motorsport websites. Very disappointing news - I think the car looks bloody good, actually, and would have loved to have seen this speeding down Mulsanne alongside the Toyota and others in Le Mans Hypercar.

Sadly, I think it looks now like Hypercar is pretty much a still-born concept. I was really looking forward to WEC 2021 with road-going cars once again as the top class.

[A1VDY]

threespires said:

napoleondynamite said:

That F1 input will be absolutely critical for negotiating the tricky apex on the gravel drive between delivery truck and air conditioned storage barn.

A silly remark.
What the owners do with their cars is up to them. So they might sit in air conditioned luxury alongside the owners other hypercars, only to be driven occasionally.
That's the reality of having a car collection. All the cars in the collection cars only get driven occasionally. It's impossible to drive them all at once.
There are dozens of P/Hrs who have a nice car tucked away in a garage for high day and holiday use only. Me included.

Cars no matter the make are made to be driven and in all weather's not 'tucked away'.
What's the point in spending a huge pot of money that doesn't see the light of day.
My Mk1 lotus cortina (for instance) although hardly a super car is a pre air flow ex Lotus developement with Ally doors, boot lid, A frame, original paint, rust free 33k mile example is used for shopping, days out and to do the school run occasionally.
Its meant to be used and used it is..

[RacerMike]

A1VDY said:

threespires said:

napoleondynamite said:

That F1 input will be absolutely critical for negotiating the tricky apex on the gravel drive between delivery truck and air conditioned storage barn.

A silly remark.
What the owners do with their cars is up to them. So they might sit in air conditioned luxury alongside the owners other hypercars, only to be driven occasionally.
That's the reality of having a car collection. All the cars in the collection cars only get driven occasionally. It's impossible to drive them all at once.
There are dozens of P/Hrs who have a nice car tucked away in a garage for high day and holiday use only. Me included.

Cars no matter the make are made to be driven and in all weather's not 'tucked away'.
What's the point in spending a huge pot of money that doesn't see the light of day.
My Mk1 lotus cortina (for instance) although hardly a super car is a pre air flow ex Lotus developement with Ally doors, boot lid, A frame, original paint, rust free 33k mile example is used for shopping, days out and to do the school run occasionally.
Its meant to be used and used it is..

Do you use it every day during winter when there’s salt down?

[anonymous-user]

pacdes said:

threespires said:

napoleondynamite said:

That F1 input will be absolutely critical for negotiating the tricky apex on the gravel drive between delivery truck and air conditioned storage barn.

A silly remark.
What the owners do with their cars is up to them. So they might sit in air conditioned luxury alongside the owners other hypercars, only to be driven occasionally.
That's the reality of having a car collection. All the cars in the collection cars only get driven occasionally. It's impossible to drive them all at once.
There are dozens of P/Hrs who have a nice car tucked away in a garage for high day and holiday use only. Me included.

Cock.

What's wrong with people these days? Why cant someone buy a car, and do what they want with it? Valkyrie's order book is full of a diverse range of buyers, and the hilarious thing is that because of places like PistonHeads, where every single new Aston Martin is only ever described as a steaming turd by the majority of posters, it actually meant those putting their name down for a Valkyrie were more often than not, genuine enthusiasts of the brand, and therefore more likely to use them than have them tucked away. Other buyers not traditionally switched on by the marque, educated themselves on what the car was and what it offered in terms of performance - those who were able to pull the trigger, are a small but fortunate group who will enjoy an utterly wonderful piece of engineering later this year. Of course the other element here is that the AMR Pro meant some customers could elect to keep the Pro tucked away, and have the road going one for on-road, or on-track fun.

It wasn't a car that initially appealed to the regular hypercar crowd, because of the reputation Aston Martin had - it was assumed the car would be a slow, heavy GT car (because that's what general PH consensus thinks is all Astons can ever be), not as quick as a Porsche, not as exotic as a Ferrari. The list goes on, and unfortunately for the nay sayers, the end result has been a car with 1160bhp, weighs 1030kg (IIRC) and has a N/A V12 that revs to 11,000rpm and when you listen to it on track, with your eyes closed, it's as close to a 1990's F1 car as anything road legal has ever got.

[A1VDY]

RacerMike said:

A1VDY said:

threespires said:

napoleondynamite said:

That F1 input will be absolutely critical for negotiating the tricky apex on the gravel drive between delivery truck and air conditioned storage barn.

A silly remark.
What the owners do with their cars is up to them. So they might sit in air conditioned luxury alongside the owners other hypercars, only to be driven occasionally.
That's the reality of having a car collection. All the cars in the collection cars only get driven occasionally. It's impossible to drive them all at once.
There are dozens of P/Hrs who have a nice car tucked away in a garage for high day and holiday use only. Me included.

Cars no matter the make are made to be driven and in all weather's not 'tucked away'.
What's the point in spending a huge pot of money that doesn't see the light of day.
My Mk1 lotus cortina (for instance) although hardly a super car is a pre air flow ex Lotus developement with Ally doors, boot lid, A frame, original paint, rust free 33k mile example is used for shopping, days out and to do the school run occasionally.
Its meant to be used and used it is..

Do you use it every day during winter when there’s salt down?

I use an old fiesta St as a runaround at my site which we took as a trade in a few years ago and we both jump in that so no I don't use the LC on a daily basis or on salt roads but it does get used regularly whether the roads are wet or dry all year round. Tucked up without use generally causes all sorts of problems..

[The Hypno-Toad]

So....

A hardcore, no compromise, racing car that you can supposedly use on the road. - tick

A unique one of a kind engine - tick

Only just enough room for a passenger and a tiny amount of luggage - tick

Costs a massive amount of money - tick

Is running very, very late in its development - tick

And now would appear to have lost any chance of any racing heritage to boost its value - tick

Is no one else reminded of something?

















Hello.