rabbit
11-05-03, 05:46 PM
http://www.champcarworldseries.com/News/Article.asp?ID=7354
I'm not crazy about a spec-engine series, but we had to do what we had to do to survive. And in that regard, the XFE was a HUGE success.
In 180,000 miles of racing, practice, qualifying and testing, there were just five engine failures. Or how about this? In 342 race starts from St. Petersburg in February to Surfers Paradise in October, there was one - count it - one, engine failure.
In case you’re wondering, that lone race failure was the blow-up suffered by Sebastien Bourdais midway through the Long Beach event.
Michel Jourdain, Jr. finished third in the German 500 at EuroSpeedway then went on to Milwaukee and won with the same engine; Ryan Hunter-Reay was third at Mid-Ohio with an engine that had 1099 miles on it at the end of the race; Paul Tracy won at Monterrey and Long Beach with the same engine, ditto Vancouver and Mid-Ohio. Not just the same engine, but the same engine between rebuilds.
I found this part interesting...
Plans are in the works for modest developments to the Ford/Cosowrth XFE for ’04, including soft- and hardware tweaks enabling a “push to pass” function giving drivers a fixed amount of time during races when they have a little extra power at their fingertips. Other software development is in the works that will make the engines a little more “driver friendly” on pit road when the cars are running at a comparatively slow speed limit.
I'm not crazy about a spec-engine series, but we had to do what we had to do to survive. And in that regard, the XFE was a HUGE success.
In 180,000 miles of racing, practice, qualifying and testing, there were just five engine failures. Or how about this? In 342 race starts from St. Petersburg in February to Surfers Paradise in October, there was one - count it - one, engine failure.
In case you’re wondering, that lone race failure was the blow-up suffered by Sebastien Bourdais midway through the Long Beach event.
Michel Jourdain, Jr. finished third in the German 500 at EuroSpeedway then went on to Milwaukee and won with the same engine; Ryan Hunter-Reay was third at Mid-Ohio with an engine that had 1099 miles on it at the end of the race; Paul Tracy won at Monterrey and Long Beach with the same engine, ditto Vancouver and Mid-Ohio. Not just the same engine, but the same engine between rebuilds.
I found this part interesting...
Plans are in the works for modest developments to the Ford/Cosowrth XFE for ’04, including soft- and hardware tweaks enabling a “push to pass” function giving drivers a fixed amount of time during races when they have a little extra power at their fingertips. Other software development is in the works that will make the engines a little more “driver friendly” on pit road when the cars are running at a comparatively slow speed limit.