It’s 1975, and the Ara’s motorcar division starts up a racing team, with some of the teams (possibly not so finest) engineers being assigned to the task. The result, the Ara Racing Mirya. No, not a Miura but a Mirya.
The Mirya is a misspelt Ukrainian word Mriya, meaning dream, because the engineers didn’t know Ukrainian. A very basic car, using the finest in ladder steel chassis design, with double wishbone suspension. Developed before the car was the 3.13 Litre, NA flatplane V8 called the Midicobra. The name apparently came to the lead designer in a dream, but everyone else thinks it was a hallucination. This engine produces about 260.1 kW or roughly 349 hp as of the latest revision. The weight limit for the size of engine lead to the 1.004 ton design weight, which was achieved to within 2 kg.
Topping out at 271.5 km/h, this car is designed for the long sweeping bends of Spa and the fast runs of the Hockenheim Circuit. It’s acceleration is poor in general, and the lack of experiance the team had shows in the design. That said, due to their decent reliablity and good fuel consumption and tire wear figures, the team is quietly confident that they will be able to make their way into the midpack.
With the goal of making a highly competitive car under 1000kg, the engineers chose to run a Twin Turbo 2.2L DOHC V12 for the 1976 BRC season, with a power output of 438hp and weighing in at 997.4kg (just .1kg over the weight limit) the team feel satisfied with their efforts and anxiously await the coming season.
I did it, 2:04:57, although every time I run the test track the time changes, randomly goes 2:04.57, 2:05, and 2:05.03… good enough for me to finally call it quits. Going to submit my car and put up some pretty pictures soon ™.
I found Green Hell to favor higher gear ratios which is counter productive on the short acceleration intensive tracks we’ll be on for most of the season
EDIT: while it may be the longest and most diverse, the majority of the track (which affects times the most) is unlike the tracks we will be racing on. Better to test on ATT or find a track similar to tracks we will be racing on
well, i handled high speed track with just MOAR POWAH…
or at least, that i thought i was doing. until i figured out that people are running twice the size of my engine capacity. recalling back that the winner in '55 brc had a 800cc v8, and now we’re running about 8x the size.
The car is a prototype for the next generation Meteor which is projected to debut in 1979. Due to the last minute nature of the submission, I’m not very confident in how well the car will perform. Hopefully I will be surprised, and if not, at least I have some representation in the field.
