Quote Originally Posted by RogerH View Post
I understand that retaining a race car in a "frozen" configuration that existed some 50 years without the ability to do any further material development must be an anathema to a development race engineer who's skills are modification for improved performance. However, most historic race regulations around the world are based on maintaing historic cars in a format that is consistent with period regulations.
While just a few mm in a rim width may not sound that important, the next step could be just a little bit of engine over-bore - then how about we re-fabricate those top arms so we can get a bit more castor - then how about moving the engine back a few mm to improve the car's balance. Where would it end? We would probably end up with something that looks a bit like the historic car it is meant to represent but is in fact a different animal.
There are plenty of places for the application of skilled engineering to obtain increased performance but I think the regulations of most of the traditional historic race classes don't provide the opportunity for these non-period modifications.
What I find most annoying about comments like this is they are based on the assumption that every car is running under Schedule K. Nowhere in T&C is there anything to say I can,t double the horsepower of my motor. And if you go back to the original Group 5 regs that I built the original car under I can do even more. As regards Ford engines it seems to have escaped every ones attention that an SCA Cosworth revved to 11000rpm approx and that BDG's put out 290bhp in the day. In fact there is almost no motor racing in NZ above club level, where you can modify a motor, the playing must always be kept level for the drivers poor little darlings. Motor sport in this country was built by people who fiddled about with engines and the cars they went in now obviously they are no longer needed.