View Full Version : best motorsports cheat?

962 kid So I was talking with someone about cheating in motorsports, and it got me thinking... what's the coolest/trickiest/best cheat you've seen in any form of motorsport? When I say cheating, I don't mean getting a driver to crash strategically, sandbag, or any other junk like that. Instead I mean teams finding innovative/sneaky ways to get around technical rules and restrictions (eg flexible front wings in F1).



I'll start off with my favorite, Toyota's cheater restrictor for the WRC Celicas:



http://carphotos.cardomain.com/ride_images/3/2572/1681/31428340145_large.jpg





oyota Team Europe has been banned from competition for the next 12months, and the points already gained in the 1995 World Rally Championship have been taken away by the FIA.



"It's the most ingenious thing I have seen in 30 years of motorsport." admitted FIA President Max Mosley after an extraordinary meeting of the FIA's World Council convened following technical reports on Toyota from the Catalunya Rally.

The offending illegally modified turbo restrictors which banished Toyota from the WRC.



The cause of complaint was that Toyota had fitted turbo restrictors which were modified in three ways:



The restrictor was not sealed so it was possible to move it without touching the seals.



It was possible for airto enter the engine without passing through the restrictor.



The position of the restrictor could be moved so it was further away from the turbine than the50 mm limit permitted.



It was discovered that these irregularities were made possible by a flange which had a special hidden bypass device which was held open against a very strong spring. The hose which connected the restrictor to the turbo had a metal casing inside, and attached to this casing were catches which could secretly force open the by-pass flange to the extent of 5 mm.



Max Mosley explained: "When the system was dismantled, the flange would automatically close itself and remove evidence that extra air could have entered engine. This system not only allowed extra air which did not pass through the restrictor to enter the engine, but also the restrictor itself could illegally be moved further from the turbo.



"The hose was fixed to the restrictor by a jubilee clip. A special tool was then applied to open the device and then the device then gripped in the open position by a second clip. Both of these clips had to be undone for a scrutineer to check the restrictor and in the process of opening those clips the device snapped shut.



"Inside it was beautifully made. The springs inside the hose had been polished and machined so not to impede the air which passed through. To force the springs open without the special tool would require substantial force. It is the most sophisticated and ingenious device either I or the FIA's technical experts have seen for a long-time. It was so well made that there was no gap apparent to suggest there was any means of opening it."



The FIA estimates that 25 per cent more air was allowed into the engine than permitted although admits it's difficult to estimate how much more power that would achieve. An expert put it as high as an extra 50 bhpa considerable advantage when the cars are supposedly limited to 300 BHP.



TTE did not claim the device was legal but was represented by lawyers who entered a plea in mitigation. Mosley went on to say that the points Toyota and their drivers, Juha Kankkunen, Didier Auriol and Armin Schwarz had gained in 1995 would simply be taken away but others would not move up to fill the gaps.

redline Ferrari in F1 in the late 90s had traction control when it was banned. Will explain later

R154 I cant remember exactly which series it was I think ti was grassroots NASCAR type series in the late 80's SHELBY was using a fuel decanter that was conical in shape (inside a cylindrical "body" with an orifice that splayed at the base leading to a large cylinder to enter at the tank. That in an of itself was a cheat (using flow dynamics to create vacuum to pull the fuel down quicker) at the time as all the decanters were supposed to be standardized. The part which made it so much more illegal was they manufactured a fuel line that came out of the tech's uniform covertly attacked to an internal spout to be constantly filling the fuel device. The concept was that the fuel would be forced out at a quicker rate in relation to total volume within the decanter. This shaved hundreds (cumulatively through out a season) in pit time. Leading to pole positions. I think they were busted after 3 seasons of using this!



In motorcycle racing there was a guy (locally) racing in CMRA and AMRA that wired a power commander covert styles. He raced a gixxer 1000 and had the wires tucked in the frame, hollowed out a battery and had the PC located in it. He relocated his battery inside of his fuel tank fully sealed. I guess he cut it open and welded a baffle/separator then welded it back together and had it repainted. He was eventually caught out when he forgot to set his PC back to "stock" via a kill switch cleverly disguised as his horn after he placed 3rd and had to dyno. the bike started to misfire on the dyno. so the tech went to check if the batt cables had come loose (fairly common) and had a little laugh when he tugged at the posi wire and top of the batter popped off revealing his (now not so cleverly) engineered cheat! The kicker was the guy spent all this money to mod his bike and was still in am class, and after all that cheat WAS STILL not that competitive!!



Another club racer bought a gixxer 750 and was racing it in am 600 class. But that was kind of tech's fault for not seeing the glaring differences in the bike and allowing him to register in it.

R154 good thread btw.

962 kid ^^ That bike one is awesome, interesting that things like that happen even at a local level. There have been a couple instances iirc of the cheats that teams have used turned out to be counterproductive. I'll try and find an article, but some of the bodywork stuff that Porsche tried on the old 930s ended up actually being worse than their legal setups.



Another interesting "cheat," the Mclaren F duct. Definitely one of the more well known systems, but a relatively simple way of getting around one of F1s oldest rules.



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When McLarens F-Duct system first appeared in pre-season testing it was hailed by many a a true stroke of genius, a classic example of out-thinking the regulations. With the basic idea being that the driver is able to alter the airflow over the rear wing, without infringing regulation 3.15 (below), and in doing so gain a speed advantage on straights.



3.15 Aerodynamic influence : With the exception of the cover

described in Article 6.5.2 (when used in the pit lane), the driver

adjustable bodywork described in Article 3.18 and the ducts described in

Article 11.4, any specific part of the car influencing its aerodynamic

performance :



Must comply with the rules relating to

bodywork

Must be rigidly secured to the entirely sprung part of

the car (rigidly secured means not having any degree of freedom) ;

Must

remain immobile in relation to the sprung part of the car.

This speed advantage appears to have given the team the upper hand at the Shanghai circuit, Racecar decided to investigate the theory behind the new system.

revelations Originally posted by redline

Ferrari in F1 in the late 90s had traction control when it was banned. Will explain later



It was pretty rudimentary, involving airflow sensors, and gearbox RPM if I recall... no wheel sensors whatsoever

Errol. Not the best but a funny one was Smokey Yunick squeezing more gas into his car.





Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank, by using eleven foot (three meter) coils of 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 gallons (19 liters) to the car's fuel capacity. Once, NASCAR officials came up with a list of nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said "Better make it ten," and drove it back to the pits. He used a basketball in the fuel tank which could be inflated when the car's fuel capacity was checked and deflated for the race.



He also made an exact 7/8 scale car which is pretty crazy.



Good thread Mike! :thumbsup:

blackpeople The Jamican Bobsled team:D

BerserkerCatSplat The Toyota restrictor cheat is easily one of my all-time faves and one of the few interesting things Toyota has ever done.



That said, this thread wouldn't be complete without Smokey Yunick. He wasn't a cheat per se, but the stories of him working between the lines of the rule book are many. For example, porting/polishing intakes was illegal, so he'd paint the ports with a thin coat of hard-set laquer and hand-sand it to a glass finish. Fuel tank sizes were restricted, so he installed a massive fuel line that held 5 extra gallons of gas.



I seem to remember hearing about a guy that was running a car in NHRA and IHRA, where the classes he competed in had slightly different rules. The IHRA class allowed him to run nitrous, while the NHRA class didn't. For the NHRA events, the scrutineers allowed him to disable his nitrous system rather than uninstalling it outright (remove the bottle). The story goes that he had a second, smaller reservoir of nitro molded into his fiberglass hood scoop, and used the low-pressure zone in the scoop to activate the flow of nitrous. That way, the only time the nitro would flow was at WOT and traveling down the track, so it wouldn't be caught during tech.



I don't know if the story's true or not, and I may have screwed up some of the details, it was long time ago when I heard it.

sillysod Chaparral 2J is one of the best IMO....



The fans were for "cooling" but turned out they just created giant vacuum under the car causing it to get sucked to the track for amazing cornering.



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Chaparral_2J.jpg/800px-Chaparral_2J.jpg



also before they had any restrictions on diesels, I remember a race car that used a giant diesel bus motor laid on its side that schooled 2 seasons of racing before they started putting restrictions on them.

slinkie Came to post the WRC celica thing, good post op

Jim2 Some race series I heard about had one competitor who always came in for a fuel splash very near the end of the race. Nobody else ever did. Ends up that the fuel jug used for the "splash" had a whole bunch of lead shot in it, this way the car would pass the weight minimum on the scales after the race.



Some eastern spec series specified no increase in compression ratio, the techs would measure the head to ensure they were not shaved. Upon tear down of the winning teams motor they discovered pistons protruding above deck, block was shaved.



No lsd permitted in formula ford racing. Some guy shimmed the side gears in his diff so they were really tight against the spider gears. Crude, but apparently it worked.



The smokey yunik's 7/8 scale car mentioned above is classic!

Jim2 Someone here may know more about this one. Les Davenport did engine support for some drag car team in the US. It was a winning car. It was discovered that just before each run the blower would be removed then put back on. Ends up he machined a gigantic block of copper to fit in the intake just under the supercharger. The copper block had a whole bunch of saw cuts in it to create fins. The block of copper was cooled in dry ice before installing it, limited time intercooler was the effect. The next season the rules were rewritten.



Funny to think that the tech guys think they "bust" these guys like Les or Smokey Yunik but they really have no idea of all the other cheats these guys create. They are really, really smart.

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