¶ Building and Testing a Honda-Powered Ferrari
One of the standout cars that I was really looking forward to catching up with here World Time Attack Challenge 2023 , is Mike Burrow's Ferrari . There's Honda powered Ferrari specifically Welcome to High Performance Academy's tuned in field report podcast series .
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Now , mike , this has been a build that's taken a fair amount of time , and I know that you didn't get a lot of time to actually shake it down and really get on top of it stateside before you had to ship out . How much testing did you actually get done ?
Two test sessions in maybe a cumulative 15 laps in total . I mean it was a half day and a half day , so very minimal time . It was basically the bare minimum to ensure we could come here and turn laps successfully and so far the cars felt awesome . I mean we did some dyno sessions yesterday at Haltech .
They said the cars were running beautifully , really happy with it . Car just felt awesome in our first test session . I mean I couldn't ask for anything more . Even if , from this point forward , it went in the dumpster , I'd be happy .
Well , let's not put it in the dumpster just yet . I know there's a bunch of people who still want to see it run .
Let's just go back to the testing you did stateside first , because this is a car that essentially every component on it has been hand built by you , and I think a lot of people would expect you know , you take the car , roll it out of the trailer , it hits the track and everything just goes perfectly . That's not always the case .
There's usually almost always some tealings , problems , gremlins , things that you didn't even know . You don't know what did you strike when you hit the track for the first time .
You know we ran into a handful of just teething problems . We lost one of our kind of intake clamp couplers on our first track day . That cut it short . But otherwise the car was happy . It was balanced , it was neutral , nothing that really reared its ugly head where it was like , oh man , we really messed that up . And the same thing with the second day .
Really , the biggest issue we encountered on day two out at Horse Thief Mile , which is at Willow Springs , was realizing that the brake bias was just not set correctly . The rear end was locking up early . We tried to run the bias all the way to the front and was still just you would lock up at the back just a smidge before .
So the first thing we did when we got here was to swap the rear brake pads to a just slightly less aggressive compound and the car feels great now .
I mean when it comes to brake bias I don't want to go too deep on this , but you've got the bias adjustment , which most people think does everything . But there's also the actual mechanical bias itself between the size of the master cylinder front and rear , and also , as you mentioned , pad compound .
Do you need to go down the path of maybe making a swap to a different size master cylinder in the pedal box as well ?
I think right now it feels good if it continues to kind of not have issues , if it feels like the balance . As I get further and further into the brakes here at the track this weekend it feels good . I'm not going to make any changes , it feels like we're in the neighborhood .
When we specced the brakes for the car with AP Racing , they were really helpful in deciding exactly what size brakes to put on the car and then they took all of the information I gave them in terms of , you know , not only the weight bias of the car and the aero load it was going to , you know , generate what tires are going to put on it , what pedal box
was in it , et cetera , and really helped us spec the right master cylinders for the car . And I think that's probably part of the reason why we're not really having much brake issues right out of the box .
I'm just interested in your approach here as well . 15 laps , two half days of testing it's not a lot . You've got so much adjustability on just about every component of the car in terms of the suspension . So what's the approach ?
Sort of you don't want to go out and necessarily immediately start making changes until you're actually comfortable and understand what the car's doing . So how have you approached that ?
I think there's kind of a golden rule of don't make too many changes at once and so just trying to follow that , work my way up to the limit of the car I mean this is way more car than I'm realistically capable of utilizing .
I mean I can drive it , I'm comfortable in it , but somebody a lot faster than me could pull a hell of a lot more time out of the car , no question . So , slowly working my way up to the limit of the car , finding where the problems are going to lie and kind of where those issues are going to rear their head .
So I think as long as I'm careful and I'm slow and methodical in getting to that limit , I'll be able to make changes slowly and not kind of run into issues like trying to fix a bunch of problems at once .
Let's talk about the build up to world time attack . Obviously , again , short amount of testing back home before it went in a container . How have you gone about learning Eastern Creek here in Sydney in terms of a track , so that you are not spending your entire time here just finding your way around ?
So I did a lot of simulator time on Assetto Corsa . I found it really good , kind of seems like the status quo , the model everybody's using for testing and whatnot . In the sim .
I built a simulator specifically to prep for this because I knew , hey , if I'm going to go to Australia and run around Eastern Creek or Sydney Motorsport Spark , I've got to be prepared and know what direction it's going to go . I don't want to be out here trying to find my way around or be wondering . I don't want to be lost on track and things like that .
So I put together a pretty decent sim and then I turned a lot of laps in it . But I was kind of giving some advice don't spend too much time in the sim , because the track for this is not a laser scan . You don't want to start developing bad habits and really trying to look for the nuances of the track .
So just know exactly where the track is going to go and then cut it off there . And so that's what I did .
I think that's definitely smart
¶ Learning Simulators and Future Projects
advice . There are always going to be subtle differences . I am talking to you here after just your first session , so let's be honest you haven't had a lot of laps under your belt yet , but I'm interested for that initial perspective . How close did Assetto Corsa actually come out and has it been as helpful as you thought ?
even more helpful than I thought it would be . I am blown away with how accurate the track map felt compared to real life . Honestly , the only real difference that I feel immediately is the sense of scale , and it's backwards from what I expected .
I expected the track in real life to feel even bigger than it does on the simulator , but it was the inverse it feels a little bit smaller , and I don't think that's problematic , it's really just kind of an observation , but otherwise I mean , the tracks go in the exact direction you know . All of the turns feel exactly as they did . The line feels accurate .
The line that I've practiced in the sim really feels translatable to real life . I feel like I short-cutted having to spend even a couple of days out here practicing . I got that out of the way , so now I can come out here and I can focus on the car and the way that the car feels and focus on getting faster .
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Yeah , I've used iRacing and Assetto Corsa myself to practice tracks that I'm going to , that I've never raced on before , and I think what it means is that at the end of one stint you're kind of at least in the ballpark or up speed , rather than wasting an entire day kind of finding your way around .
In terms of the car setup that you were using in Assetto Corsa , did you use something generic or did you go a little bit further and actually sort of develop something with similar characteristics power , gear ratios , et cetera to the Ferrari ?
So I have a buddy who's working on like a carbon copy model of the Ferrari with the drivetrain and all the characteristics and stuff . It's not done yet . So I really just try to play it safe and I went with cars that people have told me are some of the better driving and better kind of programmed ones within Assetto Corsa .
So I just kind of stuck to those and focused more on learning the track and less about how to drive the track , if that makes sense .
I think one of the advantages if you've got an absolute carbon copy of the car is not only you're learning the track , but you're going to get a sense of where your braking points are , because the speeds will be similar , and also , really importantly , what gear you should be in for a certain part of the track , and you can start playing around with those things
. But obviously there's limitations here on what you're going to achieve . Okay , so in terms of the setup of the car at the moment there's the potential to make a 1000 horsepower there or there about . So I'm guessing that's probably not what you're running for your first session .
Not at all . So right now we're on low boost so we're running 14 psi , 12 to 14 psi . It's making 640 at the wheels and I mean it's still wicked fast . I mean coming out of the last turn and just barreling down the straight . That first time standing on it and just going , it was , it was a hold on tight moment .
It's definitely the fastest I've gotten to drive the car we don't have a straight like this back home but also just a rewarding moment . To stand on it and have it do what it's meant to do was awesome . So just kind of , you know , learning those aspects of the car , the aspects that I haven't gotten to feel yet , and feeling it out .
Now , I follow your YouTube channel and you've made quite a few points that you're not a professional racing driver and you're not expecting to be on the podium here . Do you feel , though , with such a large following on social media , sort of a certain amount of pressure from your followers to maybe overperform where you think you can get to ?
I mean , I think anybody in my shoes would probably feel some sense of pressure where it's like , you know , there's so many eyeballs watching and you know , if you come out here and you go slow , you'll , you'll , you know , look or feel stupid or something .
And I'm sure some people might kind of look down and if you know if I turn the slowest lap in my group . But for me it's like , hey , I'm here , I built my car , it showed up , we're turning laps and I'm having fun . So I don't really care about any of that . As long as I improve from my first lap to my last lap , I'm excited .
I'm just trying to become a better driver and a better car builder and overall I'm just . You know , ian told me when we first kind of started chatting about bringing the car out here . I said , hey , this car is untested . This is going to be an 8,000 mile from home test session , more than anything else .
And he says , hey , as long as you're going to come and have fun , I want to hear .
Oh , you're smiling at this stage , which is really all we can ask , right ?
Oh man , I'm having so much fun already , I joke . As soon as I got out of the car , you were standing there and I said how do I plan on coming back next year already ?
I'm interested . This is probably a tricky question , given as we've already talked about a relatively small amount of testing time at the moment . But with such a big project , is there anything , looking back now , that you wish you'd done different or would have changed , if you could start again knowing what you know at this point ?
I mean , I think , realistically , the more that I learned about the Ferrari chassis and how it was built , it was definitely a don't meet your hero's moment . Even knowing now like now , I know how an F40 is built . I would never want to see underneath one . But overall I'm happy with how the car has turned out for the most part .
There's not anything that I don't have any regrets . I think if I were going to do something differently , I would have just tube chassised the car from the get go , Because what I had to work with only got worse and worse as I got further and further into it .
But I'm happy with the car as a whole and I guess it's one of those things that you start and as you go deeper and deeper and find how bad maybe that original Ferrari chassis is , you're so far down the path that it would almost be difficult to back up and start again with a tube chassis .
Yeah , I mean at this point I'm not going to cut it up and start back over . That'll just be the next project .
Speaking of that next project nice segue there . We spoke off camera a little bit earlier about what you do to decide on the next project or keep your followers happy and maybe one up the Ferrari . Is that something you feel like you need to do , or is it just going to be a different project than ?
That's absolutely fine , and I know you've already got a couple on the go .
Yeah , I mean , I think there's always that back of your head of did I peak early right ? For me , it's my first time out here for something like this , and so it's how do you do the next build better ? How do you keep your audience engaged ?
I'm not the type of guy who's going to sit here and say the next car has to be crazier , wild or more powerful or anything like that . I'm here building cars because is what I'd love to do , and I think , as long as I'm enthusiastic about what I'm building , that's what will resonate with my audience and they'll want to keep watching me do it .
I have a lot of development and refinement and certainly fixes to make on the Ferrari as we go forward for the next number of years , and I'm also thinking about what that next project's going to be . Will it be bigger and better ?
I don't know if it'll be better , but I definitely , kind of touching back on the last point , I'm going to go to Chassis next time , I think .
I mean , I think the point you just made there doesn't need to be better . No , it's just going to be different and that's absolutely fine .
¶ World Time Attack Chat and Updates
All right , mike , great to chat , great to catch up and really good to actually see the car out turning laps in anger very early in the world time attack weekend .
So we wish you all the best , and if our followers want to also see more in-depth footage and other men hiding under a rock and haven't seen your channel , we'll link to that in the description as well . Thanks for your time . Thank you so much . I appreciate it .
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