Track Car of the Year - long post/short question

[Rex]

Anybody have any suggestions for hearing protection in an open cockpit mid-engine track car? I test drove a Radical SR3 at Willow Springs Wednesday and was absolutely blown away by the performance of the thing. For those not familiar with the SR3 (see link below), it was voted Track Car of the Year by Evo Magazine, is made in England, uses a 1.5L Suzuki Powertec 252 hp 4-cylinder engine, 6 speed sequential shifter, shaft drive, weighs 1100 pounds, seats 2, pulls 2 G’s in a turn and 1.75 G’s under braking, generates something like 1400 lbs of downforce at 100 mph and can probably beat an Enzo around most tracks.

I’m no experienced track hand (my experience consists of 2 days at Laguna Seca during NSXPO ’99 plus 5 years of NSX ownership (a ‘98 and an ‘00), but driving the SR3, I felt like M. Schumacher himself. The thing is incredibly fast, impossibly grippy and surprisingly forgiving (although I did manage one off-track excursion and another near miss due to bozo technique.) I spent the day with the guys from Radical West, (Arie Luyendyk Jr. was also there trying an SR3) and left the track at 5:00, nursing a sore neck from trying to hold my head up in the turns and thinking this car’s incredible but way too intense for me. But I’ve thought of nothing else since and can’t wait to get back in one.

I’ve decided to buy one, but have one problem, hyperacusis (“abnormal acuteness of hearing due to increased irritability of the sensory neural mechanism”). And the SR3, like any engine redlining at 10.5K sitting right behind your head, makes a fair amount of noise. Nobody else had a problem with it, but my hyperacute ears are still ringing. And much as I want the SR3, I don’t want to lose my hearing for it.

So, does anybody know of super earplugs, noise reducing helmets, anything? I saw an ENT doc today, who, coincidentally, turned out to have been the track doctor at Laguna Seca years ago He said the most effective earplug is Silly Putty. Hell, I want this car bad enough I’d put Silly Putty in my nose, but I find it hard to believe that technology has advanced far enough to create a Formula 3 level car affordable by mortals but can’t make an earplug better than Silly Putty.

http://radicalwest.com/

Rex

 

[DONYMO]

You can have a set of custom earplugs made for your ears. That will help....your ENT can refer you.

 

[Rex]

Sparco WTT F1 helmet

My ENT prescribed Silly Putty in all seriousness. He's had a lot of experience as a track doc and says Silly Putty fits the ear canal better than any earplug he's seen and has superior noise deadening properties. Anybody ever try it? Hard to maintain the Michael Schumacher illusion with Silly Putty in the ear though.

Does anyone have any experience with the Sparco WTT F1 helmet? It comes with Peltor ear cups which are supposed to reduce noise by up to 25 dB. It costs $820 so I'd like to know how effective it really is before replacing my nearly new Bell M3.

Rex

 

[JPS Europa]

So what would a car end up costing?

 

[Rex]

Depends on the model you get and the options you order. Radical makes 4 or 5, soon to be 6 I think, models, ranging from $32,000 (US$) to about $65,000. The car I'm getting includes all the options recommended by Radical West (the US distributor) and will cost about $58,000. That's for a full blown race car with full FIA approved roll cage, front crash box, side impact bars, 'Nik' fulll-floating suspension, single adjustable dampers, four-pot calipers and vented discs, full carbon fiber undertray, six-point harnesses for driver and passenger, rear wing, LCD racing dash and toggles, fuel injection, gear-drive oil cooler, ultra lightweight center-knockoff wheels (extremely cool-looking) with slicks, multi-point fire-extinguisher system, foam-filled fuel tank, brake lights, quick-release steering wheel, electronic lap timer (transmitter/receiver), dash-mounted brake bias adjuster, cool paint job and full Radical decal graphics, etc.

It's as close to a Formula 1 car as I'm ever going to get. Plus it's got a passenger seat to impress/scare the living bejesus out of friends or wealthy spinster aunts teetering on the brink. Radical West had 4 cars at Willow Springs Wednesday and towards the end of the day it was getting hard to get a car because the owners were giving rides to gorgeous young woman asking for demo's.

 

[PKim]

SR3

Rex,
How can I get to test drive the Radicals, is there a day when they have track events?

Paul

Never mind I just saw there web page for track events.

Thanks.

 

[Rex]

Paul,
Call John Morris at Radical West (the #’s on their website www.radicalwest.com ). He and his partner, Justin LaJoie, are extremely nice guys and eager to share their enthusiasm. If you are seriously interested, I’m sure they will accommodate you. They were incredibly nice to me; I called them out of the blue after reading rave reviews about the SR3 and John offered to fly me to Willow Springs in his helicopter.

He’s a very interesting guy, a Vietnam vet who started a web design firm, made a bucket of money and retired to indulge his love of speed. He bought a 750-hp Viper Final Edition, took it to the track and was roundly spanked by a Radical SR3, a car he’d never seen before. He talked the owner of the SR3 into letting him take it for a drive, fell in love with it, bought his own, immediately started winning races and decided to become Southern California distributor for Radical. He and Justin opened a showroom and shop in Anaheim and have already sold about 10 cars even though they haven’t had their grand opening yet.

If you buy a car and don’t want to mess with transporting, they’ll store it for you at their shop, perform all maintenance, transport it to any track in California, Arizona or Nevada, and provide race support if you want it. They have several beautiful new fully enclosed trailers, ranging in size from 1-car to 4-car. All you have to do is show up at the track and drive. And if own a business and are interested in racing, I understand you can deduct your racing expenses as advertising and promotion (I’m no accountant, so check with yours to verify that).

Rex

 

[Jimbo]

http://www.etymotic.com/

 

[Rex]

Jimbo,
Thanks for the link. Do you use Etymotic earpluhgs? Which model? It looks like the ER-25 offers the most protection. I have some Robert Leight foam earplugs rated at 33 NRR, which theoretically provide significantly more protection than the 20 NRR ER-25's, but they tend to slip out of the ear.

 

[combustion]

I know they make headphones for flying that take out all background noise so i would assume that they would make earplugs like hearing aids that would work in reverse

 

[Jimbo]

Rex,

I have the ER-20s. I use them on occasion. I don't have a problem, but I do use them for flying sometimes and auto races. I also own their ER-9 for use with my iPod. Great company and great products.

-Jim

 

[kenjiMR]

Lucky bastard! I want to drive one soo bad.... $30k is understandable, but $58k is out of my range for now. It makes a lot more sense to do spec racing in one of those than trying to do what Doug has been doing with his NSX though.

 

[Rex]

Kenji,
You’re right. John Morris said something to me that really struck a chord: if you’re going to drive a car on a race track, drive a racecar. They perform the job a hell of a lot better than a street car, they’re a lot more fun to drive, a lot cheaper to maintain, and when you crash they’re a lot easier and cheaper to repair. When you take a street car on the track you’re always worried about dinging it. In a racecar, a ding here or there is more a badge of honor than a blemish. At Willow Springs there were Modenas and GT2’s that arrived in trailers and raced with their front ends covered with protective tape. The SR3’s kicked their butts.

The entire body of the SR3 can be removed in about 3 minutes. It’s composed of 4 or 5 sections which simply unclip. Pop 6 clips and you can remove the entire rear section, providing total, unobstructed access to the engine and drivetrain. Takes one man about one minute. If you crash and bust the front end or rear you can replace either body section for about $1,000. Maintenance is minimal. Many SR3 owners race an entire season or more without doing much more than changing the oil every time out and replacing tires. Suzuki recommends reconditioning the engine once a season, which costs about $2,500 if you have it done professionally.

I think Radical West has a couple of used Clubsports that are for sale and would probably fit in your budget. They’re not as fast as an SR3 but they’re probably faster than most everything else on the track.

 

[Rex]

Too much is never enough

Radical has just begun delivering a turbo version of the 1.5L SR3 producing 320 hp. If that isn’t frightening enough in an 1100 lb car, rumor has it that they are working on a V-8, consisting of two conjoined 1.5L 4-cylinder Suzuki Powertec engines. Assuming it’s turboed (and assuming they can get the power to the ground without vaporizing the tires), it approaches the power to weight ratio of an IRL car.