Cheats Options

[shaun979]

Reading the other thread on rev limiters and McG's mention of air restrictors easily cheated led me to think of all the cheating that I've heard or read of. I think it will be interesting to hear more from everyone else on the types of cheating (or interesting rule interpretation) they know of.


Here are some I can recall..

- Cammed wing flaps that slide and flatten at high speed (sufficient downforce and drag), but that don't flatten under a simple deflection test (downward force only).

- Elastic or hydraulic connecting rods

- Reground stock cams to smaller base circle for more lift

- Camber cutting/forming tires (solid axle)

- Growing tires (gearing rule), treating tires, etc.

- Bending sharp edge orifice restrictor plates very slightly around the orifices with a hard ball and a hammer

- Intake manifolds full of tiny precision laser burned holes. Later uncovered by colored fuel showing on manifold exterior.

- Nitro in oil with breather venting to intake (4 stroke)

- Nitro in oil (2 stroke)


Let's hear more

BTW, how DO you get around venturi type restrictors? There are so many classes that run them, in addition to SEO type.

[phantom II]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Yunick

Originally posted by shaun979
Reading the other thread on rev limiters and McG's mention of air restrictors easily cheated led me to think of all the cheating that I've heard or read of. I think it will be interesting to hear more from everyone else on the types of cheating (or interesting rule interpretation) they know of.


Here are some I can recall..

- Cammed wing flaps that slide and flatten at high speed (sufficient downforce and drag), but that don't flatten under a simple deflection test (downward force only).

- Elastic or hydraulic connecting rods

- Reground stock cams to smaller base circle for more lift

- Camber cutting/forming tires (solid axle)

- Growing tires (gearing rule), treating tires, etc.

- Bending sharp edge orifice restrictor plates very slightly around the orifices with a hard ball and a hammer

- Intake manifolds full of tiny precision laser burned holes. Later uncovered by colored fuel showing on manifold exterior.

- Nitro in oil with breather venting to intake (4 stroke)

- Nitro in oil (2 stroke)


Let's hear more

BTW, how DO you get around venturi type restrictors? There are so many classes that run them, in addition to SEO type.

[Dallas84]

Originally posted by shaun979

BTW, how DO you get around venturi type restrictors? There are so many classes that run them, in addition to SEO type.

Toyota managed for a while in 1995 unil thet were caught TTE Turbo restrictor

[shaun979]

Originally posted by phantom II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Yunick

Thanks, I had heard and forgotten about the scaled down car and the coiled fuel line, hahah.

Thanks for the link Dallas, do you know if there's a detailed diagram of the described system anywhere? I have a rough idea what they mean, but would like to see exactly.. especially the portion about the hose, clip, and catches.

[desmo]

Didn't Benetton get caught dumping ball bearings into the fuel tanks on their last pit once to make the minimum weight? Nice one, that.

[Dallas84]

Shaun, I have not seen a diagram, but like your self I would be keen see one.

Desmo, I think this was Tyrrell, who were caught allegedly topping up their cooling water tank with water that contained lead shot to bring the car back up to weight. Ironically the team was purchased by BAR who went on to have ballast problems of their own.

[Supercar]

Claude Rouelle was using leaded wheels for tech inspections.

[shaun979]

What would he do if they wanted to recheck the car after the race?

[Supercar]

Not winning is one of the solutions. Another is to try to put that lead back somehow. Maybe put those leaded wheels on for the last few laps of the race, if pitstops are allowed.

[Lukin]

The 80kg rim story and some of Claude's other stories are pretty bad.

[zac510]

Originally posted by shaun979
Thanks for the link Dallas, do you know if there's a detailed diagram of the described system anywhere? I have a rough idea what they mean, but would like to see exactly.. especially the portion about the hose, clip, and catches.

Thinking of trying it?

[Pat Clarke]

Quote....."Claude Rouelle was using leaded wheels for tech inspections".

I understand Claude's interpretative method of getting the Volvo past the scales was to use a set with the tyres inflated with the liquid gas H2O =]
Regards
Pat

[Canuck]

In one of (I think) Vizard's book on nitrous, he details a Pro-Stock drag car that had cleverly hidden a system on board. The car went from mid-pack to top-rung over night and stayed for some time. Each time it got teched, they'd pass with flying colours. For one reason or another they made them leave the hood on for the tech and that's when they got popped. They'd hidden a small bottle and N20 solenoid in the back of the scoop, glassed right in. Two tiny holes pointed into the mouth of the carb when the hood was on and the wiring was connected through the hood's Dzus fasteners. Beautiful.

[biercemountain]

Was it Penske that acid dipped the bodywork of their Trans Am cars til they were as soft as sheet aluminum?

I recall hearing about a tech inspector catching them because he gently leaned against one of the cars and the body panel buckled unexpectedly.

[ensign14]

Originally posted by Dallas84
Desmo, I think this was Tyrrell, who were caught allegedly topping up their cooling water tank with water that contained lead shot to bring the car back up to weight. Ironically the team was purchased by BAR who went on to have ballast problems of their own.

It was Tyrrell, but the ballast was perfectly legal as the regulations allowed it to be added if you could not remove it from the car without the aid of tools. Which you could not.

Plus FISA disqualified Tyrrell at the final hearing having changed the charge - instead of ballast they said there were hydrocarbons (so they had been illegally topping up with fuel). Although the level of hydrocarbon kept changing throughout the hearing and eventually it seemed that any hydrocarbon was leftovers from the water churn's previous fuel-carrying life.

Other things include the Brabham very heavy rear wing, that used to get placed on the car for weighing purposes, the water-cooled brake controversy in early '82 that indirectly led to the death of Gilles Villeneuve, turbo engines and a Lotus mechanic leaning on Jochen Rindt's rear wing at the British GP 1970 to ensure it was below maximum height (although it turned out that the measurements were wrong and it was always legal anyway).

[perfectelise]

Originally posted by Supercar
Not winning is one of the solutions... .

Like Damon Hill in the Arrows in Hungary ?

[Fat Boy]

Originally posted by perfectelise


Like Damon Hill in the Arrows in Hungary ?

Juicy.....continue.

[jcbc3]

news to me. Please elaborate or STFU.

[mtkawboy]

Vizard was referring to Rusty Glidden's nitrous experiment

[Ross Stonefeld]

Second time in a week I've heard the Hungaroring Arrows referenced, previously it was 'bent'

[Scoots]

Smokey's the king of "exploiting" the rules.

My Smokey favorites (of those not mentioned before in this thread):

Rule: No machining allowed of the intake.
Response: Extrudehone http://www.extrudehone.com/

Rule: Minimum ride height checked by sliding a pipe with a diameter equal to min ride height under the car.
Response: Had mechanics standing at the ready to help inspectors ... the car was parked on their toes, until Smokey pissed off an inspector and the inspector shoved one of the mechanics away from the car ... the mechanic got a bruised bum. Smokey's response was to put rows of aspirin tablets on top of the springs. The car would pass tech inspection (which were then only before the race), and as soon as it hit a bump all of the tablets would shatter and the car would drop.

Smokey, and I think most F1 engineers, felt that there was not "spirit" of the rules, merely how they were enforced. If you can get around the enforcement then that was the fault of the enforcers.

[shaun979]

Originally posted by zac510


Thinking of trying it?

Hahah, no. Just want to be aware of as much of it as possible and be able to protest it defensively if it should ever come to that.

Thanks for the diagram!

[Dallas84]

Originally posted by Scoots
Smokey's the king of "exploiting" the rules.

My Smokey favorites (of those not mentioned before in this thread):

Rule: No machining allowed of the intake.
Response: Extrudehone http://www.extrudehone.com/

Rule: Minimum ride height checked by sliding a pipe with a diameter equal to min ride height under the car.
Response: Had mechanics standing at the ready to help inspectors ... the car was parked on their toes, until Smokey pissed off an inspector and the inspector shoved one of the mechanics away from the car ... the mechanic got a bruised bum. Smokey's response was to put rows of aspirin tablets on top of the springs. The car would pass tech inspection (which were then only before the race), and as soon as it hit a bump all of the tablets would shatter and the car would drop.

Smokey, and I think most F1 engineers, felt that there was not "spirit" of the rules, merely how they were enforced. If you can get around the enforcement then that was the fault of the enforcers.

Apparently another trick of Smokeys was to lift the car up on its springs to the legal height clearance to pass over the inspector's gauge and then freeze the shock absorbers with dry ice so the car stayed at the legal height long enough to be cleared.

[Fat Boy]

Originally posted by Scoots

Smokey, and I think most F1 engineers, felt that there was not "spirit" of the rules, merely how they were enforced. If you can get around the enforcement then that was the fault of the enforcers.

I don't know if I completely agree. Did you ever read his books? He did most of his 'cheats' by going against the spirit, but not the letter of the law. That is different than 'getting around' the enforcement. I'm not an F-1 engineer, but If I wanted to see how far I could get around the enforcement of a certain group, then I grant you I could go very far indeed.

And what does that get you? Now you're known as a cheater and all your wins before and after are tainted even if they are completely legitimate. I like doing 'clever' things that are not mentioned by the book, but I think that people who just disregard a rule are shit.

[Fat Boy]

The biggest cheat I've ever heard of was by none other than Adolf Hitler. The treaty of Versailles (I believe) said that warships could only be a certain weight (displace a certain amount of water). That meant that you could arm a ship heavily, but it would have no armor. You could put armor on, but have small artillery, etc. So it limited the effectiveness of all warships.

Well, the Germans built these huge warships with massive cannons and massive armor. They then just filled out the paperwork that said they were of the proper size. It's a ridiculously simple cheat, and not really clever at all, but the audacity that it took to pull it off was impressive none the less.

[McGuire]

The car that won the 1967 24 Hours of LeMans was cheated up, according to team members. All the entered cars had to roll over a wooden pallet on the paddock lane to test their minimum ride height. The crew simply inserted wooden wedges in the springs, then slid them out them after the car passed over. Folks involved have told me they had to cheat -- the car could not be made to handle at the legal ride height.

There was also a discrepancy in refueling related to the actual fuel capacity of the car, but it doesn't appear to have been used for competitive advantage.

There is no way to prove it now and the principals involved will never admit it, but a number of people fervently believe the 1969 Indy 500 was won with an oversized (255) engine.

[Fat Boy]

Originally posted by McGuire
There is no way to prove it now and the principals involved will never admit it, but a number of people fervently believe the 1969 Indy 500 was won with an oversized (255) engine.

If that's the case, then 1981 and hell, every other time he was there makes my point. There's a weird karma thing that goes on. If you cheat it always seems to come back and bite you in the ass.

[Fat Boy]

Originally posted by McGuire
The car that won the 1967 24 Hours of LeMans was cheated up, according to team members.

That just dawned on me that you were talking about AJ and Dan....well, Dan, since he drove about 22 hours.

Of course it was cheated up. Dan called it 'Pioneering'. His sons and I cheated the hell out of a go-kart in an endurance race and had a ball doing it. I think we finished 9th out of 11 finishers. Just for the record, there was no money on the line and we were complete idiots about it. Obviously we didn't do a very good job.

[McGuire]

Originally posted by Fat Boy


I don't know if I completely agree. Did you ever read his books? He did most of his 'cheats' by going against the spirit, but not the letter of the law.

I agree with you 100%. Smokey could not stand the rules enforcement style in NASCAR or the people in charge of it, and he didn't much like Bill France's ways either. In his mind he was screwing with them because they were screwing with him. However, over at the Indy 500 he ran everything straight up and wouldn't abide any form of cheating. To him the Speedway was hallowed ground.

I will also add that I believe Smokey never cheated as much as people thought he did or said he did, or as much as he liked to suggest he did. Over time the whole thing has become a sort of urban folklore.

[McGuire]

Originally posted by Fat Boy


That just dawned on me that you were talking about AJ and Dan....well, Dan, since he drove about 22 hours.

Not true. In the middle of the night Dan, knowing the ropes, hid out and Foyt had to drive a triple stint.

Except for running out of gas once (not his fault) AJ never put a wheel wrong, and the two of them ran the thing like a freight train. Everyone believed Gurney and Foyt were supposed to be the rabbits, but they cruised while everyone else crashed out or broke.

[McGuire]

Originally posted by mtkawboy
Vizard was referring to Rusty Glidden's nitrous experiment

There was an epidemic of nitrous cheating in NHRA Pro Stock in the mid-to-late 90s, which NHRA refused to do anything about because it couldn't afford to catch the wrong guys (the factory teams).

The biggest joke of the entire affair was the "burglary" at Wayne County Speed Shop... but the whole thing came to a head in the pit area at Columbus in '97, when the nitrous cylinder in Bill Orndorff's car launched itself out of its hiding place (inside the dry sump tank) and bounced off a couple of transporters before coming to a stop on the pavement, ring-ding-da-ding-ding. Oops. He and his driver Jerry Eckman were made the goats and then everyone moved on.

[Scoots]

Originally posted by McGuire

I will also add that I believe Smokey never cheated as much as people thought he did or said he did, or as much as he liked to suggest he did. Over time the whole thing has become a sort of urban folklore.

Innovation not specifically outlawed in the rules is where Smokey lived, and I don't think he, or most of his competitors for that matter, called it "cheating" although they might call the parts "cheater parts".

The NASCAR fuel limit is a good example ... the rules said the fuel tank capacity could be no more than X, but the rules didn't say anything about the rest of the fuel system ... until Smokey showed them they needed to refine their rules and their enforcement.

Smokey was abrasive, brash, inventive, brilliant, hated, and loved in the pit lane by most accounts I have heard/read.

I think one of the reasons Smokey's exploits have become folklore is that they were so briliiant that the few there were are blown up to bigger proportions.

[phantom II]

To this day they don't talk to one another. Gurney tried to tell AJ how to drive. Not a good idea. Each thought the other would break the car. It was a four speed car that could do nearly 100mph in 1st and 240 in 4th. They hardly had to change gear and seldom used the brakes because that was the weak point on the car. After an hour they were in the lead and they stayed there to the finnish line. One of the most wonderful stories in motor racing except for schumacher retiring.

"Bite off more than you can chew and then chew like hell." -Peter Brock (Go get 'em Dunlop)
RIP along with Steve Erwin.

Originally posted by McGuire


There was an epidemic of nitrous cheating in NHRA Pro Stock in the mid-to-late 90s, which NHRA refused to do anything about because it couldn't afford to catch the wrong guys (the factory teams).

The biggest joke of the entire affair was the "burglary" at Wayne County Speed Shop... but the whole thing came to a head in the pit area at Columbus in '97, when the nitrous cylinder in Bill Orndorff's car launched itself out of its hiding place (inside the dry sump tank) and bounced off a couple of transporters before coming to a stop on the pavement, ring-ding-da-ding-ding. Oops. He and his driver Jerry Eckman were made the goats and then everyone moved on.

[Fat Boy]

Originally posted by McGuire


Not true. In the middle of the night Dan, knowing the ropes, hid out and Foyt had to drive a triple stint.

Keep in mind, the view that I've gotten my information through could be a little 'tainted'.

[shaun979]

Aside from the Toyota restrictor cheat (not simple), it doesn't seem like there are any easier ways to get around them. If it were that easy to cheat, then we wouldn't see them used by the ACO, FIA, IMSA, no? I tend to think restrictors are very effective and that it is easier to get around other technical regulation.

[phantom II]

Oh, there is an easy way alright. Has anybody ever checked this guys's bank account after each Ferrari win.

Originally posted by shaun979
Aside from the Toyota restrictor cheat (not simple), it doesn't seem like there are any easier ways to get around them. If it were that easy to cheat, then we wouldn't see them used by the ACO, FIA, IMSA, no? I tend to think restrictors are very effective and that it is easier to get around other technical regulation.

[cosworth bdg]

Originally posted by phantom II
Oh, there is an easy way alright. Has anybody ever checked this guys's bank account after each Ferrari win.

Would any person be game enough to...?????

[Ross Stonefeld]

I thought we were smarter than that.

[Supercar]

Originally posted by shaun979
Aside from the Toyota restrictor cheat (not simple), it doesn't seem like there are any easier ways to get around them. If it were that easy to cheat, then we wouldn't see them used by the ACO, FIA, IMSA, no? I tend to think restrictors are very effective and that it is easier to get around other technical regulation.

You can spray nitros into those restrictors!

Or, can you freeze them, just so that there is no ice buildup, and then feed some chilled air into them from the newly ACO-mandated A/C? Sorry that my thermodynamics is so 101, but if PV=RT, then for every 1 deg K of a drop in the IAT, would we then get about a ~0.34% increase in the volumetric efficiency? About 2 HP for a typical 500-600 HP racecar? Is this math any close?

Of course the A/C consumes a lot of power too, so it should only be run in braking zones and in turns. I cannot tell how effective a typical A/C system can be in cooling the huge amounts of the intake air. Probably not that much. But if someone decides to try it, send me a private email, so that I could later write my own cheater's memoirs!

[McGuire]

Originally posted by shaun979
Aside from the Toyota restrictor cheat (not simple), it doesn't seem like there are any easier ways to get around them. If it were that easy to cheat, then we wouldn't see them used by the ACO, FIA, IMSA, no? I tend to think restrictors are very effective and that it is easier to get around other technical regulation.

Every try to track down a pesky vacuum leak?

Anything that creates a vacuum leak is a cheat on the intake restrictor. Porous intake manifolds, hollow bolts, tricky gaskets, angle milled parts...the list is endless and in NASCAR they have about tried them all.

In endurance sports car racing there is not much point in cheating another 10-20 hp. Certainly not worth getting caught unless you are desperate. But on an oval 20 hp might be the whole show.

A funny story... at LeMans in 2000 I was standing in the paddock talking to the head of a factory motorsports program. Behind him over his shoulder the crew was starting one of the cars. It was sounding kind of funny when the mechanic realized he had not removed the boot from the air intake. He quickly jerked it out and then started furtively looking around to see if anyone saw what had just happened. I just kept looking straight ahead at the manager, trying to keep a straight face.