Ok, my report.
Well, I had a pretty good weekend. Incredibly, we found that most of my 5-6krpm/WOT engine problems went away if I disconnected the TPS. The downside of that was that with no TPS the engine doesn’t know the pedal is at WOT so you don’t get (I think) as much ignition advance and the engine uses internal maps. After fooling with it a bit Sat morning the CEL came on and we never did beat that, so I raced with no TPS and with a CEL. And the engine did better than it has since Feb.
I swear, the more I do this the less I know.
I did not get a clean lap at Qual Saturday and ended up 10th of 11. I had great fights in the race with Chuck Taylor among others, and finished 4th. That’s the best I’ve done all year. Not having reviewed my video yet, the thing that sticks in my memory is a helova fight Chuck and I had with a 911 GTS3 car that just wouldn’t get out of our way. It was a helova lot faster in the straights but a dog in the twisty parts. Chuck and I were on him like stink for several laps. Chuck’s tires were going and he was spending a lot of time sideways, while simultaneously beside the 911. I was trying to figure out which way Chuck was going to lose it, what the 911 was going to do (other than wet himself) when Chuck started spinning along side of him, and where the hole was going to be for me to squirt thru.
Lako was just ahead of the 911 thru all this. Then Lako lost it in 5, the 911 wet himself and Chuck and I bolted past the 911. I didn’t get by Lako until turn 1 tho. It was a fine outside pass, if I do say so myself.
It was really a lot of fun. Even if I did yell at the 911 a lot.
This was my 4th weekend on my tires. I would learn that tires are good for 3 1/2 weekends.
Today I got clear track for qual, got a good time and found that because everyone else upped their game it was only good enough for 7th.
Jim let us do a standing start. It was pretty cool, even if it nothing interesting really came out of it. For me anyways. Chris Tuttle yanked his shift knob off going for 2nd and I think he was feeling around the floor board for it when he get rear ended to add to his misery.
I was doing fine keeping Chuck behind me and hanging with Laura trying to make something work until about 4laps to go. Then my tires really fell off and suddenly I was in a crisis. I drove just as fast as I possibly could trying to put down fast laps so Chuck and Damion wouldn’t close with me, but I just didn’t have the grip. I think it was some of the best driving I ever did where I was controlled slides both early and late in the turns, catching the rear end repeatedly as it tried to step out, but in the end it just was not enough and Damion and Chuck got by me with 2 laps to spare.
In the desparate effort to push what tires I had as fast as they would possibly go, I slipped off the track at both the turn-in for 2 and also the turn-in for 5b. I stayed in it, caught both of those and gathered it together. It didn’t all go my way, but I did good work with what I had.
