Category: Gear

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Automotive Art Gear Racing Ephemera

Gran Turismo 5 Release Date Announced. Finally!

Woohoo! We racing and video game geeks have been jonesing for this one for much too long. Gran Turismo 5 has finally announced a firm release date: November 2, 2010. From the screenshots shared at E3 yesterday, it looks like we’ll be seeing more vintage machines than we have in recent episodes of the series as well. From vintage ground-pounders in what looks like a pretty well stocked Trans Am field; to early iterations of the Lamborghini LP400 Countach; and an Alpine—we’ll have some real vintage machinery to sink our virtual teeth into this winter.

From the looks of things, we’ll have some fantastic tracks to try them out on as well. The Nurburgring looks incredibly well detailed with changing surfaces and grafitti. We’ll also get to try our skills on the Top Gear test track! Oh how I’ve wanted to try and keep from lifting in the Follow Through bend. Their takes on some fictional tracks in Rome and Madrid also look spectacular. The Gran Turismo series has always pushed the envelope of what is possible with each generation of gaming platform and the 5th episode looks like it’ll be leveraging the Playstation’s hardware in ways we haven’t seen yet. Looks like it’s time for me to start saving for that steering wheel interface. And with technical direction from Adrian Newey, I imagine that GT5 will stick to the series long history of unparalleled on-track realism, including the long-overdue implementation of car damage on impacts.

I’ve always understood the car manufacturers that license their designs to video game developers have always been reticent to let their cars look all banged up at the end of the race; or become damaged in ways that might not represent the real-life safety systems in the cars. But GT5 has finally been able to sort the hesitation to bring added realism to the series. Hooray!

Pre-Order at Gran Turismo’s site.

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Gear

Bell Release Star Classic Retro Helmet

The Bell Star helmet, launched in 1966, was the world’s first full-face motorsports helmet. That Bell would introduce a quantum technological leap forward like the full-face had come to be expected. After all, Bell invented the motorsports helmet in 1954, significantly upgraded the design with the addition of expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam a couple years later and quickly earned the admiration and support of the world’s top motorsport racers and enthusiasts.

Many famous drivers such as Jacky Ickx, Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Gilles Villeneuve and many others have all worn the Bell Star to protect their head in the seventies.
Fast-forward 40-odd years to 2009 and Bell is again launching a helmet called Star Classic to the delight of true classic car enthusiasts and historic car drivers. The Star Classic reintroduces the same shape as the famous Bell Star from the seventies but is produced to the latest safety standard (Snell SA2005) using the most modern production techniques and high tech materials.

  • Famous Bell Star design as worn by famous F1 drivers in the seventies
  • High tech lightweight carbon-Kevlar® composite shell combined with multiple densities liner
  • Snell SA 2005 homologation for highest level of safety
  • Available with Hans® “post” clips fitted as original equipment and FIA 8858 label

Recommended Retail Price: euro € 570.00 + Tax euro € 660.00 + Tax (with Hans® clips)
Via: BellRacing.info

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Chicane News For Sale Gear Racing Ephemera

Announcing Chicane Trackwear and The Chicane Shop

This is a big day for The Chicane. We finally get to let you in on something that we’ve been dying to share on the blog for some time.

After months of work, we’re finally ready to debut the first pieces of a line of vintage racing inspired clothing. Chicane Trackwear will ultimately include a variety of garments and accessories inspired by our love of vintage racing: everything from our favorite racing models, marques, teams, races, and eras of auto racing history.

The first items are two t-shirts from two very different parts of our vintage racing heritage. The Riverside International Raceway t-shirt is inspired by the early races held at the track in 1957. There are a lot of tracks that we’d like to feature on t-shirt graphics. But for our first, we though it was important to celebrate one of America’s great Lost Tracks. It would be obvious to have a Green Hell shirt, or a Circuito Palermo (and I suspect we’ll have one of each eventually), but celebrating America’s sportscar racing heritage has always been an important part of The Chicane, and there’s not many tracks more missed than Riverside.

The Yamura Motors t-shirt is our way of showing appreciation for the fictional Formula 1 team at the heart of John Frankenheimer’s legendary film, Grand Prix. In a few frames of the movie, you can see the Yamura pit crews gathering around Pete Aron’s machine wearing coveralls with a graphic very like this one. Most people might not understand it; but when someone does it’s magic.

Available exclusively from the newly launched—and soon to expand—Chicane Shop.

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Gear Racing Ephemera

Luggage to Fit Your Classic

After you’ve finished restoring your vintage sportscar, after you’ve accessorized it in period options, after you’ve carefully placed your “Last Open Road” decal on the rear window, you’re ebay searches are likely to turn to some of the rarer accessories for your ride; the factory luggage. Manufacturers continue the tradition today and everyone from Ferrari to Porsche to Mercedes offers, at prices to match the cars, custom luggage designed to fit precisely in the diminutive trunk.

Don’t fret if you can’t find the original Triumph dealer bag to fit under the bonnet of your TR3. Austrian specialty luggage maker Jochen 70 has released a line of bags designed to fit in your classic, and look appropriate doing it. You can even order with your choice of colored racing stripes to match your livery. Following in the tradition of specialty motoring luggage, sadly, is the expense. Their launch bag, available only to participants of this year’s Mille Miglia and customized with the driver’s name and car number, are available for €1,000. Yeesh.

Let’s hope the expense is simply the Mille Miglia Driver tax and that once the final line is available, it’ll be so at a variety of price points.

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Gear Video

Traqmate: Sophisticated Data Acquisition


This video of a Lotus 11 at VIR equipped with a Traqmate data acquisition unit is fascinating. The Traqmate system relies on a couple of core modules to provide fairly sophisticated data for your lapping. The heart of the system is a high-accuracy GPS receiver that records your vehicle’s position 4 times per second. Coupled with an accelerometer to measure speed and G-forces, the system paints a picture of your performance throughout the race. Back at your computer, mate the data to the Traqview analysis application to visualize this data overlaid on a map of the track, or when attached to a video camera, watch a video game-esque playback of your race. If your race group has several members using the system, it can marry the data from all of the participants to show the entire racing group’s performance; allowing you to swap notes with your friends on the track. The system allows you to ‘see’ your race from a completely different perspective. Neat stuff.
They also offer a variety of accessories such as bullet cameras to get good camera positioning on the car, and a module to attach your tachometer to the system to record RPM over the course of the race (as seen in the playback video above). Fantastic stuff.

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Gear

Looking the Part: OMP’s New Vintage Line

It looks like there are more and more options for the vintage racer that doesn’t want to look like a NASCAR driver in the pits. OMP has renewed their vintage offerings with a line of excellent FIA compliant, fire-resistant garments worthy of your vintage racing car. They look absolutely brilliant and offer another good alternative to Dunlop Blues (always a good choice).

Their Vintage Superleggera one piece suit is three layers of, as the name suggests, very lightweight knitted material weighing only 280 grams per square meter. Race suits that look tasteful are always hard to find. And always expensive. I’m glad to see more companies entering the vintage market. It was only a few years ago that the only option for vintage-styled race suits were small boutique tailors that made suits of excellent quality, but at extremely high prices. While I’m a bit mixed on yielding the entire market to the mass producers of the world, I am glad to see some price competition from the likes of larger producers like OMP and Sparco.

The boots in the new line are, arguably, the real highlight of the group. Although we’ve looked at vintage-styled offerings from Puma in the past, and Piloti offers race boots that don’t interfere too much with a vintage aesthetic, these Carrera boots look almost as if Jim Clark just kicked them off.

I find it amazing (and disappointing) that ‘super obnoxious colors’ has become such a shorthand for “racing” that we have to commend racewear makers for their restraint in choosing the simple, streamlined, unadorned lines that have been the hallmark or motosport since its inception. That’s always been the point, strip away the unnecessary; yank off the bumpers, remove the chrome strips — this is the defining characteristic of racing aesthetic. The Carrera boots are an excellent example of extending this philosophy.

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Gear

Video Tutorial: Safety Wire

As we start to reassemble Paul’s Vee (hopefully) in time for this year’s Spring Brake, I realized that I didn’t have a good technique for safety wiring.
Jimmy’s Garage to the rescue.

Amazon offers a starter kit , and also this monster SK Hand Tool version with a spring-powered return. Keep those twists tight, people!

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Gear Racing Ephemera

Magic of Motoring Gear

Shell has picked up the flag planted by Grand Prix Originals in offering a wide series of garments and accessories that evoke the history of Shell’s racing effort (in particular, their sponsorship of Jochen Rindt) under the name Magic of Motoring. Perhaps the standout of the collection is this LM Jacket, named for the Ferrari 275 LM that Jochen Rindt brilliantly piloted to victory in the 1965 24 Hours of LeMans.

It’s damn-near perfectly executed and if your friends don’t know any better, they’d believe it was dead-stock vintage sewn in ’66. The details are what really make it, from the small X-100 racing fuel patch on the breast, to the vintage Shell logo, to the “5 cans” graphic on the lining; it’s truly a splendid jacket. Unfortunately it’s not on my immediate purchase list for 2 reasons. 1: £160 is a touch steep for a cotton jacket. More importantly in my case is reason 2; it’s white, which means it would be stained about 20 minutes after I put it on for the first time. That being said, it’s a spectacularly realized version of the type of garments I’d like to see more of: Garments that not only commemorate vintage racing, but look period-appropriate. No airbrushed or heavily Photoshop filtered racecar shirts for me, thank you.

While the price on that jacket is a touch high, it’s not so high that I wouldn’t still consider it. An easier sell, though, is a very nice series of T-shirts. Certainly more affordable, they’re well designed and, like the jacket, look fairly period-appropriate. Although T-shirts as anything but undershirt weren’t popular at the time, the graphic and print method employed on these shirts look like it could have come from the ’60s. Naturally, my affinity for 500cc Formula 3 cars is coming through as I pick this shirt honoring the 1950 500cc International Race as my favorite. Each is inspired by the photography and illustrations that made up the series of “Shell Successes” booklets published in the ’60s to commemorate victories by competitors in all series of motorsport using Shell fuel. Good Stuff.

I would be remiss if I also didn’t point out the one thing that makes this series particularly appealing to vintage racers. They also offer a fully FIA compliant race suit in an equally appealing vintage style. Similar to the LM Jacket, it features a small X-100 breast patch, shell logo, and red stripes down the arms. It is also available with custom embroidered name panel on the opposite breast. It looks every bit as authentic as Dunlop Blues for your race weekends.

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Gear

Stirling Moss: Style Icon

Ok, ordinarily we don’t put Sir Stirling at the top of the Best Dressed list. Trackside, however, many vintage racers could use the inspiration. Look at this photo. Dunlop blues and a non-airbrushed helmet tucked under his arm, as the racing gods intended. If you have a BRDC patch for the breast, all the better.
Technically, yes, you could wear your Team M&Ms race suit. And I’m sure it’s fireproof and everything. But then you’d be wearing a Team M&Ms race suit. You’ve spared no expense making your vintage racer period-correct where possible. You’ve probably retained the original color, placed your racing number and sponsor stickers with care. Begrudgingly increased the height of that roll-bar, mumbling about authenticity under your breath no doubt. It’s not a big leap to take that same attention to detail and apply it to the car’s single most important component—the driver.

Of course the racing drivers of old never worried about pesky things like fire. They just straightened their ties and got on with it, just like our fried Mike Hawthorne here. Thankfully, Racewear.co.uk manufacturers and sells a fully FIA compliant race suit in Dunlop Blue. They demonstrate exactly the kind of restraint that modern motorsport has been unable to.

That being said, they’re a bit expensive. For the more budget-minded driver Sparco’s vintage stripe racing suit from last year can be found on sale through many retailers and makes a great substitute.

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Gear

Video Option: Motorsport Hero

Motorsports Hero mounting image

A post on the Make magazine blog this morning regarding using the factory tow-hook mount on modern cars as a camera mounting point led me to this product from GoPro. The Motorsports Hero camera mount package offers options for mounting video cameras in a variety of ways on your car or helmet. I often see cars at the track with cameras mounted to the rollbar, but I know that many monoposto drivers have had trouble coming up with mounting options for their cars. The GoPro site shows cameras mounted on helmets, windscreens, suspension components or bodywork… certainly you’ll be able to find a spot on your racing car.

Video over your shoulder can be a one-step method for improving your track times, especially if your racing group compares videos. You can study the corners you hesitate in, your racing line, and road surface to help your times from day to day, or from race weekend to race weekend.

I think the real possibility for benefit within the historic racing community here is to compile these videos in a central location to help study-up on new tracks, or improve your own times by observing the laps of your fellow drivers in one place you’ve never been able to—the drivers’ seat. So let’s start seeing these videos you’ve been shooting on the web somewhere. Start loading them up, drivers—we want to see them too.