Lo Spino Hillclimb

[fumobici]

OK my father his wife and I had planned to make a pilgrimage to the Budrio Ocarina Festival- I'm not kidding, see here: www.ocarinafestival.it/ and had stopped in the town of Pieve Santo Stefano to get a coffee a cornetto and a copy of La Repubblica for the drive up the E45 from Tuscany to the little town of Budrio near Bologna which we did. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on whether you'd rather see pictures of an ocarina festival or racing cars, the car wouldn't start after our stop there. There was however a hillclimb race going on on that last day of April and the racecars were pitted all up and down one of the main streets of Pieve Santo Stefano. Seeing as how we were going to be there for a couple of hours waiting for the ACI tow truck to arrive from Sansepolcro, we made the best of our unplanned detour and enjoyed the racing atmosphere.

It was actually a lot of fun, there were racing cars screaming up and down the open public streets going to a from from their pit stations to the tech inspection area on one end of the street and the starting area where the cars began their timed runs from the town, up a winding two lane road to the finish at the summit of the Passo dello Spino on the way to Chiusi della Verna.

Enough small talk then, here's what I saw:





































































































And congratulations to any fellow petrolheads who made it this far! I'll be happy to jabber on about damper/suspension geometries, data logging hardware, diffusers, ground effect aerodynamics, carbon fiber layups and related arcana should it become necessary.

[Deleted]

Well, I'm not a motorhead, but the pictures are lovely anyway. You can always tell when somebody is taking pictures of a subject about which they are passionate.

Since I have never owned a car in my life, clearly I am rather immune to this subject, yet I find it interesting to go into the auto showrooms on the Champs Elysées several times a month just to see how thrilled so many of the people are to see the concept cars and things like the Renault Formula 1 car (which is on display at the end of the Grand Prix season). The cars are lovingly photographed from every conceivable angle, while I remain a bit mystified by what might be of interest in the more normal cars ("Look at the headlights on this baby!").

But even when someone is just talking about the cool thing they saw, I think it is great to hear their enthusiasm (I might change my mind if I ever go to a gun or armaments show.).

Thanks for posting these pictures, fumo!

[onlymark]

Wonderful. I'm going to add this to my porn collection.
Thanks.

[bixaorellana]

Totally out of my depth here, but have been validated in my fandom of Fumobici's photos.

How come none of the tires have any tread on them? In one photo, it appears someone is cutting tread into a tire, though.

I profoundly wish you a better audience than I for this excellent thread.

[fumobici]

Racing tires intended for use on dry roads don't have tread primarily because it increases the area of tire in contact with the road.



Here you can see a tire tech at the hillclimb cutting tread into tires as there were some awfully dark clouds floating about and even a few spitting drops in the air. If it had really begun raining whomever had these treaded tires would have enjoyed a considerable advantage over anyone running on treadless "slicks".

[Deleted]

If I am not mistaken, slicks are best on hot pavement?

[fumobici]

The tire temperature is more critical than the ambient. Slick tires- all else being equal naturally- will always be advantageous in the dry.