Boss GP Series

Be absolutely clear as it is still being missed, it does not appeal as much to me because of the reasons I have stated, to others I FULLY understand why it might. Be clear also that I am not being disrespectful to the guys out there today as many of them go very well, but if you have been lucky enough to drink Krug you will find Moet to not be to your liking.

THAT is my point, as I have said all the way through. It is not like it was, remove the drivers from the equation and it is still not the same as Group C should be about endurance for me. I used to love the Silverstone 6 hours as it gave me the chance to walk around the track 3 or 4 times soaking it all up, getting into the whole battle. 1 hour or 20 laps don't really cut it for me, but if the grid was full of the DRM drivers it might.

I am not saying it's crap, I am not saying others should not go and enjoy, because Group C in particular to me was the greatest ever form of our sport. I am just saying to me seeing in particular an F1 driven at 80% holds nowhere near the appeal of seeing a DBS1 or 250F being driven at 80%.

I think I've asked you before but what was your dads name as I mixed with many of the Group C boys back in the day?
 
Housey said:
Be absolutely clear as it is still being missed, it does not appeal as much to me because of the reasons I have stated, to others I FULLY understand why it might. Be clear also that I am not being disrespectful to the guys out there today as many of them go very well, but if you have been lucky enough to drink Krug you will find Moet to not be to your liking.

THAT is my point, as I have said all the way through. It is not like it was, remove the drivers from the equation and it is still not the same as Group C should be about endurance for me. I used to love the Silverstone 6 hours as it gave me the chance to walk around the track 3 or 4 times soaking it all up, getting into the whole battle. 1 hour or 20 laps don't really cut it for me, but if the grid was full of the DRM drivers it might.

I am not saying it's crap, I am not saying others should not go and enjoy, because Group C in particular to me was the greatest ever form of our sport. I am just saying to me seeing in particular an F1 driven at 80% holds nowhere near the appeal of seeing a DBS1 or 250F being driven at 80%.

I think I've asked you before but what was your dads name as I mixed with many of the Group C boys back in the day?
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I do understand what you are saying - I do also share those same fond memories of walking the whole permieter of the circuit while the race went on (we probably even walked past each other!), or listening to the cars through the night at Le Mans. Nothing beats that!

In the context of the OP though I just wanted to put forward the positives of the Historic F1 and Group C series as I'm sure many of the forum members would really enjoy watching them.
 
Didn't quite expect such in-depth replies :)

I think as long as it isn't expensive, it would be a good chance to see older machinery in use but other events are good too - hill climbs are great to see older rally and single seaters. I've been to Goodwood a couple of times but it costs a small fortune and is too crowded now.
 
Duke said:
Didn't quite expect such in-depth replies :)

I think as long as it isn't expensive, it would be a good chance to see older machinery in use but other events are good too - hill climbs are great to see older rally and single seaters. I've been to Goodwood a couple of times but it costs a small fortune and is too crowded now.
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I guess you mean the FOS rather than the Revival? The FOS has lost much of its appeal these days due to the sheer volume of people and to be fair the limits they apply these days are a shame, though understandable. I remember being able to park my car against the hay bails near the main straight bridge in the early days, these days even with press passes I get you can't get close to doing that.

The Revival however is not the same as they limit the crowds and to me it never feels crowded and is also a MUCH better event. I agree they are expensive however, last time I went in 2009 I spent £1400 with tickets for 3 days, hire of camper van, pitch and beers/food, so an expensive event but bloody epic.

Look :D
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Took a mate, he is a talented photographer as this was his first ever motorsport event and he got some cracking pictures without a full on sporting lens though his kit was Cannon stuff he paid trillions for :D
 
pcoltrane said:
Running them however is spectacularly expensive!
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not when they dont have the original engine and gearbox which most of them wont

If i wanted to watch old f1 cars i would spectate at a corse clienti day knowing they are actually f1 cars under the hood with stupidly loud screaming engines and not an engine taken from an audi road car
 
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Would pay good money to watch these again. Remember when they would be on "World of Sport" on a Saturday afternoon. Fanatastic entertainment.

 
arknor said:
not when they dont have the original engine and gearbox which most of them wont

If i wanted to watch old f1 cars i would spectate at a corse clienti day knowing they are actually f1 cars under the hood with stupidly loud screaming engines and not an engine taken from an audi road car
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In BOSS, most of the F1 cars will be running the original engine. That's why there are so few of the very modern cars - the pneumatic valve era engines are mind blowingly expensive to run.

Some of the older cars (eg the mid 90s Bennetons) might run a 4 litre Judd V10 sportscar engine. The reason for this is that is that you have 8-900bhp relatively reliably. By that I mean you only have to rebuild every 1000-2000 miles compared to every 500miles for something like a Cosworth HB. They are at least in character though with the original cars as the 4litre Judd is a close relation to the Judd engines that did run in F1.

The Judd is relatively 'cheap' ... but will still set you back £50-60k to buy and probably in the region of £30k for a rebuild.

You can't just stick any old engine in one of these cars - you need something that is packaged tightly enough and also can be used as a stressed member. That's why the Judd is one of the only real alternatives if you want to race a car in BOSS. For some of the modern cars there is no decent alternative .. you either use the extremely expensive engine it ran in period, or else nothing. That's a real problem when some of the engine manufacturers took back all their engines at the end of the season - and the reason why you won't ever see certain cars out on the grid.

As for gearboxes - the cars almost certainly will be using the original gearbox. The reason being that all of the suspension, rear wing etc mounts to the gearbox! Gear ratios are disposable items. In the later cars the gears won't be off the shelf items so will cost a small fortune to get made. The teams never sell the cars with software either. Back in the 90s people bought up the old Pacific's and Simteks for very little money (£8k for a simtek!) to race in BOSS. I understand they then spent as much as £100k just trying to get a working hydraulic shift! Fortunately there are now some off the shelf packages that have the capability the gearboxes but are still very expensive to buy. Not to mention how expensive any teething problems might be if it doesn't quite work straight away and destroys ratios or a gearbox casing!

You also have the problem that everything on these cars is bespoke - eg even in the mid 90s things like master cylinders were machined from a solid block of titanium. Whenever anything breaks it's going to cost £££. In that Earthdreams thread he mentions that the steering wheel alone cost him £3k. Steel suspension components on the cars have to be crack tested regularly according to the regulations which is also expensive. The later cars with Carbon suspension pose a whole different set of issues.

They might well be trying to shoehorn an H1V8 into the Earthdreams Honda in the thread above but it's not what has been done with most of the cars racing in BOSS. In fact if you look at some of the results from this year, most the cars racing in BOSS currently are GP2 or Nissan World series cars and a couple of Indycars. The reason being that these are 'customer' cars with standard parts and good spares availability making them realistic albeit still very expensive cars to race. The few F1 cars racing are either older 80s or 90s machinery which probably compare to a GP2 car in cost to run .. with just one or two later F1 cars run by extremely weathly multimillionaires!

I guess it depends on your perspective on what 'spectacularly expensive' is. By most people's standards though running any of these cars is exact that ... which is precisely the reason they can be so cheap to buy. £35k either makes an expensive show car ... or a gigantic money pit if you want to race it!
 
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I would not imagine there is a single car on a BOSS grid that collectively cost less than 250K to buy, prepare and run for a season.
 
Housey said:
I would not imagine there is a single car on a BOSS grid that collectively cost less than 250K to buy, prepare and run for a season.
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I imagine it's that or significantly more for some of the later F1 machinery.

If you're happy with a Nissan World Series Dallara, of which there are a few on the current grid, at best you might be looking at something like half that figure for the 7 round championship - but that's still an awful lot of money!
 
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As you will know it's the things that most people don't see or consider when they look at motor sport and try to equate the costs of running. I spent close to 15K getting an MX5 race car on circuit (the car was 700 quid!) and doing a couple of races and MX5 racing is about as cheap as national championship motor sport gets. I've friends in other formulas such as Britcar, BTCC and GT racing who are spending well over 250K to be out there.

Add in a rig to put the stuff in, a support camper van, some support people, the car, the tech to run it, the bits to support it, the entry fees, the fuel, the rebuilds, the fettling and it's serious money.
 
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