SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
You may think you have fast fingers from typing or texting, but how fast can you assemble a V-8 NASCAR engine? Jayski (NASCAR news site) reports on the annual Hendrick Motorsports engine building contest, https://www.jayski.com/2023/11/14/danny-emerick-bill-sullivan-win-2023-randy-dorton-hendrick-engine-builder-showdown/
The team of Danny Emerick and Bill Sullivan edged out the team of Scott Vester and Phil Seaton by 0.91 [seconds] to win the 2023 Randy Dorton Hendrick Engine Builder Showdown. With the victory, Emerick joins Vester as a six-time winner of the annual competition.
The two teams were neck and neck coming to the finish with the Emerick-led team overcoming an early miscue to take the title. The Emerick-Sullivan team posted a time of 22:56.46, while the Vester-Seaton squad posted a time of 22:57.37.[...] The Randy Dorton Hendrick Engine Builder Showdown sees 12 Hendrick Certified Master Technicians from all across the country at Hendrick Automotive Group, paired with 12 Hendrick Motorsports engine department team members. Each two-person team is matched up against another duo looking to post the fastest qualifying time. The two teams assemble 358-cubic-inch Chevrolet engines with 243 parts[1], similar to the fuel-injected engines that run in the NASCAR Cup Series. The builders assemble their engines on their own stage platform as they race against the clock to post the fastest time. Winners are determined by the quickest time with the fewest number of errors. The top two teams with the fastest times face off in the championship round. To date, the quickest time recorded in this competition was 21 minutes and 40 seconds in 2014.
243 parts in 22 minutes means over 10 parts per minute, or an average of 5 or 6 seconds, per part added to the engine. Each part put in the correct place and in some cases tightened up & torqued (with a power wrench or screwdriver).
[1] your AC contributor believes that some of the "243 parts" may in fact be assemblies that come to the engine builders pre-assembled and tested (thus a _fully_ disassembled engine might have more parts), but that is just a guess.
A quick google suggests that these engines use timing belts instead of chains--in the past the high parts-count of IC engines could be due to counting the individual links and rollers in the timing chain.
(Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Sunday November 19 2023, @11:04PM (2 children)
In the case of the F1 race here in Las Vegas, an endless flow of multimillion dollar bizjets. Even the Las Vegas Department of Airports got in on the greed, they mandated a $3,000 landing fee at any of the 3 local airports. I have zero interest in this rich-guy "sport" so I merely report what I hear, being one of the locals who
hate the traffic jams for the last month or so, while setting up this fiasco..
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2023, @12:11AM
You put "sport" in scare quotes, sorry for the inconvenience. My friends in Toronto feel the same way about the Indy car race that goes through the city every summer.
I think it's great. Didn't get to Vegas this time, but I was there in the early 1980s when F1 was in the Caesar's Palace back parking lot for a couple of years. Also in Detroit for the original city street F1 circuit.
From an earlier era when motor racing was much more dangerous than now, “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games,” Ernest Hemingway.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 20 2023, @03:30AM
I saw some video (iirc on reddit) from some kind of pedestrian bridge / overpass. The F1 race was happening on the road below, and they had most of the sides blocked so you couldn't see out. There were a few openings, and a dozen or so rent-a-cops accosting anyone who paused to look out at the race.