CMP Stories and Videos thread

#1

For the first time in the history of SpecE30 at CMP, a 1:54 got pole on Sunday. Usually it takes a 1:52 get pole. And the 1:54 was me, woohoo! After all these years, my very first pole.

I was in first place. For about a microsecond.

Sunday’s tale. Craig Guthrie was on my right at the standing start. My start was fine, but his was really good. So I tucked in behind him and braked into 1. Craig started leaving me and Paul starting catching up. I focused on not sucking. I really needed to be on my A game if I was to have any hope of keeping Paul back.

My worst turn at CMP is 8. Paul and I headed into 8. This was maybe lap 3. I had enough gap that he was unlikely to try to take it. I executed a turn 8 that was sucked a little less than usual and checked my mirror to see how Paul did. He came out slow and I exclaimed “Woohoo!”. Then he moved over and really slowed down. I thought “Uh oh. He’s got a problem. Shit.”

The Saga of Sandro. Because he skipped the early morning qual, Sandro started in the rear. It took several laps before he appeared in my rear view mirror. I was pleased with myself about that. Usually he can get from the rear of the group to my mirror in a couple turns. I was watching him in my rear view mirror with a big silly grin on my face when I realized I’d missed my braking point for 4. Once the dust settled he wasn’t in my rear view mirror anymore. Shit.

I run a set of tires for 3 weekends and this was the end of the 3rd weekend.

My tires were going. I was determined to drive hard tho. I’d started in good position and I wasn’t going to get lazy. I needed to accept risk and push myself to resolutely stay out of my comfort zone. I couldn’t relax, I had to stay hungry. I had to go into turns 3 and 8 so fast that I’d be scared. Then I’d have to make it work. Also, I needed to compensate for the slippery tires as best I could by adjusting braking points, turn in points, and entry points such that I got everything possible out of the failing tires. No getting comfortable. It had to be total focus A game.

Chuck started coming up from behind. I was doing my goddamndest to put down good laps to keep him back, but I was getting a lot of sideways that was forcing me to be judicious on the throttle. Chuck got beside me on the front straight, we went into 1 together and I think it was 3 where he got ahead. It was a pretty damned fabulous and ballsy 3 he pulled off to do it. In the laps that followed Chuck slowly pulled away while I experienced some WOT drifting as I resolutely accepted more risk then is usual for me.

I ended up 4th. Damn that was fun.

#2

Sounds like a lot of fun Scott!!! Sorry I missed it. Congrats on your first pole and what sounds like a heck of a run.

#3

Contingency awards

  1. I was wrong about how Toyobucks works for small fields. Even tho we only had 13 participants, 10th - 14th place still gets some $$.

  2. Congrats to the winners of the $25 UUC gift certificate.
    Saturday Colin, Laura, and Bob Rutzky
    Sunday Julian, Alex, and Mark Skeen.

I have the gift certificates with me at each event so the next time I see you I’ll get you a certificate. This makes 3 for Laura. Another year and she’ll own UUC.

#4

oh yeah, pay day! Had a blast this weekend. Finally got to see some action. Looking forward to figuring this out more and moving up.

#5

I had a fantastic weekend with the SE folks, and it almost didn’t happen.

I came down on Friday for a test day since I had never been to CMP before. Near the end of the very first session I was barreling down the straight heading for T1. When I hit the brakes, I immediately shot from the right hand side of the track over to the left. Brakes were very screwy. When Paul Patrick showed up later that day, he had a variety of parts onhand that we used to troubleshoot with, to ultimately find out that my ABS pump was bad. Wrapped up the swap at around 11pm Friday night, and was good to go racing for the weekend.

As we sat on grid for qualifying Saturday, the skies opened up and it started to pour. (Not as bad as it would be later that night, but bad enough.) Apparently my lack of knowledge of CMP was an asset here, as I was so off-line that I actually found grip. :laugh: I wound up qualifying P4 and immediately started doing a rain dance for the race.

In the dry, I knew holding those positions was a long shot. As it turned out, I got caught outside in T1 on the start, which led to many folks freight training past me by the time we were at T4. The rest of the race was fairly uneventful, but ended with my drag racing Alex down the front straight. He won by 0.198 seconds, and I finished P7.

On Sunday, qualifying was in the dry, and damn early. I felt like I was starting to get the hang of CMP, and turned in my best time of the weekend, which was good enough for P5.

Again, I knew that in the race the folks who were behind me were actually faster than me, and it was going to be work to keep them back there. I was determined that if they were going to pass me, they were going to have to work for it. We had a standing start (my first ever) and I managed to not lose several positions at the start. I made lots of mistakes and had Alex, Ty, and Colin right on my butt for most of the race. At one point I went off at the track out of T14 and rejoined the track in a three-wide sprint for T1. My driving wasn’t the greatest, but I did meet my goal of being hard to pass. Ultimately Colin got me with about a lap to go. I wound up finishing P6.

This was perhaps the most fun race weekend I’ve had in a while. The camaraderie at the track, and the hospitality of the Southeast group was second to none. I’m really glad I made it, and SE events at CMP are on my “must do” list for next year. Can’t wait.

Here’s video from Sunday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymebIJRG7qk

#6

CMP remains my favorite track…managed to finish 4th after a crappy qualifying session Sat. Limped around Sunday with a fuel issue but at least got to watch a great 4 or 5 car battle in front of me.

Was great hanging out/camping and the weather was pretty dang good considering the previous 2 weeks, thanks for the hospitality and beer. Glad yall liked the rat jerky.

Al

#7

[quote=“FARTBREF” post=81181] Glad yall liked the rat jerky.
[/quote]
I burst out laughing at that one. I’ll be chuckling about that all day tomorrow.

#8

Man, it’s just a great feeling getting to the track on a Friday night and seeing you all nut bags! It just doesn’t get old. Shame that we have smaller fields at CMP every time, but it’s understood, Although with this short races that we now have, it’s not as bad, we should all agree to run shitty tires, so it’s not as expensive to run there. I had brought bad tires on the car, I just didn’t realize 2 were corded, so I ran stickers, not a bad idea since we’ll be at VIR in 3 weeks and they say new tires are not good there.

Special Congrats to Craig! Great performance :slight_smile:

#9

Agreed on the sticker tires…if we all run used tires would save a bunch of $$$ and be more fun…spend the money on new brakes!

Al

#10

Saturday completely sucked for me, so that’s all I will say about it. My windshield fogged so bad during quals the only thing I could see was brake lights, seriously. Also, I tried to get a 3rd weekend out of my tires (Sebring alone was 7 heat cycles) and in the race it was hopeless.

Busted out my new ones, along with properly working brakes for Sunday. Qualified P4, a solid second behind the top 3 guys, but managed to get around Patrick on the standing start when he had a problem with the 1-2 shift. Was holding 3rd until Sandro came through, back to 4th, but on Gress’s butt the first few laps. I was happy to follow him for awhile, but Patrick on my ass made me decide it was go time soon enough, before he attacked me from behind.

My new tires against his junk made it relatively easy to stay on him, and eventually he had a crummy 11 which allowed me to get inside of him at 13 into 14. Drop to 2nd gear and got by on the front straight. After that I was just trying to keep Sandro and Guthrie in sight without totally chewing up my new tires. Anyway, Sunday was a blast, and the Lightning group made it the entire weekend flag-free, which was fantastic and much appreciated.

#11

Definitely agree on the crap tires suggestion for CMP. No need to spend the $$ on tires there when they get beat up so badly. Also, I’m getting tired of Al beating me on my own old tires.

I had a decent 6th place qualifying time on Saturday in the rain. Then…my underweight saga continued. I got DQ’ed for being under by about 25 lbs. So, 50 lbs of gas and 25lbs of lead later, I started 10th.

Had a mediocre start and then fought my way up to 6th where I finished.

Sunday was a blast. Started 9th as a result of a really bad qualifying. Another mediocre start lost me only one place to Sandro. I then spent the next few laps catching up to Ty, Alex and Julian. It was very enjoyable watching those three battling it out (including 3 wide into 1). I finally waited for things to sort themselves out and proceeded to move on up. Had a really fun battle with Julian to finish 5th. Watching the video, I need to stop babying the braking points to preserve my tires. Either that or get my ABS working.

Once again the racing and camaraderie were awesome!! Thanks to Scott for bringing the food and shelter.

#12

Overall my best weekend by far racing. I debuted a relatively new car for me which performed fantastically all weekend despite a zip tie failure on Saturday…:angry:

Saturday I managed to get a really good lap in qualifying despite the rain. I knew the track would only get worse as the rain continued so I pushed pretty hard on my first flying lap and that got me 2nd. Started next to Ty and got a relatively decent start. Slotted in behind Ty and made an inside move at turn 8 for the lead. Led a few laps with Sandro pushing me around the whole time before a fuel relay popped off in the carousel. Managed to avoid the field and get off track to watch the rest of the race. Now I have about eleventeen zip ties on each relay…

Sunday morning I woke up with a nice tequila headache, but well worth it. Plenty of after hour shenanigans with some belligerent neighbors. Managed to qualify P2 again with one good flying lap. Called it quits after that one lap. Standing start is a rather strong suit of mine so I grabbed the leap from the drop of the flag and tried to check out knowing Sandro would be charging from the rear. Led about 5 or 6 laps before Sandro caught me. I didn’t put up much of a fight because I wanted to trail Sandro and learn as much as I could. Kept him in sights for the most part and finished P2. My first ever podium finish. Still a lot to learn, but a very confidence building weekend for me.

Thanks to Scott for the hospitality. See everyone at VIR in July.

#13

[quote=“CGuthrie” post=81192]

Sunday morning I woke up with a nice tequila headache, but well worth it. Plenty of after hour shenanigans with some belligerent neighbors. [/quote]

Ca-caw!

#14

Working on getting video from Saturday.

#15

Boys and girls, do we have some pics for a Speednews article?

#16

Saturday’s video:

[video size=100 width=560 height=315 type=youtube]D1aaZIXj9GU[/video]

#17

my sunday video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yM665jKu3o

it’s boring until about 18 mins in. The rest is Al pointing me by because his motor is breaking up but my motor didn’t have enough to get around him so he had to let out and Alex asking for a bump but again, no power. Almost punted Alex, but luckily he hung on to it (sorry Alex)

#18

My Sunday video. After getting by Ranger, there’s nothing much to see, but the first part of the race was fun to be closer to the front than the back!

https://vimeo.com/132546036

#19

Craig’s dyno chart. This is from just before CMP. As you can see it’s a lot of motor, but at 158.9hp, it’s (not so safely) under the >160.9 max allowable.

The dyno was at Rob Eskew’s shop, Markert Works.
[URL=http://s465.photobucket.com/user/RangerGress/media/Misc%20E30/CraigGuthrieDynoJun15_zpsc8czqc5n.jpg.html][/URL]

#20

Nice numbers!!!