RA Results and Videos thread
Accelerator pedal got stuck at full throttle because there was no pedal stop on the floor. Spun in T7 and wound up on the inside tire wall.
Comp School was tiring, but it prepped me for the weekend so it was great overall. I enjoyed driving with everyone that I drove with, sans the gold 944 that got me twice and caused me to spin Sunday. I made plenty of small mistakes for a rookie, but no big ones that I was aware of and I finished both races. My times in practice and Qual improved all weekend, even after a late Sat night.
Now on to the next race(Aug 1 for me) and hopefully I will be able to drop another second as I am really coasting through a few turns. All comments welcome on the below.
Notes in the vid: Sunday Race
In the first couple laps you can watch as AR and Ryan go flying by me, Gress and I get some battle.
Missed a shift in 5, oops…
At 11:50 you can see my encounter with the Gold 944. I still have no idea what he was doing. That was a close one.
Last lap you can see Gold 944 and another one trying to collect me up again, nice try fella’s. 
Race report, part 1.
I had a great time.
The threatened rain never showed up, the evenings were nice and cool, and the racing was fierce. I didn’t do all that
well in the races tho. Faster traffic really kicked my butt.
It was terrific that Larry Fraser came out from NorCal and Pete Thibault from NJ. Both of them had hard weekends tho.
We all owe a thanks to the guys that showed up Thur night and started kickign people out of our parking area immediately. I think this was the most successful we’ve ever been at all parking together at RA. All the more impressive given that the weekend had Friday track time which usually means our entire area is taken Thur night. Way to go! That led to much easier SpecE30 bonding, the all-important glue that defines the class.
I brought my 3 boys because #1 wife was out of town for a chick-weekend. My thanks to AR Hoshmandy for letting my kids hang out with his kid for 18hrs/day, meals, movies, etc. AR really squared me away showing my kids a good time. Every single time I went over to his RV to check on my kids, they were mooching this or that. AR perceived my kids as being quite well behaved, which, knowing my kids well, I really can’t account for. AR’s kid, however, the youngest of the bunch, somehow ended up being the informal leader. What kind of charisma do you have to have when all the other kids are older than you, but they all let you be in charge?
Qual Saturday was lousy. I’ve been qualing on old race tires so I can get a 3rd weekend out my best set. I have this theory that you can get a couple decent laps out of old RR’s before they give up. That didn’t work out on Saturday. Those tires gave up as I drove on to the grid.
Fred and I brought a ton of chow for Saturday lunch. I almost blew myself up at the grill when it’s valve failed. As high pressure gas roared out of the grill I went for the gas bottle in unscrew the damned thing before we took out the paddock in a fuel-air explosion. If anyone’s interested in it, the grill can now be found in a RA garbage can.
We had a standing start Saturday. I missed both 2nd and 3rd gears , and lost 2 places. I went into 7 wide to give Paul Patrick room and then chortled when I saw how much turn exit speed he lost. I got by Aaron Whitinger on the back stretch and Greg Smith moved up behind me. The train was now Mark, me, Greg, Paul, and Aaron as we roared towards the [strike]checker[/strike] red flag.
At the restart I went into turn 1 inside of Mark but he held me off. Shit, this would seem to be a new Mark Issa. Greg took advantage and got beside on the outside of 2 but I used 3 to scrape him off. Paul used that to take Greg.
Once again Paul tried to take the inside of 7, hosed himself for turn exit speed, but caught back up to me in the 10a braking zone.
Thru the whole race I was holding my own in turn 1, but still losing some ground in turn 5. Could be worse.
GTS traffic came thru which opened us up a bit. Issa got away from me when I had to check up to avoid a sideways e36 at the exit of 10b. Shortly thereafter Greg was on me like stink. Then as we headed down to 12 and a white flag, a GTS 944 took the inside of 12 at exactly the wrong moment and I had to ease off because I was in the marbles. Greg and Paul zipped by me on the straight as I ground my teeth in frustration. Finished 12 of 25.
Saturday night hilarity was in fine form. I’ll let others tell those stories but you guys that leave the paddock for hotel rooms are missing half of the fun of the weekend.
Sunday qual was a bummer. I was behind Greg Smith and bumped-drafted him a couple times on the back stretch so we’d both get a good time, but then traffic hosed me each lap. On the last lap of qual Aaron led Greg and I into 5. Aaron had a bad 5 so stuggled up the hill. Greg went right and I went left. I think that Greg and I were even, and Aaron was far enough back that his front tires overlapped with our rear tires. This was in the straight between 5 and 6. At that point Greg and Aaron bumped and that put Aaron into me, punting me across his bow. The gods were with me and I shedded most of my speed going sideways down the track…precisely what did not occur in my big RA crash of Dec11. Greg was not so lucky. He hooked into the right wall at high speed. There’s enough damage to his right front that it might be too much for a frame shop. I think he’s going to need a RF clip welded on, or maybe just retub his car. Bummer.
Aaron and I just had a bit of sheetmetal damage and I think both of us had to replace bent tie-rods.
Had an awesome time at Road Atlanta with everyone this weekend. On Friday, I did the Test & Tune and my friend from Colorado did DE3. Between the two of us, we probably logged at least 4 hours on the car. Had a slight mishap with the accelerator pedal getting stuck at full throttle in T3 but my friend made a great save and pulled off driver’s left. Saturday’s race was kind of meh. Sitting on grid for 15 minutes without a coolshirt was not fun at all. Sunday’s race was much more exciting. Had some great battles with B Edmonds early on. Narrowly escaped what would have been a nasty head on collision in T5 with Retey (11:50 in the video). Ranger and I battled pretty hard for 2 or 3 laps after I was able to capitalize on his misfortune in 10A/B. He returned the favor by exploiting my weakness in T1 on the final lap of the race. Saturday night party was amazing… kiddie pool, that is all!
Somehow I got involved in the Saturday evening paddock melee led by Sandro. Beer, tequila, shots, et.al and then Sandro rips my precious E30 tshirt in half and I get wrestled into the kiddie pool. I completely missed Sunday qual but managed to recover in time for the race and have fun working my way up from 24th to 12th. I will get some video posted soon (just the race video) :silly:
now we are getting tid-bits of the Saturday (night) action…I hope there were at least a few women around…
Al
Wow, what a Fathers day weekend. By the wee hours of Sunday morning I had seen way to many spec E30 drivers either being thrown into or diving off Walsh’s car into the Group3racing swimming pool. Sandro took off a half dozen shirts and when the booze ran dry pool water shooters for all.
Racing was close all weekend. I qualified P4 both days and battled it out with Walsh, Palacio and Espinosa. Saturday: Got the white flag in P1 and blew turn 7 leaving the door open for Walsh, we got together in 10a and I got the short end of the stick finishing in 5th but got to do the cool down lap and bring the car to tech with Walsh’s bumper cover attached to my car. Jim didn’t believe that there was no contact. https://vimeo.com/98397971
Sunday: Similar to Saturday but finished P2 behind Walsh.
Great to meet some new faces and hope they can remember the weekend. Working on video. I have no idea on how to overlay the rearview camera. calling Gress. How about a little help.
I use RaceRender to do picture-in-picture. Cheap and easy. Google it, pay a couple bucks and download it.
Traqmate users need to overlay the data on the front camera before inserting the secondary video. If you try to do the picture-in-picture first, TM won’t read the file that results.
Part 2. Sunday’s race.
I think I started 13th of 24. Ryan Whitinger got on my inside going into 1. I don’t know what he was doing starting behind me, but it didn’t last. We remained side-by-side all the way thru 5. Always recalling my big crash in the S curves, I positively hate being 2-wide in the S’s. I exited 5 tight so I wouldn’t slide against Ryan, but available room to track out allowed Ryan to take 5 much faster so he left me in his dust as we climbed the hill. Brian Edmonds used my slow 5 to catch up and we did 6 and 7 together, but he had to take 7 tight enough that it killed his exit speed.
I spent the next several laps as tail-end Charlie in a 7 car train. It was totally awesome to watch the battling in front of me while looking for an opening myself. Then I got a better 7 then Savannah based newby Jeff Retey and got him on the back stretch. I ended up on Mark Issa’s tail, again, but this was the new Mark Issa and I didn’t have anything for him.
AR Hoshmandy came out of 10b like a freight train and passed me heading into 12. That slowed me up and Jeff got me in one. I got him back tho when an e36 slowed Jeff down in 7. I then struggled for a couple turns to pass a slow 944 while Jeff looked to exploit my troubles, then I got the 944 when he got a bit sideways coming out of 5. It was in turn 10 it almost all ended.
A little VW GTS3 car passed me going into 10. Then he had brake troubles, struggled a bit and, to my very great surprise, parked it between a and b. I zoomed thru 10a as best I could but then stood the car on it’s nose trying to avoid rear-ending the VW. Then he and is 300ftlbs charged up the hill and I yelled a lot. Jeff and Chris Harkins went by me.
In the next lap, as Jeff entered 5 on a 944’s tale, the 944 locked up it’s brakes at turn entry. That caught Jeff by surprise and he spun left just after the apex. I checked up because I’m weary of hitting spinning cars and Paul Patrick darted by me.
The next couple of laps were spent watching Chris and Paul battle it out. We had a couple 944’s mixed in with us and I had some anonymous white car behind me so there were 6 of us. We have too many white cars, they all look the same. The anonymous guy in my mirror then went off the exit gators in 7 and trying to regain control knocked him out of our train. The lead 944, now #2 in the train ahead of Chris, got into trouble in 10 and that made it Paul, Chris and me.
I then spent 2 laps behind Chris as Paul got away. I could see that the only place I had an edge on Chris was in 1, it just took me an extra lap to set it up. It was white flag so Chris fought hard for it and stayed alongside, but I scraped him off in 3. Finished 13 of 24.
Lako, So after Jim saw the video of the contact between you and Walsh what was the outcome? Gress what do you have to say?
Here is my Sunday video. https://vimeo.com/98454414
A bit crazy at 2:35 when I got hit by a large rock. New windshield time.
I will upload video of Saturday soon. I’m glad that Scott/Fred mandated inspections as Aaron discovered my transmission was hanging with the two crossmember nuts missing after the Saturday race. :ohmy:
[quote=“ppatrick” post=77332]Here is my Sunday video. https://vimeo.com/98454414
A bit crazy at 2:35 when I got hit by a large rock. New windshield time.
[/quote]
Wow that was crazy! Good reason to keep your face visor down. A rock projectile and some glass shards in your eye would not be so fun.
Another great weekend with the Spec E30 crew at Road Atlanta! It was kind of a mixed bag for me on the track this weekend. I decided to bring the new purple car to run PTD so I could shake it down and see if I had any problems. I quickly realized that I had a rear differential that needs to be rebuilt. Could not get out of turn 7 or 10b without completely letting off the gas to allow the right rear to catch up to the motor RPM. Then during the race on Saturday within two laps I started getting fuel starvation coming out of right hand corners which then turned into left hand corners and areas on the strait sections of the track. I decided to get off the track as I was a danger to the fast cars. Got through tech and it finally died on me in the pits. Had to be towed back to my paddock. I had not gone through the fuel system or rear diff on this car so I will now be paying for it. I parked the car Saturday night and decided it was best to not continue with PTD for Sunday.
As for the Spec E30 racing, it was also a mixed bag. I qualified 2nd for Saturdays race but did not have a great start. As we were pulling up for the standing start I was paying so much attention to Sandro and where he was going to stop that I never looked for the flagger. Once stopped my attention turned to the flagger, which for the life of me I could not find. I knew he was to my left but simply could not see him. After freaking out for about 5 seconds I come to the conclusion that I had to wait until Sandro took off before I could let the clutch out. After watching my video, it was clear that the flagger was directly in front of my front door pillar. If I would have moved my head just a bit to look around the pillar, I would have found the dude! Lesson learned.
Really tight racing for the first lap or two. Everyone was pushing hard and the racing was clean. Sandro got past me in 10a, which is very typical of him. I was so flustered about 10a that I decided to completely blow turn 1. Took an off road excursion from turn 1 to turn 3 before I could cleanly get back on track. Lost about 4 positions during that trip but was able to get a couple of them back before the very short race ended. Finished P6.
Sunday started off rough. During pit out for Qualifying I happened to look down at my temp gauge. Much to my surprise my needle was reading 40 degrees hotter than it ever does. NOT GOOD. I decided to try for a qualifying lap anyways but it was clear that I was down in power. Did two laps and decided to get it to the pits ASAP and find out what was going on. When I popped the hood it was clear what happened. The water pump belt was gone. I recalled from the previous day that my electric fan had broken loose and dropped down to my oil pan guard. It must have rubbed the belt and weekened it. Three laps at speed at Road Atlanta on a very hot day had me concerned that I damaged the motor. Peter had an extra belt that he gave me and he helped me get it on. I was concerned about running the race as I was not convinced that the motor was not hurt. Fortunately I got lucky and everything seemed good. Ended up qualifying 14th.
The Sunday race was a blast! I had some good tight racing with Issa, Gress, and Clark. Battled hard the entire race and was able to finish P4. I could see the leaders in 10a as I popped over the hill on the back stretch but could never get to them. As ashamed as I am to say it, I was hoping for a quick full coarse yellow so I could go and race with the leaders. That never happened.
It was great meeting and hanging out with the out of region guys. Pete and Larry were awesome and scary fast. Both had some issues with walls but it was clear that they are both great drivers as they battled in the front of the pack on a track they have never driven on. Great job guys!
It was also great to have some new guys out there. Craig and Jeff both passed comp school and both did a great job on track. Welcome to the madness!!!
No comment about Saturday night. I was one of the few that knew better and decided to head home for the evening. What I saw Saturday morning solidified my good decision for leaving Saturday night! 
Here is the video from Sundays race: