Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Advanced Driving Lessons From F1

Since I’ve been on a bit of a car & driving tiff for the past few days, I thought I’d share something meatier with everyone: some actual driving lessons!

This first one is about the importance of balance in your car, understeer and oversteer. This is why you want to get a sports car – the street-legal, consumer-level kind – with as close to 50/50 balance as you can.

This next one is a unique video.  It shows onboard views of the track, the tach, and very importantly, the pedals.  This is a lesson in driving by a master who is, sadly, no longer with us.  This is a video of Ayrton Senna taking an Acura NSX around the track.  It shows you the driving line and it shows you how his feet control the car’s throttle, brake, and how he upshifts and downshifts.  This is truly a lesson by example from the man who dominated the world of Formula One when drivers still had to use a clutch pedal to change gears and how well you controlled all 3 pedals meant the difference between winning & losing.

This final video is about getting driving lessons from another master.  This is like a driving lesson from your grandfather – except that this senior citizen drives a sports car with more skill than you or I ever will!  Yes, this is an entertaining clip of Jackie Stewart trying to get a guy to shave 20 seconds off his lap time, and succeeding at it.  Perhaps it’s good reason for you and I to take to heart his advice about throttle control.

Road Car vs Rally Car vs F1 Car

Sports cars come in a variety of shapes and sizes. On a road track, you know that a consumer-level sports car can’t compete against a WRC rally car. You also know that neither of them are going to be able to compete against a Formula One car.

What you probably don’t know is just how badly one will beat the other.

Here’s Top Gear’s humorous take on it, and you’ll see just how much each step up outclasses the other on one lap around Silverstone on a somewhat wet and slick day.

McLaren F1 or Ferrari Enzo? Maybe Neither.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that dream cars, or dream anything for that matter, aren’t really all they’re cracked up to be. I’ve written before about how brands don’t have the same appeal or pull on me anymore. I think for the same reasons that previously-favorite brands lose their emotional power, dream cars lose their pull and magnetism. I suspect that even things like dream houses must also lose their luster.

Like so many millions of men around the world, I am a fan of Ferraris. I’ve also been a longtime fan of the penultimate road-legal racecar, the McLaren F1. Perhaps neither of these cars are the best-performing vehicles on the planet. You’ll find other supercars with more horsepower, faster lap times, and more impressive stats. However, you will not find anything with greater emotional appeal than the top-of-the-line Ferrari and the one-and-only McLaren F1, designed as a Formula 1 car made street-legal.

You can read in magazines or on car enthusiast websites all about what each car can do on the racetrack. But, the real question is what it’s like to really own and drive one, every day.

Perhaps it’s a sign that I really am getting older, because the fuel efficiency on these beauties is atrocious. And the maintenance cost? My goodness, the McLaren F1 will cost $120,000 per year just for regular maintenance!

Could I justify spending that much on fun? I doubt it. I’d probably go for a much more economical sports car. Yep, something “cheap” but fun like a Lotus. After all, I have some emotional attachment to the Lotus cars, too: my dad used to own and drive one.

Dream cars are usually dream cars because of their performance. Boys, young and old, want to have the most powerful and have the best, so that they feel the most powerful and feel the best. It’s really all about the emotion.

Between these two cars, I think I get more of an emotional kick out of the state-of-the-1980s-art McLaren F1 than the state-of-the-2000s-art Enzo. Even so, I don’t think I’d get enough kick from the F1 to spend $120,000 per year on it.

Take a look at the following video and see how you feel.

Red Bull Gets Automotive Enthusiasts’ Hearts Racing

Car-porn is designed to titillate. It gets guys’ hearts racing, it puts smiles on their faces, and it’s pure visual & auditory pleasure.  Differing from porn of the more fleshy variety, the coolest car-porn is made with slick camera-work, good soundtrack, and expert editing.  The end result is a little morsel of pure, meaningless pleasure for the automotive enthusiast.

I’m not a big fan of the Red Bull Formula One racing team.  Really, I’m not sure if anyone is a die-hard Red Bull racing fan.  However, I have to say this video, which has real footage and computer graphics mixed together, is an expert little promotional piece.  It’s total fluff, but it’s good fluff!

And here’s another little goodie!  It promotes Red Bull, but also the Montreal Grand Prix returning in the 2010 season!

Finally, to give you a little bit of meat – something a little educational so that you aren’t scarfing up only automotive junk food: an explanation of modern F1 car design & construction from the fine folks at Red Bull Racing!

How Handmade Japanese Knives Are Made

To a kitchen knife aficionado, japanese knives are some of the most insanely well-made cutting machines one can use.  To a collector of high-quality goods, items made by the hands of skilled artisans and masters are particularly delightful.

For all the wonders of automated manufacturing, the results that come from the skilled hands of a master blacksmith are still better than anything that rolls off a factory assembly line.  Of course, the end customer pays for this pleasure and performance – it’s something any Ferrari owner knows first-hand, and which any high-end j-knife owner also knows.

So, here are two videos from two very renowned smiths showing you how those wonderful japanese kitchen knives are made!