BTCC Handling

The Audis also used a cylinder head from the V8, which was then angle milled all to heck (the exhaust valves stand nearly straight up OE 16/20v heads) and ported to within a mm of their lives.

IIRC their interpretation of "original suspension type" also ruffled some feathers.

DaewooOfDeath wrote: So, like, you mean to tell me that building this "Mondeo Strut" was probably pricier than just making a dedicated suspension? And this is how the Audis got so low.

The 06+ Ford sport tracs have the rear CV's going though the frame just like the audi, I guess its more of a race car then i thought

(hard to see in the picture)

DaewooOfDeath wrote:

alfadriver wrote: Because the whole FWD and RWD arguments we've heard over and over again are overrated.

Yeah, I'm mostly interested in the technical tricks. I have a nose heavy front driver sedan I'd like to make turn better. It already turns much better than most RWD cars I've driven, but nowhere near as well as the BTCC rigs did.

Start with a bigger(stiffer) rear ant=sway bar, then perhaps stiffer rear springs, like the B spec cars do.

In reply to iceracer:

Yeah. On my autocross(STF) Mazda2 I'm up to 700# front and 550# rear springs. It seems no sway bars works well for putting power down on corner exit since an LSD is not class legal. I suspect adding a diff would allow more sway bar to be added for less camber loss in turns.

iceracer wrote:

DaewooOfDeath wrote:

alfadriver wrote: Because the whole FWD and RWD arguments we've heard over and over again are overrated.

Yeah, I'm mostly interested in the technical tricks. I have a nose heavy front driver sedan I'd like to make turn better. It already turns much better than most RWD cars I've driven, but nowhere near as well as the BTCC rigs did.

Start with a bigger(stiffer) rear ant=sway bar, then perhaps stiffer rear springs, like the B spec cars do.

I'm already on 500 lb front springs, 600 lb rear springs and no bars.

It's time to start running driveshafts through the frame rails for me.

Knurled wrote:

pinchvalve wrote: I remember reading that the large diameter of the tires was not to cram wide rubber under the car, it was there only to clear massive brakes. They were relatively narrow compared to what they could have been.

It's better than that. The rule said that no part of the bodywork may touch the ground if a tire were completely deflated. Solution: Rubberband tires so you can get the car down low/sideskirts as low as possible for aero reasons. The larger brakes were just a convenient bonus. "No action should have only one goal"

Thats a hilarious way to write a rule that means no body parts can be lower than the bottom of the wheel

In reply to Opti:

That's not the same thing, though. Barring a tire rule, a team would be able to use runflat tires, for instance.

Ah, the glory days of BTCC, when they adhered to the "Super Touring" rule set (or Class 2 ITC if you will). I loved those cars. In my opinion the rules were perfect. Not too spec-car'ish like they have today. I had a subscription to "Racecar Engineering" and "Race Tech" during that time which often went in to the details of these cars. Both magazines were from the UK and were very good during the 90's but sort of declined after that.

Regarding suspension, it had to be of the original factory "type" (struts, a-arms, trailing arms what have you). Pickup points on the chassis could be moved by 25mm in any direction. The rest was "free" as they say (custom built). From what I read the move from 18" wheels to 19" wheels was not for bigger brakes, but to better accommodate suspension packaging (taller spindles, struts with less KPI etc). The bodies had to be factory spec, but all extraneous brackets could be removed. I believe Audi was the first team to build the roll cage first, and then weld factory provided body panels around the cage. Roll cages is where the Super Touring cars really redefined things. The cages were incredible, almost entirely focused on torsional rigidity (with safety as a natural by-product). Those guys put tubes everywhere. Today's BTCC cars are much more limited in this respect, as is DTM.

As previously pointed out, the firewall had to remain unmodified, but beyond that they could stuff the engines as far back and down as they liked. And they did. Sometimes you could barely see the engine down there!

The series was rev limited to 8500 RPM to reduce cost. What that resulted in was cam profiles with enormous durations, to get more area under the lift curve. The result was top ends that barely lasted one race. Max power near the end of the series was about 320 hp from 2 liters.

I liked the aero rules also. The wing had to fit into a theoretical “box” looking in side view, but could be any profile you wanted as long as if fit in the box (roughly 6” x 6” or so). In front view the wing could not be “visible”, i.e. it could not protrude beyond the silhouette of the body. So if you had a wide car, you could have a wide wing. Narrow car – narrow wing. Much better than the spec surf boards they put on GT cars these days, man those are ugly. BTCC splitters could be anything as long as you could not see it protrude beyond the front bumper when looking down from above. So car with a protruding front bumper could have a big splitter. A car with a flush front end not so much. I liked these rules because it brought forth the natural advantages or disadvantages of the factory car. The Volvo 850’s had the advantage of very wide track, since they were a wide car. But this hurt them in terms of frontal area. And so on…

Here are a few pics I have on my drive:

In reply to DaewooOfDeath:

Thanks for posting, im just sitting in the cheap seats gawking.

That is some amazing racing.

https://youtu.be/5ZQlICWEvt8

jstein77 wrote: That is some amazing racing.

Good racing, but that is the new BTCC (spec series). Try this from 1995, one of the best years of the Super Touring era:

""

Let me try that link again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJejyOFbu0

The ultimate reason they were so fast were the budgets spent to exploit the rules to the max, and as with other free for all formula in the past (Can-Am for instance) Rumors were that the big teams like Ford were spending close to £20,000,000 in 1999/2000 money. To put that in perspective, forget the current exchange rate, historically over the last 20 years the exchange rate has been around $1.6=£1.00 so that's over $30,000,000, but again that was 2000 $$'s, translate that into 2016 $$'s and it's more like $40-45 MILLION. That's more than a top line Indy car team or back of the grid F1 team to run a 'production' body car.

Yes, they were seriously cool.

DrG wrote: Let me try that link again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJejyOFbu0

Think about the driving talent too, in the first three mins of that vid (all I've seen) they mention five drivers of which three were ex-F1!!

In reply to Adrian_Thompson: The British tracks are so cool also. Rolling up and down green hills. Fabulous corners with real names! Instead of boring numbers. Thruxton, Knockhill, Brands Hatch, Oulton Park, Donington etc...