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New race winner for Saturday’s sprint race: Congratulations David Walsh!
Walsh also turned a 144.2 in Sunday’s fun run. Wow.
New guy on the leader board.
Also, Simon Hunter and Sean Curran invaded the southeast and were also fast. It is interesting how well this series has developed. Thanks, guys, for making the long haul to Atlanta.
Your story?
Regards, Robert Patton
Congrats to Walsh on his first win, but I guess I will be the guy bad here. Since he has made the move to the pointy end of the field and is taking toyo bucks out of the guys pockets behind him he needs to make his car legal.(He is not running the spec exhaust) If I have to run that piece of shit on my car he has to as well;)
And that’s all I have to say about my weekend as you most of you know how it turned out:angry:
44.2? Isn’t that a track record in a spece30?
edit: I found the link…2nd place record. Not bad.
Also Tom Hall came out to race with us in the Sunday fun run and was spinning the rear tire out of turn 7 like …well, like Laura does. Any advice on how to keep the rear end planted comming out of 7? Tom was fast company,too.
James Walker was my guest and drove both the 8 and 241 cars. Collectively they (the cars) need some sorting out, but James was faster than I in my cars. We’ll have to work to get him rehooked on the sport (an old SCCA racer).
Damion, I can imagine the peer pressure will force the exhaust system change to Walsh’s car this winter. Technically speaking/splitting hairs, does the 44.2 count if it was in a fun run?
Amber and Sean Wooten were there sorting out their new spec e30 racer in time trials.
Stories?
Regards, RP
I had a good time watching at 10 A/B with Steve D. and Kelly?
I was also glad I wasn’t racing. Not much of a story though…
Patton wrote:
Bar on full soft? Take camber out of right rear? Square off the corner more? Switch to a 3.73 diff? 
Beats me. I had wheelspin like crazy at CMP and was only able to try two of those at the track.
Good times in the grandstands with IndyJim and Kelly. We agreed that it was enjoyable to sit back and watch the battle. Besides, when the three guys who would be on the podium are in the grandstands it gives the mere mortals a chance to shine. :laugh:
You guys and gal put on a great show. Shame there was the extended yellow. Was the cause Karl Condor (Accord)? He absolutely walked the field on the first lap. He was turning in at 10a when the 2nd place car was cresting the hill. Then all of a sudden he was gone. What happened?
For those of us who weren’t there, what was the overall story? Who’s going to post a real race report?
DMoses wrote:
I hate to be the bad guy here, but I don’t think your right rear quarter was spec…
My race report is brief…got turned by a Miata in 10b on Saturday, which ruined an incredibly fun race I was having…and ended my season on a bad note.
CEL came on in the middle of the Sunday race (it goes off at idle)…I decided not to take any chances with it and parked it about halfway through.
I was watching from the center of the front straight so I had a good view of 12 & 1. I was suprised at how fast Sean and Simon were, I saw some of how hard-fought the battle was between Damien and Johan, I saw Brian hauling ass to keep Simon in sight, and a great fight between Fred and Tom.
Johan kicks his rear out and drifts towards apex’s at 100mph that is scary as heck. Damien put a move on Johan going into turn 1 that was epic, even if I cringed expecting an impact.
Brian really seemed to be pushing hard to limit his damage against Simon, who was trying to pull away. Brian seemed to not quite have the grip that Simon did. Brian seemed to cheat death on turn 12 every lap.
There was a wild restart which ended up with 4-wide into turn 1. Dang.
TheRedBaron wrote:
I’ll jump on the opportunity to spread some dubious (mis)information, hypothesis and supposition. Since the post-race discussions were audible from quite some distance, here’s what I got:
Johan & Damion had a fierce battle going on. At some point, they came upon a 944 who tried to help them get through a turn by not interfering. He claimed to have left a car width at the apex but was hit in the right rear by Johan. Evidently this put the 944 into Damion.
Pure speculation on my part, but I imagine if Mr. 944 was trying to leave a car width at the apex he was way slower than usual and may have caught Johan by surprise.
Somebody else came over and got in Johan’s grill, but I am not sure who or why.
One thing I can say for Johan is that he took a lot of yelling (3 on 1 at one point) and didn’t lose his cool. Damion, Mr. 944 and the other guy were hot (no Al that’s not a man-love comment), but nobody pegged the 'roid rage meter.
With the double yellow, there were a lot of split-start backmarkers to work through. I think that contributed to the fustercluck. Again, pure speculation on my part. I saw nothing of the on-track action except at 10a/b.
Steve, you and I should both leave race reporting to those that were in the cars. Johan is a great guy, but I’ve never witnessed anyone more agressive in a car than he is. I remember his first race at CMP, I got out of the car and walked right up to him and told him he was going to cause a lot of wrecks. There is a difference between fast and wreckless. Johan is wrecklessly fast.
Gasman wrote:
A bad day racing a bunch of cars is always better than a good day racing nobody!
Gasman wrote:
Agreed. I thought I had included enough caveats. I didn’t see any of it. Probably didn’t hear the arguments very well. Didn’t mean for this to be a vote for or against Johan, Damion, 944, Mystery Guy, whatever. All I can comment on is how they handled themselves. Nobody was a raging a$$ and I thought Johan handled the situation very calmly. Surely we can give props for that and encourage that behaviour, right?
I’ve been near him on track - even finished in positions close a couple times. I wouldn’t call him reckless. Of course, when someone is faster than I am, I will usually try to figure out a good place on track to let them by without losing time. Then I can follow and learn. Some guys hate to be passed and make it tough on the following car. That will usually up the aggression level a tick.
At IFU, he came storming through the field after the 2nd invert. He passed me in a turn and tracked out a little too early, causing me to drop a couple wheels to make sure we had room. He came and apologized afterwards. Opinions will differ, I suppose.
Here is my race report, video to follow when its done uploading.
Enduro – Thanks again to Scott for offering up his car so I could get some seat time in the Enduro. Scott drove first and did a great job, we had a pretty good pace until I got in the car. What a comedy act that was, despite the fact that I had watched the Skeen lap record video over 2000 times and had actually done a DE at Road Atlanta 10 years ago I was completed lost on the track, specifically turn 2,3 and of course turn 12. I also couldn’t heal and toe in Scott’s car as I think he has a 2 by 4 on the brake pedal. After about 50 mins of lapping I started to get mildly confident and when the Robinson team came around to lap me I was able to at least hang on for a bit and pick up some pointers. I got out with my confidence in shambles. Fred got in and once again we were running some decent laps. Then Scott did another session and came in and I was ready to really start to figure out the track and not get lapped again. There was some smoke coming from the car but we didn’t think too much of it at the time. I got in and I noticed the oil temp was already at 270, water temp seemed high but not terrible. Honestly I’m surprised one of the 20 warning lights in Scott’s car didn’t come on ;). I turned on the electric fan did a couple of slow laps and it didn’t improve so I came in. There was no water in the car. After filling with water, we tried to restart and the motor sounded really bad. We were done at that point. Congrats to Team robinson who I think finished 3rd overall!
Sat- I felt pretty good in practice, but the times didn’t reflect it and I was near the bottom of the timesheet. I was checking the air pressures on the tires and I noticed a lot of heat coming from the left rear. It was pretty obvious the caliper was sticking after I looked at the rotor which was scored pretty badly. There wasn’t a lot of time before qualifying so I threw on a new set of pads hoping that would compress the piston some and fix the sticking caliper. Unfortunately it didn’t and I qualified 12/13. Between qualifying and the race I went about rebuilding the caliper, with the help of Scott (who at one point took my wife Shannon to a bmw parts place to buy a used caliper), Fred, Robert Patton and probably some others who I probably forgot I got the thing fixed. I went to replace the rotors and I have some Chinese knock offs from that autoparts123 place. They don’t fit by the way and are now in a trash can at Road Atlanta. Robert Patton had to give me his spares. I just had time to mess with the sticking caliper so I think I went out with DTC 60s on the front, hawk blue on the left rear and 1 ht 10 on the right rear, anyway it didn’t seem to matter as the car braked fine and I was no longer dragging the rear brake. In the race I had a good battle with Laura Patton, I got by once at 10a but when I got on the rumbles on the exit of 10b the car momentarily cut out and she went right back by. She had an epic moment in turn 1 which I captured on video. Eventually I got by for good and was on the back off Jones when the yellow came out. When we finally got going again I had a good battle with Jones, who put up a valiant effort despite perhaps not having the best car out there. I’d call it a piece of crap but I don’t know him that well :). I saw Bill get turned by the miata and managed to not run into him. Eventually I got clear and on the final lap I was catching Robert, Chuck and someone else. I went over 2 seconds faster than qualifying so I guess it helps to not have the brakes on. I think I did a 1:46 something which I was happy with.
Sun- Drew 15th on the grid, was a fun race trying to manage all the traffic. I was a bit frustrated early on with a factory five that was parking it in the turns but honestly there were a lot of cars like that and it was the same for everyone. I’m not sure where I finished but did have a good battle with Jones again at the end. Walsh came from behind and went by me easily. Curran who was very impressive for also not seeing the track was somewhere out front. I think I might have finished 3rd out of the spec e30s that were in that race but I honestly have no idea and it was just for fun anyway. Towards the end I was more worried about not crumpling my car before I put it away for a year or so. I was loaded and on the road 15 mins after the race which might be a record for me. We got home at 11:30pm, not too bad.
It was great to meet a lot of the southeast folks and see some old faces from the BMW club days (Damion good seeing you man). I had a blast would love to do some more road Atlanta before I forget where I’m going again but in the coming years I think I’m going to be lucky to get to Putnam Park which is an hour from my house.