I had a really great time.
Saturday I was 8th of 21 and Sunday I was 7th of 20. The dark years of 2012 and 2013, when I was struggling to not be last, seem to be behind me.
My videos turned out well so they will show great battles.
I’m not sure who had the idea of getting the entire group to go out for Mexican, and also bring our trophies with us, but that worked out really great. Dang that was fun.
Qual stories.
Saturday qual. I always bring lots of tires. In an attempt to get 3 weekends out of my tires, I don’t qualify on them. Instead I qualify on old race tires. I’ve found that I can get a decent lap 2 & 3 out of the old tires before they go off. And since 4 hot laps is usually all we get, it works. I just have to be sure that I get a good lap out of 2 or 3. To make things more complicated, I use a really old set for Saturday, and a less old set for Sunday. This gets me better tires for Sunday qual, which is useful because I’m always slow on Sat qual anyways because I’m rusty. But the extra set of tires means that to each event I bring a practice set, 2 qual sets, a race set, and a rain set. That’s a lot of tires to load up. Actually tho, it’s a lot of tires for the kids to load up. I pay them 25cents/tire.
But sometimes I don’t supervise adequately.
Qual Saturday I didn’t have much front grip in right turns. But I was determined to do the best I could so I was a wheel-sawing mofo as I drifted frighteningly far out on all of the right turns. I got perilously close to the edge of 1 and 12, but I needed a reasonable time, and the damned car needed to give me what I was asking for. I tried very hard and did the best I could.
Later I was swapping out for race tires and I saw an odd wear pattern on the front left tire, the one that couldn’t seem to grip. It’s outer half was really worn but the inside half, not so much. I looked it over in puzzlement. I’d thought sure I’d beat that problem years ago and tires have been wearing reasonably evenly since. “WTF is going on here”, I asked myself.
“OMIGOD, it’s not a 3 month old barely worn RR, it’s a 3yr old completely worn out RA-1.Shit, no wonder I couldn’t turn right,” I thought. All the other tires were, correctly, old RR’s, but the left front got pulled from the wrong stack of tires. Sigh.
Sunday qual. I was on a dream lap. I was heading for my first-ever 1:45. It was a big deal. The stars were all aligned, I’d done rare work on every single turn. This was my moment. The angels were warming up to sing.
Dream lap. I was flying past the black flag tower confident in my new fabulous brakes now that I have an o-ring between MC and booster so I am holding brake vacuum for boost. I stood the car on it’s nose as I hit the 2 marker, which is much later than I’ve been able to do for 2yrs, and prepared to turn in. Suddenly a GTS2 E30 spun on the exit of 10b. “Uh oh.”
Dream lap. I turned in towards the 10A apex. It was perfectly executed. I was going to pound the shit out of the inside gators and finish nice and tight so there’d be no feathering the throttle in 10b. But my entire attention was riveted on the spinning GTS2 E30.
Dream lap. It looked like I was going to be able to make it work. If I just altered my line just a little I could pass behind the E30. This was still going to work. Scott Gress finally an owner of a 1:45.x.
Dream lap. As the car unloaded from 10a I turned in for my slightly modified 10b with the throttle buried into the floorboard. Which is when the E30 started rolling backwards. “NNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
With no safe way to make it work, I headed for the kitty litter. Fortunately I didn’t get stuck and I was able to get up the hill. That hosed lap 3 because my front straight was slow. My tires were done now. I ground my teeth in frustration and did goddamndest best I could with what traction I had.
Chuck asked about the DQs. We had a couple for weight, and one for speeding in the pits.
The demise of Chris’s car happened a little bit in front of me. I didn’t see the start of the incident because my view was blocked. I didn’t see it until Chris went up on his side. My eyes were big as saucers as it looked like he was launched up into the air and maybe he was going over. Then, incredibly, he came back down on all fours. When I turned my attention back to the track there was a 944 astride the track, right in front of me that I barely dodged.
Usually I have a fair amount of trouble with traffic, but this time I managed a bit better and didn’t lose any places due to traffic. What I found challenging re. the out of class cars is they have a habit of throwing out the anchor at turn in. For christ’s sakes guys, everyone of you has more grip then a SpecE30. Don’t slow down so damned much for the turns.
In Sunday’s race I had Aaron, and I think Mark, right on my ass and an E36 was coming up on me in 5. I was determined to get him by me before 7. I waved him past me aggressively and went wide at 6 to make it easy for him. He didn’t do it. I waved very aggressively at the exit of 6 and slowed down to force him to pass. He slowed down too. I started yelling at him.
He was determined to go thru 7 with me. I yelled at him a lot. I came out of 7 slow and hollering. In the video I can hear my yelling over the roar of the engine and screech of the failing differential. I don’t know how I failed to lose 2 places on the back stretch.
- Very clean, hard racing, A.R. was coming hot on Sunday, Moses is back to RA, Pissant’s got a car (finally), met Anthony, super cool dude that won’t drink Tequila 
we also got to meet Chris, another super cool guy, (get your car fixed and we’ll see you at Nationals) - Aaron W finally got fast woohoo!! watch out. Gress is consistently fast now, Roebling was not a fluke :woohoo: We finally got R.Eskew to race with us, not sure if that was a great idea :unsure: Always a blast hanging out with all of you… Specially Saturday nights :cheer: