Mara goes Letara, Ep. 3-6: Turning a shitbox into a racecar
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Early morning, 17th June 1965, Mara’s proving grounds on the south shore of Lake Mara, near Mostovka, Archana
Rodyn Gumprov, Mara’s lead development engineer for the Irena project, Yenna Blielicki, lead development engineer for the Perspekt I4 and Blyz V8 engine projects and Marek Krowalkowski, Mara’s chief test driver all arrived early at Mara’s proving grounds.
Rodyn and Yenna arrived together in the prototype Irena racecar they were about to test and fine-tune for the R2 class of the Letaran racing circuit starting later in the year.
Mara’s proving grounds are located on the land of an old brick factory totally not the BeamNG industry map. Lake Mara on the horizon.
The racecar prototype was converted off a 3-door sedan in the flag red colour. The prototype they had with them also sported a first attempt at a livery; there were two black stripes left of centre on the bonnet, intended to go all across the car later. But for now, engineering and testing had priority over external design.
Mara race car testing, part 1: regular track handling
After a short briefing, their day started on the handling course, a twisty track with few straight areas. While Marek started exploring the limits of the 250 hp Irena, Rodyn pondered that they were essentially now testing what had received the least attention during their past eight months of development time.
The Irena R2 racecar prototype being put through its paces
Despite their initial goal of splitting development efforts equally between car and engine, most of their effort had to go into the engine after all in order to achieve the target output of 250 horsepower - or 186.4 kW, as their boss Fedor would insist on. Among other things, Yenna had to develop an entirely new intake and header system to re-focus power delivery to high rpms. There were also many other detailed improvements to the entire engine construction - especially so that they did not have to forge special versions of the stock cast engine components as well.
Against their limited budget, this effort also meant that there could not be any big car engineering changes beyond what was necessary. Rodyn had to have the heavy-duty gearbox from the interceptor modified to withstand the power and torque from the not quite twice as powerful race engine. Inside, they removed the rear bench, dashboard padding and a few other amenities, replaced the fuel gauge with a tachometer (they still had a fuel warning light), and rewired the 160 kph speedometer to indicate 160 at 320 kph.
Grip was provided by the newest Tyrelli Cinquerato tyres - now available thanks to the Fruinian market opening to Archana. The radial nature of these tyres - as opposed to the stock crossplies the regular Irenas (including the interceptor) ran on - meant developing an entirely new suspension geometry. The front drum brakes were replaced by discs and crude but effective cooling for the brakes was provided by cutting holes into the body shell.
Rodyn was also keen on replacing the entire rear suspension. However, all the aforementioned changes meant there was little time and resources to develop anything else properly over the existing the leaf set-up that essentially had not seen much changes since the initial Tovarysh development in 1947.
A loud screeching sound brought Rodyn out of his reflections.
Nothing wrong with going over the limits at times during testing
Yenna looked up from her notes as well. “By the way”, she began after seeing that Marek had everything under control again. “Have you seen the letter from the Letaran privateer racer… what was his name again?”
Rodyn nodded. “Yes, and I can’t remember the name either. He highlighted the very long straight of Lerance raceway and the recent installation of banked corners. So we need to reduce air resistance. The handling in banked corners is what we will actually test next.”
In truth, Rodyn had not gotten very far in his attempts at external streamlining. He had replaced the chrome stuff around the windows with plastic equivalents from the Regular models, had a new fuel filler cap machined that stuck out less than the old one and removed the front bumper. The rear bumper had to stay on because that’s where the newly required reverse light was fitted. Beyond this, Rodyn saw not much obvious further improvement potential.
Suddenly, Rodyn and Yenna heard faint voices over the engine roar. They looked around and saw that they had gotten two spectators. Since Mara’s proving grounds were located on the area of an old brick factory, and they never left anything valuable between their sporadic visits, there were not many fences or other security measures in place. Still, it was an area that hardly saw any visitors.
Yenna and Rodyn approached the two spectators who stood in respectful distance away from the testing track behind the provisional barriers that were placed to keep a spinning car from careening too far off into the scenery (and into the debris that still was scattered around in the bushes). They saw two teenagers - one boy and one girl - who looked like twins, their bicycles leaning against one of the barriers.
“Hello, who are you?” Rodyn tried not to be too intimidating.
The girl spoke first. “I am Anya, and this is Andriy. I hope it’s okay if we…”
“Sure”, reassured Yenna. “Just keep away from the test track. What are you doing here?”
Now it was the boy’s turn. “See what you are testing. We also want to be engineers when we grow up!”
The girl chimed in. “Our father builds a sports car, not far from here - you know?” Her brother unsuccessfully tried to shush her.
For a moment, Yenna and Rodyn were puzzled, then their penny dropped. “You are Mayster’s kids?”
Both nodded. Yenna and Rodyn heard the engine noise in the background die down. Marek apparently had come back to the makeshift pits.
“We need to go back to our testing. You two are welcome to stay here, just keep a safe distance from the track…”
