| Monday, October 26, 2009 3:41AM | Behind The Wheel With Brett Smrz |
What a day! We spent the day looking at the McLaren Technology Center, which was absolutely amazing. The building is made of glass. Literally, everything is made of glass! Little did we know, there was even a small pond right outside of the building, which made it look like it was floating on the water. Jakub gave us a tour of the entire factory, and told us everything about everything!
We got to see all of their different stations; such as their brake testing station, the station where they build the parts, and the station where they design the parts on the computer! The cars are amazingly high tech when you look at them up close. There are little curves on the body work that you would never see on TV, and that you wouldn't think would help on the car. The thing is, every little thing they do to the car gains them time on the track! They run their wind tunnel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! They are non-stop testing their cars to improve them and get one step ahead of their competitors.
We got to see the room where they can communicate with the team from their factory, no matter where the team is. I thought that was very interesting, just to see how high tech technology is these days. They can talk to the driver from that room, which is absolutely insane! They even have a photographer that takes photos of the car every lap to make sure there is nothing damaged. The photographers photos get transmitted to McLarens television screens, and there is only a 10 second delay.
They have a racing simulator in their building, which we unfortunately didn't get to see. He told us about it though, and I wish I can see it some day down the road. It is an old formula 1 chassis that is in a dark black room, and the screen is 3 projectors. You are wearing a 3d helmet, which makes everything stand out a bit more. Apparently, they develop their setups for every track on the racing simulator, and the setup is usually almost dead on every time. The drivers get to test on the simulator one time before every race event. If they can develop their setups through the simulator, it must be very realistic...
After we visited McLaren, we got to see West Surrey Racing's shop. West Surrey racing runs a few BTCC cars, and he used to run a couple of Formula 3 cars. He ran many famous names on his Formula 3 team. Their place was very small compared to McLaren, but it was still a very nice place! Dick Bennetts showed us all of their race cars, and all of their trophys and accomplishments while we were there. All of us also had quite a long chat about old racing experiences before we left, which was also fun. The British Touring Cars are very cool. They reminded me a lot of the Grand Am Rolex cars back home, but the BTCC cars have a bit more under the hood. I wish we would have gotten to see one of their races while we were over here for the Team USA Scholarship!
I wanted to thank Jeremy Shaw, and the Team USA Scholarship for allowing me to be in Europe and to tour all of these fantastic places. Also, I would like to thank the Team USA Scholarship supporters, as I wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for your backing.
Brett Smrz
