Our Dear Leader (Fred) is under some pressure to write up a series race for the NASA newsletter. That’s pretty much impossible to do unless some of us write up our adventure stories. Write them now before they recede in a blur of alcohol and work responsibilities.
Gresstale:
Great time as usual.
Practice on Saturday gave me a good laugh because a couple cars in front of me were scrubbing their tires like crazy on the outlap. They weren’t Thunder Roadsters, they were SpecE30s.
Qual Saturday didn’t go all that well. I lined up near the rear of the grid, just in front of 4x Porsche 944’s. I figured that’d be a cherry spot because the 944’s were sure to be slow. Patton was in front of me. When we got to the back stretch I dropped back a little so I’d have some gap behind Robert. I didn’t need much gap because he’s faster than me. I just wanted some gap in case he got tied up with someone slow ahead of him.
Which is when all 4, ALL FOUR of the Porsche’s passed me and got in between Robert and I. We had 2 hot laps in qual and I spent both of them going thru turns side-by-side with a Porsche as I worked my way up thru them. I yelled at them a lot. WTF people? This is QUAL. Figure out how it works.
Saturday’s race was short because of Thunder Roadsters scattered about the track. Anyone else notice TR #33 (white)? He was, ah, unconventional. We only raced for about 300m before the first yellow at turn 2. We were in a pretty tight pack and I was the middle of a 3 car sandwich in turn 2. That’s not a bad place to be. The guy on my left couldn’t possibly hang on the outside of 3, but I was willing to give the inside guy enough room to make it work because he had a speed delta and had therefore earned it.
Then, thru the dust and chaos I saw a yellow at 2. That changed everything. I worried that there might be a guy astride the track on the exit of 3 and with me being in the middle of 3-wide, I’d have no escape. So I backed off the throttle to be ready for an abrupt dodge. But since the group of us were in a scrum, few others seemed to see the yellow and I got passed on both sides.
That led to a good fight with Clark for a while, then in the latter stages of the race, with Nash. At the time tho I got them confused because all you white cars look alike.
Nash came to us via Miaters and he’s wicked fast in turns. The only thing that saved me was that his engine was running hot so was dialing back hp. The delta in hp was keeping me out front but his ability to draw me back in between 1-5 was just unbelievable.
Traction was not good in Saturday’s race, at least my traction wasn’t, and a couple others mentioned the same thing. I’d swear that I was going into 1 just as fast as I could but Nash was picking up 5 car lengths in the braking zone of 1 then coming out 5mph faster. Lap after lap I flew thru turn 1 thinking “goddamn that was close” as I rocketed up the hill having almost slid off the track edge. Then suddenly Nash would abruptly appear on my rear bumper from way back. Then we’d go thru 4, the S curves and 5 with him 1" off my rear bumper. Several times he tried to get me on 4, but couldn’t make it work. As I skated down into the S curves with him painted on my ass I kept thinking…“fuck me, the slightest touch from him and I’m going into the wall”.
Then my rear end got out from under me just after the apex of 5. That got my attention. There I was heading for the big abrupt gater-ledge with the car’s tail all hanging out figuring I was truly fucked. But just before hitting the gator I tucked the tail back in and regained control. Which is when Nash bumped me. As bumps go it was really nothing, but the timing of it was almost very bad. Nash had been right on my ass. When the rear end stepped out I’d backed off some throttle to add traction to the rear to help catch the drift. Me backing off had caught him by surprise and resulted in the bump that occured the instant I had the car straightened out again. If I’d a gotten bumped a heartbeat earlier, I’d have been doomed.
A bunch of us went out for beer and margheritas Sat night. Was excellent.
Sunday’s qual was better in that I got a hot lap. It would seem that it was better for everyone else too because being 1.5sec faster didn’t move me up any in the grid.
Sunday’s race was short because of Thunder Roadsters scattered about the track. W/o the video it’s hard to remember the details. Early in the race I was heading into 12 3-wide with me on the outside. That was not good. In a heartbeat I weighed my chances in the marbles at the outside of 12, vulnerable to anything interesting that might happen to the two guys inside me, and decided I didn’t like the odds. I backed out and lived to fight another day.
I spent most of the race pretty much alone. Nash and Patton were ahead of me, and Laura led a tussle a ways behind me. In the last couple of laps I blew a couple downshifts and all the sudden Laura was a threat. The white flag threw and I managed to hold it together long enough to stay ahead of Laura and co.
I need to work on my video cameras. My forward cam wasn’t very reliable. All I ended up with was the first half of Saturday’s race. Richard was trying a new camera this weekend and I like it so much that I bought two of them. Do a search on ebay for Mobius actioncam.
On the way home I lost a trailer tire. I checked my pressures before leaving RA so I know it was ok then. It could have been worse. It could have been a dark and rainy night with the tire on the driver’s side and car’s whizzing by my ass. But instead it was daylight on the passenger side. On the less good side, my TPMS didn’t warn me because it’s been flakey lately and my race jack had failed at RA. But I got it done.
