To Modify, Replace or Maximize?

This morning I read a thought provoking post by @Willem Toet. It covered his experience of competing in the British Hillclimb Championship. This struck a cord with me as in the 1990's a guy who competed in the series kept his car at my families farm. As a result we used to get many trips to hillclimb and sprint events. My personal highlight was a free flying lap of Silverstone in a helicopter at top gear live in 1998.

Back to the Hillclimb's our driver was very enthusiastic but not that skilled or consistent. But he was incredibly quick to blame his car and to go out and order the upgraded parts that his competitors were using. Once fitted his car was often so much quicker that the stopwatch recorded him as having gone slower.

When possible I used to go out observing on the track and make notes, Generally we were in the top 3 off the start line, but at the corners is where it would all go wrong. My favorite place to observe from was just below the second hairpin at Prescott.  This gave an excellent view of Pardon hairpin and allowed me a square view of the cars under braking on the way in and acceleration on the way out. I found suitable reference points and kept a record of the drivers times at this hairpin. 

We were typically 2-3 seconds off the pace in this corner alone. In my view this was down to our drivers inconstant braking, over exaggerated steering inputs and an over heavy right foot. Years later I watched the episode of Top Gear that featured Sir Jackie Stewart teaching James May to drive quickly. Jackie explained the application of the throttle very neatly, "Don't apply any throttle until your sure that you won't have to take it off again" 

Overall on Prescott we were loosing around 8 seconds to Roy Lane and Roger Moran. On one occasion we got excited because we had done our run in the dry, but they had to do theirs in the wet. They still beat our time. 

But why were we so far off the pace? We were pretty much level pegging them off the line, we had the same tires and aero parts. In my view our driver didn't understand driving or his car. New parts were hopelessly thrown at the car in the blind hope the would make up lots of time, no set up or evaluation work was ever done and most of the time these slowed us down. 

At the time I was in my early teens, so wasn't taken very seriously. But I couldn't help thinking that we were giving away time unnecessarily for example the car's 6 gallon fuel tank was filled to the max each morning but only took around 1 litre after each run. The sliding skirt system was never set or adjusted, this would have given us more downforce with little drag penalty. We never did any representative setup work on the car to see where we really were or where we could improve?  Whilst I never got to drive the car, i felt that a more consistent and disciplined driver could have gained 2 seconds on each of Prescott's hairpins and probably a further 2 seconds at the chicane further up.

When I compare the drivers, im not comparing them with someone as talented as my idol Ayrton Senna, im just comparing them with a theoretical driver who has a technically correct style. So if better driving could have clawed back 6 out of 8 seconds, then how many opportunities would this have opened to properly set our car up?

Our team disbanded in 2000 and I completed an Engineering Apprenticeship. I never really got back into Motorsports, but have frequently thought what could have been. I have also seen this situation occurring in other contexts. I've seen people condemning perfectly good machines and equipment, not because there was actually wrong, but because the hadn't got the best out of that machine.

As a young apprentice I optimized the set-up of a 1940's Ward Turret Lathe. As were at full capacity we subcontracted some of these pieces out to a local CNC machining company. One day that companies owner was at our factory and made a beeline for my turret lathe setup which was manufacturing the same parts that he had done for us. 

We had a custom made Roller box that could turn 3 outside diameters in one pass and also carried a 20mm drill bit in the center. Doing these 4 operations in a single pass enabled us to knock around 50% off the cycle time of the CNC Machine in the year 2001. The other company owner who was watching in amazement was determined to find fault and checked the entire batch. All the parts were within 0.02 mm where the customer only required 0.05 mm. 

This guy's next addition to his business was a toolroom so that could manufacture his own custom tooling. He went on to make some pretty serious money after incorporating those lessons.

I'm now 30 and have learnt a fair bit over the years, but still have much more to learn. But one thing that I have constantly observed many peoples desire to upgrade or replace things is driven by their failure to maximize what they already have.  Ive never been a big fan of Michael Schumacher, but he regularly finished in-front of superior cars and in my view drivers who were more talented.

Why? Simply because he made the most of every opportunity.