Savannah Sizzler Results & Video Thread

#1

Today’s race - was billed as 45 mins but ended up about 37 minutes of actual racing – that was more than enough for me! The top 5 cars were all pretty much nose to tail the entire time. There was position swapping among Damion, Walsh, and Kelly. They can all tell their stories, but congrats to Damion on a well-deserved win today, and to Robert for a wire-to-wire run yesterday.

There were some interesting situations with the out-of-class situations, either being passed or passing the slower cars. I think we did a pretty nice job of making nice with the faster Thunder and HC cars that came through.

On the last lap, however, the two leading Thunder cars were making themselves 2-wide in T2, while already going inside of Walsh (which of course adds up to 3) – you can guess the rest, something went wrong with the Thunder guys, one of them tagged Walsh, he went off, Kelly did his John Deere act looking for a hole through the mess, and Robert and I were very pleased to turn P4/P5 into P2/P3. Sorry guys, but thems the breaks.

I had already processed my video from the Saturday sprint, so it is presented here, at

http://vimeo.com/40380734

Also notable was Ranger making his return to the track in New#6, and a very welcome guest from the Florida region, Shawn Waggoner.

I think Saturday may have been an all-time high in red flags, including 2 in one qualifying session, and a FCY in the sprint, but Sunday was green all day long. Maybe we need to get everyone drinking Friday night too, to knock down a bit of the Saturday aggression!

#2

Video and story to come later (still editing/posting video). Thanks to all for a good clean weekend of racing. Nice to see Ranger back and for Shawn make the trek from Florida. Just a quick note and screen shot of turn two on the white flag lap from Sunday’s race as the overall race leader (& #2) tried to work their way through the Spec E30 leader (& #2). Everyone was battling for position, it just happened to be at the same place and the same time. This was my view after the two thunder roadsters came together side by side on the inside of Walsh.
[attachment=1830]ScreenShot.png[/attachment]

#3

You guys were great. Wonderful weekend (well maybe not my driving :stuck_out_tongue: ), but great event and everyone really made me welcome, thanks! It was a fun first weekend at Roebling.

I’ll work on my videos later today and get them posted. They should be, er, interesting!

#4

Very disappointing weekend for me. The highlight was the racing during the Saturday race, and the lows were qualifying last or second to last and then going to lunch on Sunday and not getting back before noon. That meant I was way late to grid and missed the standing start and was laps down with nobody to race. I tried to stay out of the way of everyone. Lako gave me a little help in that regard. :smiley: I will hopefully get my videos up tonight and figure out how I lost over 2 secnods a lap from my times last fall with no changes to the car and new tires.

#5

This weekend was fun. We had some good racing and I feel like I am finally starting drive half way decent again!

I qualified 3rd on sat. which isn’t saying much beacuse it was a very abbreviated session. At the start I moved into 2nd and stayed there for the rest of the race. Robert drove a mistake free race and got the victory.

Sunday I qualified 2nd which is great when you are doing a standing start. That means I only have to worry about getting hit, not hitting someone! I got a terrible start but maintained 2nd place thanks to a nice push from Robert. I think it was lap 2 when I got by Walsh and took the lead. I stayed there for the rest of the race but it was tough going. Kelly and Walsh gave me everything they had. I knew things were going to get hairy on the last lap when I saw the Thunder Roadster leaders coming. I tried to get through turns 1 and 2 as fast as possible because I knew thats where the would catch us. I got there first, Walsh and Kelly didn’t make it and the Thuder roadsters took each other out and David with them. I saw all this happen in my mirror so I backed it down and cruised to the finish.

It was great to get a win. It’s been a while! Once again the Spec e30 crowd raced hard and clean. Now if we can get the rest of them to do it too.

#6

Fixed that for ya

#7

I did not have a great weekend. It took some effort to maintain a sunny disposition. In the old days I could knock out high 1:25’s all day. But on Saturday I was running 1:30’s on new tires. People were passing me at will on the turns. I couldn’t understand why I seemed to have so much less traction than everyone else.

My driver’s side door got smacked pretty good on lap 1 of Saturday’s race, but more on that later.

Sunday, minutes before qual I checked my rear (relative) toe and to my surprised it was all messed up. I’d done my alignment with excrutiating care a couple weeks earlier. After Sunday qual I improved the alignment quite a bit and as a result got a little faster on Sunday. A little.

Getting my door stove in a bit.
Well, it was pretty much my fault. I had a great start because I made a good guess when the green was going to get thrown. I passed one guy and then got up in between Trackrat Shawn, and Smith. I was sandwiched pretty tightly in the middle as we all went into turn 1 about dead even. Trackrat, on the outside, ran out of track, went 2 off, wiggled a little and came back on at an angle and hit my door with his RF bumper.

Not until we reviewed video did I realize that I had room on my right and therefore could have given Shawn more room, which I certainly would have done. I could have sworn that I gave Shawn all the room I could, but that just goes to show you how incorrect driver perceptions can be.

The other issue is that as the passer, it’s my responsibility to make a safe pass. And since I never got entirely ahead of Shawn, I never completed my pass.

A final note. Having slipped in fluids and crashed at RA twice last year, I find that I’ve become darn cautious re. the debris flag or smoke coming out of cars. Once I see that sort of thing I don’t care about the race any more, I’m focused only on preserving the car. This occured a couple times, most critically at the end of Saturday’s race.

#8

[quote=“Ranger” post=65027]
Having slipped in fluids and crashed at RA twice last year, I find that I’ve become darn cautious re. the debris flag or smoke coming out of cars. Once I see that sort of thing I don’t care about the race any more, I’m focused only on preserving the car.[/quote]

I drive this way all the time (at least I think I do. Shawn might argue a bit). To me the thought of having to repair body damage for the sake of 0.5 second just is not worth it.

Relative to being disappointed in your times----you’ll get it back.

Don

#9

I try to be the same way. The cost of a n incident is just too high in comparison of the possible reward.

BTW: Those were Blunder Roadsters, right?

#10

Here is the inventory of Thunder excitement, best I can recall.

Saturday Practice, a Roadster ended up so far into the trees outside of T2 that all that could be seen was the white ducktail. 80% of the car was in the trees. Up and over the tire wall, etc. Red flag, driver OK.

Lightning qualifying. Corner worker mistake, but a Thunder roadster went so John Deere in T2 with a massive cloud of dust they threw a red flag. THEN, the roadster drove away. I never learned whether there was any contact. So much for the red. Don’t know what that was about. Later in qualifying big Brad D was sideways in middle of T5. Everyone got around w/o hitting him thankfully.

Then in the Sunday race there was the last-lap furball with the two Thunder leaders taking themselves and Walsh out. Not a bad weekend’s work. Fortunately we had more than enough to go around; there were a bunch of them.

#11

Great meeting all you guys this weekend. I look forward to getting out with you guys in the second half of this year.

Matt

#12

Wait! I thought Lako and Walsh were there? :whistle:

PS - Way to go on your victory D-Mo!! That makes up for the crappy mechanical luck you had in September. I missed seeing you guys but with no Meeotters to play with and no IFU, I decided to stick around the trailer park this past weekend.

#13

I’ll do write-ups with the videos (Vimeo crapped out on my first attempt.

Sunday’s race was a hoot. After deciding to pair up with Damion for qualifying, we ended up with an eight car spec E30 train at the back of the grid with leading the way followed by Damion and Robert. In the end, Walsh took the pole, clearing the rest of us by a half second. I found out being the head of the train isn’t good as both Damion and Robert outqualified me putting me in fourth.

The race ended up being 36 1/2 minutes flag to flag for me, and it was grueling. After the start we pretty much tried to get in line and pull away from the pack, the only problem is the top five as able to do just that so there was never time to breath. Walsh took the lead, but Damion got by a few laps later. About 8 minutes in, I was able to get by Walsh taking advantage of lap traffic. The next twenty minutes was an exercise in tire and traffic management simply trying to keep going around fast enough to stay ahead of the guys behind you. About 28 minutes in, I hesitate when a black flag gets thrown in my direction (for another car) while a white flag is already out, and Walsh jumps back by. I had the best view of the turn 1 shenanigans between the thunder roadsters… its ~35 minutes in. Here is Sunday’s Race Video: http://vimeo.com/40495046

Congrats to everyone in the top 5 for keeping such a close pack for that long… it’s unreal that absent the thunder roadster incident, we were all that close after 35 minutes of racing.

Edit: The video I uploaded may be corrupted, does anyone else have problems with it cutting out around 5 minutes to go.

#14

Sunday race opening laps and final lap still in Vimeo queue, should be up by 11p eastern. Here’s the link:

http://vimeo.com/40563558

#15

Got my Saturday video up. Started 12th and finished 10th:

http://vimeo.com/40567967

Definitely open to any comments or suggestions.

#16

Could have been a bit more agressive with Ranger before the restart. He was leaving you lots of room on the inside in some spots and it looked like you could have slid up next to him. Great jump on the restart, and way to use the rookie as a pick on Ranger!

#17

[quote=“kchildre” post=65050]I’ll do write-ups with the videos (Vimeo crapped out on my first attempt.

Edit: The video I uploaded may be corrupted, does anyone else have problems with it cutting out around 5 minutes to go.[/quote]

Yes.

#18

[quote=“ctbimmer” post=65066]Sunday race opening laps and final lap still in Vimeo queue, should be up by 11p eastern. Here’s the link:

http://vimeo.com/40563558[/quote]

5:32 mark the 241 and 168 just miss the 490. The 490 would not have spun were it not from some help by the t rosdster. Wonder if the t roadster got any points for the bump and change in position? A possible DQ ? Guess that is between the 490 driver , the t roadster, and NASA. Close, close, close.

RP

#19

[quote=“DMoses” post=65082][quote=“kchildre” post=65050]I’ll do write-ups with the videos (Vimeo crapped out on my first attempt.

Edit: The video I uploaded may be corrupted, does anyone else have problems with it cutting out around 5 minutes to go.[/quote]

Yes.[/quote]

Thought so… I’ll have to reload it once Vimeo gives me space (next week). In the meantime, here is Saturday’s race. Qualified well, but lost some ground at the start. Working through traffic after the double yellow restart was a lot of fun.

http://vimeo.com/40579948

#20

I’m fine with what happened on Sunday. It does suck for me but it didnt change my life, so its just one of those things that happen in racing.
Those guys were fighting for position just like we were. I do have an opinion on what exactly happened, but I’d like to hear the groups thought before I lead in any direction. I dont personally care about faulting one person or another, but for the sake of the roadster driver I believe wasnt at “fault” what do you think… https://vimeo.com/40484811 The video is password protected with “iwantaroadster”