Road Atlata Race Results

#1

DeVinney wins Saturday.
Walsh on Sunday.

Other reports?
Great racing with Laura on Saturday, riding around under caution on Sunday.

Your story?

Regards, Robert Patton

#2

Well, pretty rough weekend for me. Qualified 5th on Saturday and ended up 8th with the car cutting out. Changed the AFM (thanks Jim, I’m sending it back to you) and car ran great in qualifying for Sunday, ended up 4th. Deb took the car out for a DE session and dumped all the water out of the cooling system on the grid - that was the end of the day for us. Sucks to wait all day in 95 degree heat to get sidelined 25 minutes before the race.

On the plus side the car starts up and runs fine, no strange noises, so hopefully the engine is good. Now time to find the problem, probably a hose or a thermostat. Baby did really good though. Anyways, there will be another day.

PS - Now I know what it’s like to be Ranger for a weekend, with shit failing all the time!

#3

You should have come and said something. I had a box with just about any cooling system part (except a radiator) that you could have needed.

#4

I finished dead last in a borrowed car =)

Is it me or was the race cut short? I thought it was a 40 minute race, but my clock showed :20 when we went out and :40 when the checkered waved.

Good to meet everyone and run my first race, would love to do it again if I could find a car!

#5

I had some performance problems Saturday that a tweak of the AFM seems to have cured and the engine ran well on Sunday. My lap times were disappointing. But not having been able to race to the last 9 months I’m pretty rusty. Seat time will fix that pretty quickly.

It is good to be back!

#6

I had a GREAT time. My first Spec E30 race and I can’t wait to come back. Everyone I met this weekend were great people. If I needed anything from advise to car set-up everyone was willing to help. I ran a fast lap of 1:49.2 in Sat. Race which I was more than happy with and I hate that Sunday’s race was under yellow the whole time because Julio, Scott, and I were all right there together. Now its time to put a new clutch in and rebuild the rearend and then I will be back in August to be even more compedative. Thanks to everyone this weekend that made the weekend such a great experience. Allen

#7

I had a fun weekend. More write-up when I get a break from work…

Until then, here is Sunday’s video. http://vimeo.com/12723209

Walsh, Lako and Patton did a great job getting up on that wheel when I was snoozing on the restart. I spent several laps damn near bump drafting that Civic trying to get him to catch up to the pace line. That guy was the epitome of “other sports beckon.”

#8

priapism wrote:

http://dtomracing.com/for-sale-the-82-spece30/

Price is negotiable.

#9

TheRedBaron wrote:

[quote]priapism wrote:

http://dtomracing.com/for-sale-the-82-spece30/

Price is negotiable.[/quote]
Craig forgot to mention that I would have finished 2nd and 3rd this weekend if his car had been on track. :laugh: I wish I had the scratch to buy it as a back-up car so I could roll like Patton and have a “Saturday” car and a “Sunday” car… :woohoo:

#10

TheRedBaron wrote:

[quote]priapism wrote:

http://dtomracing.com/for-sale-the-82-spece30/

Price is negotiable.[/quote]

I live in California :slight_smile: I’d have to rent / borrow a car to run out here again…

#11

priapism wrote:

The first race is $12,500. After that, the rental charge is $0. I know a place that can store & prep the car for you. :wink:

#12

I had a good time.

I brought Sneed’s e motor to RA and gave it back to him. That got crap out of my garage and a nice refund. The F150, getting about 40% better gas mileage then the '99 Dodge Ram, got me to RA on one tank of gas instead of 2. I pulled in Saturday morning about 0100 and the ever gracious Palacio’s gave me a place to sleep.

Predictably, without a SpecE30 parking Nazi, we were scattered all over hell’s half acre. It chaps my butt when our ability to create a central SpecE30 local for beer drinking, childish chest thumping, swapping lies, and admiring McKay’s girlfriend, is hosed up by knuckleheads that can’t read a parking map.

I’d not been to RA since the enduro last Dec that killed #5 (coolant hose failure). Heck, I’ve not done a helova lot of fast laps anywhere since then. I could really feel the rust in turns 3, 5 & 7.

I’d loosened the rear sway a couple weeks prior when I was having handling problems at Roebling and going thru all the turns sideways. After figuring out how to set my own rear toe and fixing some significant rear toe problems, I’d left the sway relatively loose. My thought was that I shouldn’t change too many things at once.

At practice there was some understeer. Not too bad, but enough that I thought "ok, I loosened the rear sway a couple weeks ago, lets tighten it back up a bit. So after practice I tightened it 3mm on each side.

At Qual the car really handled terrific. The understeer was gone and the car felt really well balanced, especially so in the scary corners. I was able to go thru 12 & 1 as fast as I ever have, and my hair was not standing straight up in terror. The car was, I dunno, the only word that really describes it was “confident”.

Which is when I spun on 5 and headed for the wall. I looped it and slid left towards the wall sideways. I ended up perfectly alongside the wall with about 10" to spare. Was quite nicely done. Once the car came to a rest I thought “ok, maybe 3mm was a smidgen too much”.

After qual I loosened the sway up just a hair and from then on the handling was perfect. Turn 5 requires a lot from your rear tires because unlike 12 & 1, you’re accelerating hard.

But the problems that I never beat was I was just flat ass slow on 3, 5, & 7. It was going to take me a while to get my mojo back on those. Instead of running 1:47’s and 8’s. I was running 1:49’s and 50’s. And folks were just driving away from me on the back stretch. That was a hard blow. If Skeen was doing well in 2007, it wasn’t because of this motor.

There were a lot of newbies this weekend. It was good to see the new faces, but I’m sorry to see our old buddies dropping out. I miss every one of them.

I didn’t have any contact over the weekend, although there were some close calls. I had to drive into the dirt to avoid the fish car when he and the Miata he was racing scared each other going into 7 and slowed to 20mph. And during Sunday’s 40min double-yellow I exited turn 5 and came up the hill on Julio’s tail, only to find that the entire train had come to a halt just over the crest of 5. Neither of us had any warning. He darted right and I darted left. I missed him by so little that if he’d had another layer of paint on his bumper, it’d be on my bumper now.

My thought was… “Pantas is 2 cars back. Come on now, don’t let me do something stupid with Pantas right behind me.”

There was some little silver Honda Challenge hatchback that was the bane of my existance all weekend. The thing was in the way on the turns, yet fast on the straights. The biggest problem, tho, was that he was unpredictable and as a result trying to get around him was perilous. I saw several of us struggling to get by the guy, and we were all thinking “WTF IS HE DOING???”.

In Sunday’s race tho, all 3 laps of it, I evened the score a bit. There were several of us behind the HC car. The HC car caused traffic to knot up and slow to a crawl in 3 and I almost rear ended Julio again. But this time I predicted that the HC car was going to cause a goatscrew in 3 and so just ended up on Julio’s bumper instead of his backseat. I could read Julio’s mind in that he had enough of this and he was going to attempt a pass on the HC car at the exit of 4. I’d had enough too so I was going with Julio, even tho I would normally not try a pass in the S curves. Julio gave the guy plenty of room and the speed delta was such that in the time that it took the HC car to think about turning in for the S’s, Julio’s bumper was already in front of the HC’s bumper.

The part that probably surprised the HC car was that bolted to Julio’s rear bumper was my front bumper. I told the HC car…"Palacio and I are not two cars but one. And we are going by. Since you’re a newbie this is going to scare you, but we will give you plenty of room to survive. But if you do something insane your pretty little 1800lb girly-ride is going to bounce off of us and go into the wall. And he did nothing insane.

AAR comments.
Going out on Yellow for qual sucks. It causes the group to bunch up and then it’s hard to get a clear lap. I understand that folks are doing dumb things, like scrubbing tires, when going out on Qual on green. So publically humiliate those that do dumb things.

Lets bring back Race for Qual. Compared to the Time Trial guys, the racers don’t get a lot of track time for the dollar. Racing for Qual means more fun and it doesn’t cost the schedule any.

#13

I miss this shit. :frowning:

#14

M3Bill wrote:

So, why aren’t you out with us???

#15

M3Bill wrote:

D-I double T O :frowning:

#16

I hope I wasn’t too much of a rolling roadblock out there. I tried to point people by as much as possible. I’d never seen the track until qualifying Sunday morning so I was hella slow trying to pick out visual references (mostly in the sky! hahahaha) and figure out where the heck the track went. It’s super hard to learn with all the blind corners. I chopped chunks off ever lap but I was still pretty slow at the end of the day. Sure wish I could have gotten in a practice session Sunday morning! I was driving the 271 Peterman machine.

#17

jlevie wrote:

[quote]M3Bill wrote:

So, why aren’t you out with us???[/quote]

Work. And the motor is still broken. But I will start up again after I get back from Europe at the end of July.

#18

I had a good time hanging out, drinking beer and a nice beverage called an icepick (sweet iced tea and vodka)and telling lies, but less of a good time on track.

I was having a good run on Friday during the enduro, but with 10 minutes to go, after I had already sweat the life completely out of me (no coolsuit and I drove the whole thing alone), the timing belt broke. That killed the weekend for me. I still finished 5th overall and 3rd in class. Of the 22 enduro starters, I believe only 4 cars were running at the checkered. I was already dead and finished 5th, so I believe I am accurate.

I borrowed Pantas’ CMC Camaro for Sunday, but it, too, had mechanical problems (some of the bolts fell out of the transmission and it wouldn’t shift)

I will get my heap fixed and back out to RA for August, where I will bring somewhat stronger game, I hope. Hope to see everyone there.

-Scott

#19

Another great weekend on and off the track. Some of you boys in hiding need to get back into the game.
Enduro: I managed to maintain second in class directly behind the leader for the first 90 minutes and handed off my ride to Walsh…I think Ill let him finish the rest of the story. Thanks to the crew for the quick repairs and help all weekend.
Saturday: qualified 6th moved up to fourth and briefly in third until I failed in outbraking Walsh in 10a and looped it. Luckily I got back on track in 9th and worked my way up to 7th enjoying an exchange with Fred over the last 3 laps. 1 or 2 more laps would of really helped to mix it up with laura and Chuck.
Sunday: Qualified 2nd and was happy to finish 3rd. My lack of traffic experience showed in 10B last lap when Devinney schooled me down the hill to take the checker. Walsh and I exchanged many great laps of tight racing and somehow managed to bring the cars home looking a little more SpecE30.
Congrats to Devinney and Walsh with their wins.
Lets see some video!!

#20

scottmc wrote:
:([/quote]

D-I double T O :([/quote]

It took me a minute to figure this one out…

Me too - My car is at my partner’s stable until I pay down some debt. He is racing this weekend at Beaver Run in PA.

Who won the enduro?

Don