Life Blasters ventured out to Thunderhill Raceway last weekend to catch up with Rob Sherod, and old friend from auto tech school.
Rob works for M&L Racing and spends every day maintaining a fleet of race cars including the subject of this article, the Spice prototype car.
The chassis was built in 1990 by Spice and campaigned in the FIA world championship series in the C1 class. It also competed in the legendary 24 Heures Du Mans endurance race in 1990, 1991, and 1992.
The Spice’s powerplant consists of an all aluminum 3.5 liter DOHC V8 from a Formula 1 car which revs effortlessly to 11,500RPM. Rob says the power output is a modest 590WHP, de-tuned from its 750HP Formula 1 spec for reliability at endurance races such as this particular weekend’s event, SCCA’s 4hr Illgen enduro.
The interior of the car is all business. If you ever wanted your street car to be light like the spice, you might have to do a little more than strip the interior. Including the driver and a hefty 32 gallon fuel load, the Spice car weighs in at only 1922lbs. That’s lighter than a Spec Miata!
The Spice is made up of an aluminum monocoque with an all-carbon top. The wing looks massive, but it’s not the only thing providing the Spice with downforce. The underside of the car is designed to suck the car down, and combined with the rest of the aero-package it produces up to 4,000lbs of downforce at 172mph. That’s twice what the car weighs!
Just look at the size of those shoes! The Spice has 18″ x 14.5″ wheels that are easily replaceable with the car’s air-jack system, and 4.5″ uni-lugs. Oh, and brakes… 15.5″ rotors on all four corners help stop the Spice when it’s approaching the Mulsanne Corner at over 200mph, or Turn 1 at Thunderhill at 160mph.
This duct is to keep the rear brakes cool. The gold you see is foil covered in real gold, because gold is the most efficient reflector of heat available. Saucy!
Here’s something you might not know, the alternators on lots of purpose-built race cars like this one are driven off of the differential or final drive. The purpose is to reduce parasitic loss of horsepower from the engine, and to keep the alternator from being subjected to the constantly changing RPMs the engine is going through.
The Spice’s systems are pushed to such an extreme level that for every day the team spends driving the car, over eight hours of work must be done to it. Everything from rebuilding the gearbox, using the magnaflux technique to check all the hollow cast-magnesium uprights and other metal parts for cracks, to torquing every single bolt on the car. All in a day’s work for Rob and the rest of the M&L Racing team.
-G
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