The Russians are coming !

This is the story of one teams journey to race their car in WTCC in Portugal.
It starts with the race truck leaving Moscow, via Minsk and on towards the Latvian border. Not only are the team developing a car suitable for WTCC but they have to get it to the race track. Bring on the race truckies!!!

Holes in Russian roads

Not even a road !!!

When they arrived at the Latvian border, there was a 6km queue of trucks in front of them, all waiting their turn to complete the customs and passport control. Now these guys have got to get to the front of the queue somehow. They decide to open up the race truck and take out a small road car which they use for personal transport. They then drive to the checkpoint at the border and explain to the police that they must pass through as quick as possible. The police agree to let them come to the front of the line of trucks, as long as the other truck drivers allow them to do so. I don,t know if Russian truck drivers carry guns in their cabs but I do know that they are some very big guys in Russia and I would not like to start a fight with them.
With the police offering to help them quickly on their way, the truckies now have to negotiate with the other truck drivers to let them pass. They explain their situation, to the driver of the truck in front of them. He agrees that they can go past him. This helpful truck driver then talks on his CB radio and the message gets transmitted, up the 6km line of trucks, and everyone is happy to let the Lada team go to the front of the queue. The police complete their passport checks and they are free to drive into Latvia.

ALL OF THIS, JUST TO GET OUT OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY!!!!

It has taken them 1 day to leave Russia and now they have to drive through Latvia, into Lithuania. This part of the journey takes another day. They can then catch the ferry to Germany. Each time they cross into another country, the passports must be stamped, visas checked and the shipping carnet will be looked at by the customs officials. The ferry to Germany takes another day to complete its journey overseas.
Once they arrived in Germany, they are subjected to yet more customs interrogation before they can continue through Holland, Belgium and on to Magny Coeurs, France for some last minute testing of the car.
This has taken them 1.5 days to complete since getting off the boat.

Testing of the car was completed. Everything packed back up in to the truck and the last part of this huge road trip finally leads them to Portugal. And I am sure that I do not have to tell you that the two,WTCC races are approximately 20 minutes each.
I think that a journey,over 5000km, just to race a car should applauded by anyone who loves motorsport.
Well done Denis, Max and the other unknown driver. 
Now that really is From Russia with Love.

I hate flies and bugs.

Late evening in Portsmouth

The ferry leaves England at 2200 hours and we now have to amuse ourselves for the next 32 hours. Read a book, watch a DVD on the laptop or anything else to pass away the time. Our destination is Bilbao, Spain. Unfortunately, this boat has to change its French crew and at 0800 hours the next day, the boat stops in Brittany, France. It is the reason that the journey takes so long. Normally, it can be done in 24 hours.
But the view from the deck of the boat is quite pleasant as we watch trawlers unloading their previous nights catch of fish. A very small boat, with one man aboard, is pulling up his crab pots from the water and seeing what he has caught. I see him take 7 large crab from one pot and he shouts his good fortune to the departing crew members. I have given up eating crab, fish and other seafood after some very severe food poisoning. And still I had to do the car testing with the team that I worked for. Being sick in the world of motor sport is not really an option. We all rely on each other, so much, and when a team member cannot work, it just makes more work for everyone else. You have to start losing an arm or a leg before you have a good excuse not to work.

Roscoff in Brittany,France

The weather at sea is nice and the water is quite calm so that will make the journey a bit more comfortable until we reach Spain at 0630 hours on Tuesday. The boat was full with camper vans, and caravans but not too many trucks. Luckily we were at the front of the boat and we drive up onto the ramp and straight to the passport control without having to queue for a long time. Once again, great care is taken as we drive up the ramp onto the dock. These race trailers are so easy to damage as I mentioned in an earlier post on this blog. The port of Bilbao has been made much bigger, in the last few years, and it is now much easier to come out of the port and go straight on to the Spanish motorway system. The 480 horsepower truck, pulls us easily up the steep hills and we head towards Burgos. From there, it is a very straight forward journey towards Portugal. We pass through Valladolid, Salamanca and finally reach Merida which is where we decide to stop for the night. Several other teams were on the same boat as us and everyone has a different plan of how and when they need to be in Portugal.

A comic book character from the 1950,s is making his comeback appearance at the WTCC race of Portugal. One of the Chevrolet drivers is going to play the part in real life. The car, the race truck and the pit garage will be be painted and and covered with sticker graphics to help recreate this comic book hero, Michel Vaillant. The race truck was in Spain when we spotted it.

Comic book hero race truck in Spain

The following day and we are up very early so that we can get to get through Spain and reach our final destination, Autodromo do Algarve, Portimao, Portugal. We are not looking forward to washing the truck when we arrive. The amount of dead flies and bugs, covering the front of the truck, will mean that we have to get the pressure washer and the chemical cleaner to remove all traces of them. And to make matters worse, the temperature is 29 Celsius. I hate washing trucks when it is so hot. It is so difficult to remove all traces of the water and you end up with a clean truck which is covered in water marks and smears. This just means that we will have to polish the truck by hand to make it look good.

Turn off at junction 3 to get to the circuit

The circuit is a few kilometres from the motorway and as we arrive, we are greeted by Claudio from the organisers of WTCC, and we follow him through the tunnel and up the steep ramp into the paddock. Only a few teams have got there before us and we locate our garage and park up the truck and start getting the wash equipment out.
Several hours later and we know have a clean truck, BUT IT LOOKS TERRIBLE. Now where did we put the polish???????

The view as you arrive at the circuit

The ramp up to the paddock

The question of road tolls has reared its ugly head again and confusion has taken over. Trucks, cars and even motorcycles, now have to pay to use the roads. Portugal is struggling with its economy and have decided that to raise money, to pay for the maintenance of the roads, they have introduced a toll charge for all vehicles. But they have rushed it into operation, very quickly, and caused a right mess. Locals are refusing to pay. The purchase of a vignette or automatic toll box for trucks and cars is very difficult as not many petrol stations have the necessary equipment installed. The Portuguese website which explains the system, is written in Portuguese and if you do not understand Portuguese, how are foreign drivers expected to understand it?
And the European Union government have said that Portugal cannot charge a toll on sections of motorway that were built using money from the European Union fund. Therefore, it is illegal to make people pay tolls. This is all being sorted out in the law courts now and will probably continue for months and months.

As the world becomes more accessible by plane or car, the cost to travel and move goods seems to be higher and higher. If your truck or car is old and is not very Eco friendly, it will cost you more than a newer vehicle. If the goods that you want to import or export are not Eco friendly, it will cost you more. All of the governments in different countries just seem to want to make money out of everything. Where will it all end???????????

Camera gantries in Portugal. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

Turning a used WTCC tyre on the rim.

This is sometimes done to utilise and prolong the tyre life for free practice sessions.

I have been taking some more behind the scenes videos and hope to include them in my blog at a later date.

Just another journey.

Washing trucks at the Salzburgring

 The Salzburg weather has given us everything from snow, hail, rain and then continued into glorious sunshine. But as we arrive on the Monday morning, at 0530 hours to collect the truck, the skies above the mountains are very grey.

 We need to get as far as we can today and the autobahn in Germany has roadworks everywhere. That is why we are at the Salzburgring so early. It is 35 kilometres to the Austrian/German border and there is very little traffic. We have to buy German road tax for the truck and the first chance to do that is at the Autobahn services, at the border.

Still some snow on the Austrian mountains

 As we come around the corner and up the hill, we can see that the services is absolutely full of trucks. I make a quick decision and decide to stay on the Autobahn, even though trucks should not take this route. Normally, all trucks have to go through route the services. This gives the customs and police chance to stop and search any suspicious or dangerous looking vehicles. My decision to stay on the Autobahn looks like it may come to a very quick end. A police car is parked by the side of the road and I can only hope that we do not get stopped. I would just have to plead ignorance and try to talk my way out of any trouble.
Myself and another race truck behind me, slowly drive past the police. I look in my mirrors and I am sure that the police car has turned onto the Autobahn and is now following the truck behind me. We both continue driving, but nothing happens. We do not get stopped and are free to continue on our journey.
IT,S A MIRACLE !!!!!!!!!!

German roadworks

Several trucks are passed on the way and they pass us again when we stop for a quick coffee.The roadworks are never ending through Germany. Kilometre after kilometre. Through the clouds of dust caused by the bulldozers and other earth moving vehicles, and on towards France.



A short detour from the German Autobahn, near Baden Baden, takes us across the River Rhine border crossing, and onto the French Autoroute. The Autoroute system is luxury compared to what we have just driven through and we can enjoy the journey a little bit more.


Our final destination will be England. But this evening, a hotel we know offers us the chance to rest up for the night. Unfortunately, some Bridgestone race trucks had got there before us and had parked in the hotel car park so that they took up 6 parking places with 3 trucks. NOT VERY CONSIDERATE! We spend the night in France and then just a few hours drive the next day, we will reach the port of Calais and cross the English channel, by ferry to the UK.

41 Kilometres of roadworks

One of the teams had arrived at the Salzburgring last week, with some serious damage to one of their trailers. A tyre had exploded and this not only damaged the bodywork and paintwork of the trailer. It had also broken all the electrical system that operates the tail-lift. Before the truck could be unloaded, the electrical system had to be repaired and then the bodywork had to be patched up to make the trailer look nice again. AND THEY DID A VERY GOOD JOB OF IT. The image of the trucks and trailers is as important as the cars and the garages. The spectators who walk around the paddock area take note of all of these things and it reflects on their teams personal image when things do not look 100%. You will see many people having their photograph taken next to some of these them. That,s how good looking the trucks are!!!!!

Exploding tyre damage

Trucks parking up for the night in France

Yokohama meets Bridgestone in France

Chevrolet and Yokohama are friends again after the Austrian race.

A Beginners Guide to WTCC Tyres.

Most of the WTCC truckies are also responsible for tyres. So I have compiled a bit of an insight for those who are interested.

Firstly, we all use a control tyre, supplied by Yokohama. Only 2 types of tyre are available, slicks and wets. No other sizes or makes are allowed. The slicks are 240/610R17 for the ADVAN A005 and the wets are 240/610R17 for the ADVAN A006. Each car can use a maximum of 12 new slicks and can also use 8 of their best carry over tyres from the previous race. Some flexibility is built into the regulations when the season starts and when we go to new tracks or fly away events, but I am not going to list all the permutations available here. IT WILL BORE YOU.

Tyre declaration sheet.

Scrutineers.

Tyre scanners and yellow bar code on the tyre.

Once the tyres are fitted, the bar codes on the tyres are scanned by Yokohama. The teams will then collect their tyres and must write down all the bar code numbers, which are then given to the scrutineers. Later on, the tyre scrutineers will visit each team, scan the tyres again, to ensure that they match the tyres declared by the teams. 
The teams will now go through the arduous task of cleaning and giving each of their race tyres its own number,eg, 1,2,3,4 etc. And possibly marking FL(front left) or RR(rear right). As we have many different nationalities, these markings will differ according to which language they speak.

Cleaning and marking tyres.

Some teams do not bother with any tyre balancing. Others balance the rim before it is fitted with a tyre, and some teams balance the rim after a tyre has been fitted. I went testing with a team sometime ago and we put lots of tyre weights on the rims and monitored whether the driver could detect the vibrations. The results were that a tyre can produce quite bad vibration before the driver becomes very concerned. REMEMBER, these are touring cars. NOT, sensitive, ultra lightweight, single seaters. All teams will constantly check the rims during the race weekends to make sure that they are still round. These cars use alot of kerb in some of the corners, so a few damaged rims are to be expected.

TPMS fitted to a rim

Tyre pressure sensors,(TPMS), can be also fitted. These will monitor the tyre pressure inside the tyre, each lap. It normally takes a tyre several laps to reach its optimum pressure. Data is sent from the TPMS to the enginners laptop via the car. The tyres are normally inflated to a cold pressure.e.g. 1.6 Bar. Then when the tyre has been put into its tyre warmer for approximately 1.5 hours, a tyre pressure reading is taken and then a small amount of air will be taken out.As the tyre temperature rises, so does the tyre pressure. The engineer has to calculate what tyre pressure he wants to achieve for optimum performance.
ALL TEAMS HAVE DIFFERENT WAYS OF DOING THIS PROCEDURE AND ENSURING THAT THE TYRE HAS THE CORRECT AMOUNT OF AIR BEFORE THE CAR GOES ON TRACK.

Tyres in the tyre warmers.

The question of whether to use air or nitrogen to inflate the tyre, is a tricky one. Again, some teams do and other teams do not. Many races are won using normal air. The air may pass through an air dryer before it enters the tyre, to try to take out as much moisture as possible. Air is a mixture of Nitrogen(78%) and oxygen(21%) Oxygen is far more reactive than Nitrogen and at high operating temperatures, the oxygen reacts with the rubber of the tyre, reducing the total pressure inside.Water particles in the air upset the contraction and expansion as a function of temperature which also makes the tyre pressure unpredictable. Nitrogen however, will not absorb any appreciable amount of water, so your tyre temperature should not fluctuate. But if you use Nitrogen, you should first inflate the tyre with Nitrogen, let it all out, then re inflate with Nitrogen before putting in the valve core.
This is called "purging". The extra time and effort to do this is quite considerable for the teams who use this procedure. If you do not purge the tyre first, you will still have a small percentage of air mixed with the Nitrogen.

Tyre warmer control box.

The tyre warmers will sometimes be set to a maximum temperature,e.g. 80 degrees Celsius. Some teams will will turn up the temperature of the tyre warmers for maybe another 15 minutes before the car goes out. Teams will try to put the tyres through a maximum of 3 heat cycles while they are in the tyre warmers. More than this can be detrimental to the tyre. Every team seems to do it differently.
A similar procedure will be used for the wet tyres.

Ready to use a heat gun to scrape the tyre clean.

Another job that is done to the tyres, after they have been used, is tyre scraping.
This gives a team chance to clean up the tyre surface of old rubber that has picked up on the tyre, usually as the car comes into the pits. The race engineers can also inspect the tyre service when it has been cleaned up. This is not always necessary as a track that is clean will not have lots of old rubber laying on the track.

Old rubber which has been cleaned off a tyre.

All of this care and attention to the WTCC tyres will still give the race engineers some surprises. All they can do is try to follow the basic rules and formulaes and then make adjustments on the day of the races.
The optimum tyre pressure for each car is forever changing. Ambient air temperature, track surface temperature, the suspension set up of the car, or hitting the kerbs on the corners very hard. All of these can affect the tyre and its performance. Also, drivers all have different driving styles and like their car to handle in different ways. Do they want a bit more oversteer or understeer in a corner? If you look at the diagram below, you can see how the tyre pressure can affect the handling of the car.

Adjustments	Decrease Understeer	Decrease Oversteer
Front Tyre Pressure	Higher	Lower
Rear  Tyre Pressure	Lower	Higher

This piece you are reading is really only an overview of what happens to a WTCC tyre. Without trying to confuse you with too much technical stuff.
Tyres may be little, round, black pieces of rubber but they demand and require a lot of care, love and attention. Race engineers can put big demands on the truckie in charge of the tyres. It is a very underrated aspect to keeping the car on the track. A good tyre man is as essential as all of the other team members.

Ring,Ring,Ring.

 My own personal view on the Hungarian WTCC was that it was superb. Good crowds, good weather, good racing and good to see the Lada boys back in action. I remember when Lada turned up at their first WTCC race. They have evolved in their skills and appearance and it only helps strengthen the importance of this championship.

Accident damaged wheel and tyre

Packing up on Sunday.

With the sound of the crowd still making our ears "ring", we load up the truck. We decide to move it away from the main paddock area to somewhere a little quieter. We want to leave early on Monday morning and do not want to find the truck has been blocked in causing us an unnecessary delay.

Next stop for us will be the Salzburgring, Austria. When we arrive at the circuit, 3 security men are waiting by the circuit entrance, they confirm who we are and we drive up to where we left the truck. Some poor guy has been on security duty all night and is sat on a plastic chair, right by our trucks. He is awake but is looking a bit cold and definitely tired. If the circuit security told him to stay by the trucks all night, I would like to say thank you for their vigilance. Two trucks set off at 0600 hours and we try to get back around the Budapest motorway system before too much traffic appears. Spots of rain start to appear on the windscreen and the sky is very grey. Such a contrast to the 2 weeks of brilliant sunshine that we have had.

Packing up at the front of the garages

Climbing up the hill and through the roadworks, we leave Budapest behind and set off for the border of Austria and Hungary. As we get close, we can just make out, in the distance, the hills that surround Bratislava, Slovakia. We have travelled a full circle through these countries but before we can leave Hungary, we are stopped at the border and have to keep the border guards happy by giving them a team cap each.
"Koszonom" they shout as we are set free to cross into Austria. The drive through Austria, towards Salzburg, is trouble free, apart from a 12km section of roadworks. The mountain tops are still snow covered but not as much as when we drove past on the way to Slovakia. SUMMER IS COMING !

LET ME IN........please.

Find junction 274 on the autobahn and follow the signs for "Salzburgring". Head on up to the first roundabout, turn right and we drive slowly through Gitzen. The road starts leading towards the forests and if you have never been here before, it looks like you could be heading into dangerous territory, whilst driving a 16 metre long truck. Down the hill and out of the village, we cross a small bridge and a sign says turn left for LKW Salburgring traffic. The road gets very narrow here and after 1 km, we have to turn left again. This left turn is almost 180 degrees and takes some caution to get around it. Now you really do look like you are going for a drive through the forest !!!!

Meandering our way along this very small road, we are careful not to catch the overhanging tree branches against the side of the truck.  Some time ago, they actually moved a whole house, several metres to one side, because it was so close to this road. As race trucks got bigger, it became ever more dangerous to squeeze past. They couldn't move the road, so the house was the easy option!

Public track day at the "Ring"

The race track was first opened in 1968. It was built in a narrow, alpine valley, and has a rather simple layout, with two long straights plus the sweeping and fast "Fahrerlagerkurve" ("paddock turn") at the bottom, and the narrow "Nockstein-Kehre" on the top. In spite of its simple layout, it garnered a fearsome reputation for the high speeds reached on the straights and the "Fahrerlagerkurve".
But they didn,t have huge great trucks in 1968 and the access tunnel is not tall enough for us to use. So, we are forced to wait, while a track day is in progress. Once the cars have stopped and before the next session starts, Gate number 2 is opened for us, and we have to drive down and across the actual race track, before parking in the paddock. Whilst waiting at the gate, I had chance to have a close look at a small hydroplane speed boat. The owner was obviously using the parking facilities before possibly racing at the nearby Wolfgangsee lake.

I would love to have a go in one of these....

The truck will now stay here until it is needed in 2 weeks time. It saves  us money by not driving back to our base and the positioning of the last few races has meant that we have not had to spend so much on diesel and manpower in the current economic climate.

I am hoping that the crowds will appear again at the Salzburgring. But the local population do alot of shooting in the forests here. So if the squirrels rabbits ,birds, deer and wild boar are due a weekend away from the guns, maybe the WTCC race could be the solution.