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Friday September 12, 2003
marked a very special day for Gizzmo Racing. The Alfa 2.0 version of
the “Oval Spec”
named the
KITTY CAT
car made its maiden run.
The car, conceived as an
entry-level oval car, ran on the St-Roch road coarse as an initial
evaluation. At 7:15 eastern standard time, Gizzmo president Alain
Carpentier took the car out on a couple of exploratory laps and was
instantly, and quite pleasantly, surprised by the smooth ride and docile
handling of the car. Team engineer, Phil Matthews and designer Patrick
Philie then put the car through its paces, again with similar results.
The computerized lay out of the car that as been used
since the beginning of is conception
Initial
Feedback:
Smooth ride.,
Quick but very
forgiving handling
As this was the final race of the
St-Roch summer calendar, and with the gracious approval of the competitors,
the car was raced against similarly powered road-coarse cars to further the
evaluation. After twenty minutes of racing (3 qualifiers and a win in the
A-main), the only bug was a popped servo saver due to a tangle (the servo
and servo saver are a couple of the parts not made by Gizzmo!). A slightly
longer screw fixed that problem, and the rest of the evening was trouble
free.
Between heats, approximately 25
different people drove the car. The skill range went from elite racer down
to newbies and several non-racers. The comments, however, were all the
same: “Wow is this easy to drive!”
Alain saw this from a different
perspective, the people would drive the car for two laps to get familiar
with it, then blast down the straight away into a tight left hander. None
had any difficulty with the car after next to no time driving it! This was
true for the WHOLE range of drivers, even the newbies.
The car that as been used Friday September 12, 2003
The entire Gizzmo team will now go
back to the design to address the minor issues encountered in the build up
to the first run and will be back quickly with the Beta version of the
Gizzmo Oval Spec Car.
Stay tuned… |
Phillip Matthews, Gizzmo Team
engineer
and Pat Philie, Gizzmo Team designer, are getting the car ready for is
initial ride!
Alain
Carpentier (archive picture)
Alpha 1.0
version of the car as it been presented to the GRCSR board of
directors |
