Mark Donahue's (Captain Nice) TransAm Camaro

[Rupunzell]

Walking around the pit area at Laguna Seca, this caught the eyes. Turned out to be Mark Donahue's TransAm Camaro# 6.

Standing about four three to four feet from the front right fender and got this video:

Spoke to the crew chief about this Camaro. Legend has it that these bodies were acid dipped to lower weight. The acid dipping was so extreme, the roof was crinkly. Penske & Donahue & crew hid this from SCCA officials by covering the roof with a vinyl top. They also used a faker tech car, they would roll the SCCA legal car into tech for inspection, they swap cars before the race. SCCA officials knew this was going on yet turned a blinded eye to all that was happening and they were not the only teams that was doing this. This and many other factoids about these cars were verified by my conversation with the crew chief of Camaro No. 6.

Mark Donahue is one of my all time fave driver-engineers, right up there with Bruce McLaren, Colin Chapman, Dallara, and others.


Bernice

 

[RJH]

Right up there with Tom Brady and deflategate and Lance Armstrong and doping.

Can't win on your own merits - cheat.

 

[kmead]

Right up there with Tom Brady and deflategate and Lance Armstrong and doping.

Can't win on your own merits - cheat.

That was the game back then. Everyone was cheating in one way or another. No spec motors, standard chassis modified for racing. The car likely had to meet a weight minimum, it was just a question of where the weight was...

 

[Rupunzell]

Racing very much a circus with the rules written and designed to market cars and create brand identity. Once there is an understanding that rules are written with an agenda (no different than laws, aka "rule of law") by human beings, it becomes clear rules are not about "fairness" and the belief that the best will be sorted out by competition. This is what race promoters, car brands and marketing wants race fans to believe.

If racing is to be about drivers, they would all drive identical cars, same set up, same power train, same chassis all made as identical as possible (think IROC and similar). Racing history has proven this format is not as marketable or favorable to fans as brand identified racing, racing like this has become un-common in much of the racing for $ world (aka Pro Racing)

Know production based racing is much about marketing and promotion, these production based race cars often have next to zero in common with their production offerings. Then we get into reading the rules. what makes winners or lesser today is the ability for some one on a race team to read - interpret the rules and figuring out the ideal - best loop holes to take advantage of the rules. This behavior pretty much drives most if not all pro racing today.

Back in the SCCA Trans-AM days, ALL the manufactures did their own brand of rule bending. SCCA, race promoters, manufactures had a lot at stake in these events. Some of these races back then drew crowds in the tens of thousands. This really put meaning to, "Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday." SCCA was taking significant $ from this show promo, if they did something that was not agreeable with the manufactures they run the risk of that manufacture or manufactures pulling out of racing. This is partly why rule bending is sort of accepted as a way of racing. It is much about promo, brand identity creation and making $ for all involved.

SCCA disqualification of the first six finishers for spec Miata is a recent illustration of how "SCCA spec racing" fails, and fails bad.
http://blackflag.jalopnik.com/so-many-spec-miatas-allegedly-cheated-that-seventh-plac-1645710255

A properly prepped Nationally "Competitive Spec Miata" cost about $50,000.


Race cars today are designed on a simulator. Potential race team will inquire with a specialist like Dallara to target a specific race venue, track , driver and all that. That team will then put their driver into the simulator to do testing of chassis-suspension-power train-aero performance on any given track with that specific driver. This goes on for months to figure out what is the best racer to build. Once all involved has settled on a car design. They press the "build" button resulting in a race car in about 2 months. This car is then taken to the tracks with that same driver to test and evaluate design simulations -vs- real world performance. The idea-belief-romantic notion racing results in better production cars is pure fantasy today.

Bernice