An evident tendency seen during the last
kart chassis homologation, the one valid for
2009 to 2014, is the one for which the best
known manufacturers were making several models
for third parties. These “third parties” have from
time to time been other smaller manufacturers, who
put their trademark and then assembled the parts,
or drivers (even F1 drivers) and others working in
this field. In one case though, we were faced with
two authentic authorities of top level in this field:
CRG, headed by Giancarlo Tinini and Peter De Bruijn,
PDB team owner, that is, one of the strongest on
the international scene, which has already proved
capable of competing with equal arms against
official teams. Important elements, whose meeting
has brought about a new chassis, the Maddox. This
is one of the products where you don’t see anything
exceptionally different, but it’s in this that you find
amazing sturdiness. There is nothing revolutionary
about the design of the body, on the contrary, it is
in agreement to the latest manufacturing standards
only with one or two of its own characteristics, and
it’s in this that we have the best of each “parents”
the know-how of a great factory and that of a team
that for some years isn’t just a simple racing team
belonging to a chassis manufacturer. And giving
rise to something that we cannot define just as
being simply “interesting” but much more. Peter
De Bruijn himself is enthusiastic to have his brand
together with that of Gillard traditionally used for
racing, enough to say: “It is fantastic to have a
second and new brand and will give our teams
and company a big boost forward”.
This speaks for itself, there’s nothing else to add
concerning his expectations for the future of this
model of kart.
The Maddox is one of the products where you don’t see anything exceptionally
different, but it’s in this that you find amazing sturdiness. There is nothing revolutionary
about the design of the body, on the contrary, it is in agreement to the latest manufacturing
standards only with one or two of its own characteristics, and it’s in this that we have the
best of each “parents”
BORN WELL AND READY TO RACE
As usual we’ll take a closer look at the technical
and manufacturing details in a separate column.
However, we underline that we came into contact
at the official free practice held at the circuit
Muro Leccese before the first round of the WSK
championship, something that has enabled us to
find a decent track despite it being cold. In fact
tyre pressure, at first quite high due to the cold
environmental conditions, was after brought to the
usual and normal 0.55 bar. Tubes for frame are 30
mm in diameter and this leads to believe that it can
adapt to both these conditions and to conditions
where there’s much more grip, in this last case with
the effect of “freeing” set up. The thing is that, even
if this model was in its early base of development,
it has positively surprised us from the start. Not
so much, perhaps, for its clean performance, but
for its trueness the way it made us immediately
understand what was happening. For example, skid
induced after first 5-6 laps was only due to high
pressure of tyres, not to anything else. On trying to
get a bit more grip, tracks were narrowed and the
effect though was that kart behaviour on the track
was slightly rougher.
IT GIVES AND GETS ASSURANCE
But once tyre pressure was lowered again and
we returned to the right track measurement the
response what any driver would always like to have
in racing on circuits like La Conca. Clean behaviour
increases as we went along and besides being
easier to drive, you have less apprehension, it really
enables you to “shoot” round corners with such
self-assurance that is rewarded. You have always
got the sensation that it the Maddox just won’t
betray you, and can makes your performance and
corner entry improve lap after lap and there’s no
second chance (because even in normal situations
you make the most of the margin of track and curb
available) round difficult corners like some you find
at Muro Leccese, starting from the double turn after
the finishing line. A very fast corner where, if you
slow down too much, after it is impossible to pick
up speed lost after. Having more self-assurance you
automatically are able to concentrate more on other
important aspects of racing, so you can follow the
“right” path line. The result is that also the engine
– a Iame for KF2 “straight from the box”, that is new
and just ran in – gives more yield because it hasn’t
got to take on the task of picking up speed under
turning stress.
FOR A BETTER START
So, time improves with each lap but whatsmore
you realize that you are really starting to use the
technical material you have properly. And this is
only reasoning in terms of “user friendly” results
referring to the Maddox. This is a characteristic that
that we already found in the chassis used by the
PDB team during the last test, but that in this case
absolutely assure the very best. Helping no end to
meet the requirements for getting to know a Kew
kart – like this one – or a new track. Besides giving
unique “internal self-assurance” in heated racing
and in decisive instants. And improving with each
lap, going almost from a sort of shy approach to the
track and track conditions, that this chassis makes
all hesitations superfluous, and even lap time
automatically become what you’d expect it to be.
Even more appreciated results these, if you think
that it is a new chassis, in fact in set up, they still
haven’t decided to use supplementary bars, which
can be mounted but aren’t. If you can tell what the
day’s going to be like by how it starts, well…
Tubes for frame are 30 mm in diameter and this leads to
believe that it can adapt to both low grip conditions, and to
conditions where there’s much more grip, in this last case
with the effect of “freeing” set up.
TECHNICAL BOX #2: WITH CURVED CROSS MEMBER
The chassis Maddox tested was homologated as model LP01,
number Cik 34/CH/14, for all the classes. All tubes are 30mm
in diameter except for the front and rear cross member, which
are 32mm. However, the design, quite traditional with double
curve in longitudinal members, all the difference lies in the
central cross member, in fact it has a double forward curve,
so that it is more upright on the longitudinal members, so now
there are 11 curves altogether. Among the other characteristic,
wheelbase is 105 cm. Supplementary bars can be mounted both
on the front and rear, something though that hasn’t been done
yet. Furthermore, the model that we tested had bearing support
binders “closed”: the upper part surrounded the axle, so as to
make the whole stiffer.
TELEMETRY BOX
As we have seen, one of the main points of the Maddox chassis is reliability and the
trust that it gives to whoever is driving it. But, is it possible to weigh up trust? Well,
no. But Unipro acquisition data does allow you to register and evaluate several
other parameters: let’s see which.
GRAPH #1 #2 #3
One of the results that we can get from the Unipro system, thanks to the
ForzaG sensor, and path line line. So, we can trace out the track (or, rather
our path lines) that in this case is the track at La Conca, which is 1250 metres
long, direction is clockwise, 6 right and 5 left turns and an “S”. The straight
continues for 250metres. But it doesn’t end here. Thanks to the Pc Analyser
you can judge the correspondents for speed, revs, braking, skid, Gforce and
temperature at each point of the track. In this case, (graph1) in the picture of
the track we can see a yellow dot, the first braking point, which corresponds
to the line for engine revs on the left graph.
Besides, in graph 2, we can see how to colour track surface according to
one of the prominent colours. In this case, we looked at speed with green
representing higher speed, while red stand for the slowest parts of the track.
High-speed test registered 121.1 km/h, while the highest minimum one (that is,
the best registered at the slowest point) was 51.3 km/h. However, you can also
check contemporarily and parallel two of these values, as we did in graph 3 for
revs (top) and braking (lower).
Graph #3
GRAPH #4
This graph underlines wheel skid compared to actual kart speed. You can
see how in the comparison the green line represents positive and negative
peaks compared to the red line, identifying stronger skids. This because the
two lines represent two different laps in different sessions where also the
weather conditions had changed. On the green lap, especially, track was wet
due to light rain.
Graph #4
GRAPH #5
Here in each column we see how long the engine remained at each rev level,
starting from 4500 to a maximum 15000 revs (when the rev limiter steps in to
control max revs) at 500 rev intervals. There is a first column that represents
the permanence between 14500 and 15000 during a single lap; it tells us that
the engine stays there for 8.70% of the lap and just below (between 14000
and 14500 revs) the engine stays there for 9.66% of the lap. It shows us how
the engine remained at max revs for about a fifth of the lap, which confirms
how fast the track at Muro Leccese is depends a lot on how clean engine
performance is.
Graph #5
GRAPH #6
To conclude, the “Delta Time” graph can immediately show the time difference
between different laps or between two drivers. Two areas, a green one and a
red one, mark the graph and to remain in one or the other depends on whether
you are dropping or gaining along that part of the track. So, it is useful to see
whether you have gained or not and exactly where along the track.