ChrisFranson: Zauskycop: I saw a mini in grid with insulating sponges wrapped around the car at the base of the skirts to the ground, and then tire blankets put on. And running. Any heat from underneath the car was trapped and it looked pretty effective to me...
IIRC that wrapped cars, with engines running, have been protested in the past as having active tire warming. Those protests were upheld.
We ran 4th heat in DSP, and wrapped the car each day but I was fanatical about being sure the engine was off before doing so. I'm sure my co-driver is now very glad I was so paranoid.
We were fanatical about it and I wouldn't have run the car with the wrap around. However, we did ponder a quirk... what's fully wrapped? would a 1" gap somewhere mean the car's not fully wrapped?
I personally would have strongly considered filing a protest against a car wrapped with the engine running. As for Ian Baker's arrangement, it'd be pretty close to impossible to enforce a rule preventing that. What happens if someone was storing his or her car in one of the rented garages, which was warmer than a car that sat outside overnight? How do we distinguish between the two conditions?
Edit: the phrase "other means" is far too vague. It is my interpretation that my above listed example would fall under the term "other means." There's no way to ensure that every competitor's tires are the same temperature. Taking it even further (and this is way out there), I'd say that using the term "other means" would also conflict with the allowance to have a co-driver.
Were you on the PC at some time recently? It seems like you've been thinking about these sorts of things lately :)
I didn't know the mini was running all the time. I too would have protested it since I know that rulings in the past have been against fully wrapped and running cars. That is if the Mini driver hadn't shut off the engine after I had talked to them about active warming with the skirts. Not everone knows past precedent on this stuff. Also as I wrote this I realized that it might fall under the quirk I mentioned above about fully wrapping the car. Was there a gap somewhere? Did it matter or not?
As for Ian's solution, I thought it was brilliant. He was thinking ahead and thought of the variables for what he could do within the rules. Others I know took tires to their hotel room overnight, or stored them in their cars/trucks prior to running. All of that isn't illegal. The active tire warming rule is to prevent on-the-car warming with active heat sources (and the requisite generators to run them).
-Mike
Mike Shields
1993 BMW 325is | 92/192 DSP