Silverstone!

The important stuff - pictures:

6-10-10 Silverstone

The school arranged a nice tour bus for us to get to Silverstone.  The trip took about 50 minutes, through some nice English country landscape.  Once we arrived we were led through the Silverstone Innovation Centre, where the track leases office space to various firms.  The CEO of Silverstone Holdings went through a presentation describing all the different functions the track has going on.  They are very much focused on making the almost 800 acre property a multi-function business.  Interestingly though, the whole "empire" is owned by the British Racing Drivers Club.  It was intriguing to hear the business side of running a race track, as an engineer and enthusiast you rarely think about the things that it takes to keep a track running.

The next presentation was from the architecture firm that was responsible for designing the new Pit Complex.  Populous has an extremely impressive resume of motorsport complexes and sporting venues.  Originally the building was estimated at 40 million (don't remember if that was $) but due to the economic decline and value engineering, the cost had been reduced to 27 million.  The structural engineers also supposedly reduced the amount of steel in the building by half!  Along with the pit complex, the firm has an in house circuit designer.  His presentation was really interesting, especially hearing about how he has to balance the various run off and safety barrier requirements between the FIA (F1, GT1/GT3) and the FIM (MotoGP).  The redesign of Silverstone accomplished many goals, from updating the circuit to all current FIA and FIM standards, to making more land accessible without having to cross the racetrack.  The original proposal had a Laguna Seca style corkscrew that dropped 8 meters.  Unfortunately this was scrapped because of water table and flooding issues.

The next stop was easily one of the highlights and could be a once in a lifetime opportunity.  We were welcomed into the British Racing Drivers Club by the current club secretary, Stuart Pringle.  This club is very exclusive, and to even be in the building is an incredible opportunity.  We got to see all three levels, the top level being an outdoor deck and great view of the final few corners of the Grand Prix circuit.

After the BRDC we got tours of Race Control and the Medical Centre (one of if not the leading facility of its type in the world).  In essence a complete small hospital.  Race control was impressive to see how much camera control and capability they have.

To finish the day, we got to experience one of the Circuit's driving experiences.  They maintain a fleet of "Formula Silverstone" cars at their Stowe circuit (completely separate from the main Grand Prix and other track configurations). The cars are something like Formula Fords with wings added on.  A Ford Duratec 1600cc engine is mated to a 4 spd manual racing gearbox.  No synchros, straight cut gears, and no reverse gear.  The transmission was the hardest aspect of the car to get comfortable with.  One time down the straight I kept grabbing 3rd gear, so I just kept bouncing off the rev limiter.  It wouldn't take a lot of time to get used to, but definitely more than the 20ish minutes we had.  The experience was absolutely great, easily the fastest and most responsive car I've ever driven.  I'm sure they are setup this way, but they were surprisingly easy to drive, you could feel the back end sliding if you were doing something too quickly and correct it very easily.  The entry to the pit straight and the chicane following the pit straight were the coolest bits of track.  At the end of the longer back straight you could very much feel the wind pulling up on your helmet - not a comforting feeling!  There was no speedometer in the car, only oil pressure and water temperature gauges and a tachometer.  I think I was getting to a little over 100, maybe 110 on the back straight.  The tach was too far down in the car for me though.  You are supposed to keep your eyes ahead when driving, and while doing this it was difficult to pick up the tach or the shift lights.  The view of these was basically through the bottom half of the steering wheel.  I mostly shifted based on sound, which worked out for the most part.

A very long, full, excellent day.  I do have to edit some of our group assignment though, so it's going to be a bit later night than I was planning on.  

Long Day

Today was one of those necessary evil days - we had 4 hrs of auditorium presentations on using the Library, IT Services, Plagiarism, and the Career Service.  Some useful information, but most of it could've been found on the internet.  On top of that, I waited around while working on our assignment to intentionally take the 6:20pm bus, that turned out never coming.  It is a different route and run by a different operator.  It wound up working out because there were others waiting for the same bus, so we split a taxi 4 ways back to Milton Keynes.  That turned out to only be 2£ each.

I did finally find a few water coolers around, I hadn't noticed any before.

The exciting stuff though: our bus leaves for Silverstone at 9:30am tomorrow morning.  It's too bad I have to go 30 mins to campus just to take the bus back towards my house to get to Silverstone.  None of us are really sure what all the day will consist of.  I'm sure we'll get a tour of everything, and one of the lecturers strongly hinted that we would get to drive something that was both open wheel and single seater, so that should be cool.  Maybe we'll continue to get lucky with the rain too (knock on wood for me please).

It will be weird to not be able to watch the MLB playoffs start tomorrow.  If we had Sky Sports in the house I might have a slight chance of catching some, but we don't.

I should probably go now, hope to have some pictures for you tomorrow.    

Another Sunny Day

I know the rain is coming, but the weather has been better than advertised these last few days, and I've been enjoying it. The process of getting to campus and the lecture hall is much more enjoyable without rain. Buses were much more crowded today though, and unfortunately the seats are not very big and don't provide much legroom. We have a week of introductory lectures, today we covered the basic course manual, schedule, some background, some of the computer programs we have access to and a brief history of motorsport.

We do have a small group assignment, which is to prepare a paper discussing some aspects of technical innovations in a particular type of racing. My group chose to cover drag racing, as we were given "all other motorsports" that weren't covered by the other 6 groups. After getting home and cooking some chicken and vegetables for dinner I did my research online so that the group can discuss tomorrow at lunch.

I did bring a sandwich, some fruit and a granola bar for lunch and our breaks during the day. I'm going to try to avoid having to buy meals on campus every day. On the way home I stopped in the Iceland to find some water as I haven't been able to find water fountains on campus. The store seems very cheap for things like milk, water, eggs, bread, but most of their other food is frozen and doesn't look too healthy. Maybe I can find some good options next time though.

Pictures From Yesterday and...

I uploaded some pictures from yesterday to Picasa. The link is:

Cranfield and Other Surroundings

Let me know if anyone cannot get to it, it should be public if you have the link.

I did get a cell phone yesterday. A Samsung GT-S3370. Seems good so far. Twitter and Skype are free to use, they don't even count against my data limit. I'm on a pay as you go plan where I can get 300 minutes, 3000 texts and 500mb of internet for 10£. The top-up as they call it lasts for 30 days. On a slightly related note - I don't understand how they can have so much more technology in their basic phones, but yet the sinks here have totally separate spouts for hot and cold water!

There has been rain off and on this morning, but I caught up on college football and MLB scores. I also worked on a short presentation we have to do tomorrow. We are supposed to talk for about a minute about our CV (resume). I'm gonna go make some lunch here in a few minutes, and walk to the store a bit later. I'm gonna try and buy some things so that I can take lunches to school with me and not have to buy food from the cafe every day.

It really is too bad how the NCSU game turned out yesterday. I knew that the second half meltdowns would come back to hurt against a good team, and it certainly did. Let's hope they can keep improving and continue to fight for an ACC title.

Saturday

Well it was a great day here weatherwise, sunny most of the day, between 55 and 60 degrees all day, although the rain has just started a few minutes ago. I did take the bus back to campus this morning. I left some course packet info in the library that I was looking for, but did not find. I should be able to get another copy on Monday. I did however spend some time in the library playing around with ANSYS and Matlab, which are finite element analysis and math softwares that I will need to use a lot during my studies.

After that I attempted to head back home, but after discovering I'd left my keys on my desk! So I wasted some time exploring the area south of where I'm living while I waited for my landlord to get back in touch with me. I took a nice 30 minute walk to Woughton on the Green, which was a nice area, lots of grassy areas, a bunch of horse and cow pastures, and a quaint little town area. I took the bus back, but could have walked too. By the time I was heading back I was just ready to be home and back in my room.

I've been streaming Petit Le Mans online from Road Atlanta while waiting for the NCSU vs Virginia Tech game, which is about to start. That's about it for now, I've got a bunch of pics from today, I'll probably start something on Flickr, but if anyone has other suggestions please let me know!

GO Pack!!!!

Beer and Chocolate

Ever seen a KitKat like this?

It was a freebie in a goodie bag from the University. Haven't tasted it yet, but definitely not what I expected when the woman told me there was a KitKat in the bag!

Jeremy remembers a different version of this beer.

Found a four pack of this stout at the store, it was just a little over 3£. We used to get a Mackeson XXX Stout that Jeremy and I enjoyed. This one is only 3% alcohol, and a milk stout. I guess because of the lower alcohol the milk and lactose flavor stands out more. Quite enjoyable.

If the weather is good tomorrow I might take the bus back out to Cranfield and take some more pictures. The forecast says sunny and partly cloudy, but apparently the forecasts are notorious for being wrong.

Registration

Rugby and Football Fields

Today I officially registered for the course, got a general overview of things going on at the University and met my classmates. We also toured the motorsport testing facilities and Impact Centre where 70% of F1 cars get their FIA certified crash testing done. The course director, Dr. Njuguna basically told us to never walk in there unannounced or without a professor because of confidentiality agreements that they sign with the teams or organizations running the tests.

Rugby and Football Fields

After the tours we all met in a classroom and introduced ourselves. Let's just say it's a very diverse group. I'm the only American. There are student(s) from Belgium, Holland, Malaysia, Iran, Scotland, Ireland, England, Asia (didn't specify further), Canada, India, France, Spain, Poland, and I'm probably forgetting a couple as well. On Wednesday we get to tour Silverstone (current home of the British Grand Prix) and spend all day there as well. We were told to bring our driver's licenses, because there was a "driving activity." Don't want to be too opimistic, but actually driving a few laps of the circuit would be just absolutely phenomenal.

Afterwards we had a welcome BBQ, which was hamburgers, bangers, chicken wings, a couple pasta salads and cole slaw. Overall a pretty good meal, and a good number of my classmates were around so we got to know each other a bit more. Surprisingly I believe there are only a few others that have work experience - meaning they aren't coming directly out of undergrad or the "uni" as the English seem to call it.

The main task for tomorrow is to go get a cell phone. I'm going with the company 3 because you can use Skype on all their phones for free. I'll do a pay as you go plan for local UK calls, which should help me keep overall costs down. Hopefully I won't need to use it too much.

The Bus Stop at Cranfield