A touch of irony ?

[marcus]

In an official release yesterday the ALMS has disquaulified the prototype technology teams winning BMW M3 from the sears point round..the car won the GT class and finished 10th overall with hans Stuck and boris Said at the wheel but was found to have an oversized fuel tank.

"This was a brand-new car which we had just finished, and we had not checked the capacity of the fuel tank,” said team owner Tom Milner. “We had the capacity checked at the gas pumps and it came up to about three-quarters of a gallon below. Apparently, this form of measurement wasn’t accurate enough, and after taking expansion and other things into account, our fuel capacity was a half-gallon too large.”

The team accepted the findings of the scrutineers, but Milner insisted they had not benefited from the increased capacity of the tank.

“It didn’t have any effect on our performance or the outcome of the race - we pumped out 2.5 gallons after the race,” he insisted. “But regardless of those facts, our fuel tank capacity was above the maximum allowed. We all feel bad about this, and it was an oversight on our part. We did every measurement that was available to us to make sure the tank was legal and just missed it by a half-gallon.”

the ironic thing is this now hands the win over to the Dick Barbour team that suffered the same fate at le man earlier this year..surely this doesnt make up for the le man situation but Im sure they would be happy to take the win anyway.

is there some sort of problem with teams not taking enough care to properly check their cars over before the event or are aliens at work in sportscar racing as well ???

[Heeltoe6]

I would say coincidence. At Le Mans, no one expected heat that badly, so that was probably why the problem occurred. As for Sears, it was a new car, and they didin't really check the capacity thoroughly. From a report from TheRaceSite:

"This was a brand-new car which we had just finished and we had not checked the capacity of the fuel tank," Milner said of the new No. 7 BMW M3. "We had the capacity checked at the gas pumps and it came up to about three-quarters of a gallon below. Apparently, this form of measurement wasn't accurate enough, and after taking expansion and other things into account, our fuel capacity was a half-gallon too large."

[KC]

I would suggest that there is no way that heat can be explained as the increase in any fuel cell by almost a gallon. A gallon displaces 231 cubic inches. An increase in volume by 1 gallon is an increase by 6 inches cubed. The cell would have to be six inches longer, six inches wider, and six inches taller to accomodate a gallon more fuel. Most likely they miscalculated how much fuel they put in the car. Really though, as much money as it costs to field any race car, there is no excuse for having an oversized fuel cell other than to circumvent the rules and increase the range of the racecar. Racing has been rife with oversize fuel cells and extra long fuel lines or oversized fuel lines serving as an accumulator. The fuel cells are typically carbon fiber canisters with a flexible bladder in CART and F1 and usually aluminum canisters with either a bladder or explosion inhibiting foam inside for production-based sportscars. The temperature required to expand a fuel cell by 6 inches would be higher than the melting temperature of the material used. Aluminum begins melting at 1150 degrees F and will easily flow at 1300 degrees F. Carbon fiber will delaminate and fall apart at around 700 degrees F.