Good luck to our Southeast racers.
New computer game…vicarious racing SE, version 1.0. Keep us up to date on your progress.
RP
SE racers at the NASA Nationals 2011
Steve_D
#2
Test Day report:
Fred showed up. DeVinney achieved his goal of not wadding the car up during 5 rainy sessions. Harness blew a head gasket. Our spare is in a box in Atlanta. Just before the driver’s meeting the Palacios were trying to diagnose some valvetrain clatter in Eric’s new motor. He might get to drive Julio’s car as a back-up.
Tomorrow has practice, qual and race #1.
Patton
#7
Not your best race.
In addition to your punt,the #36 neeeds some time-out for a punt.
Driver ahead of you needs to learn how to do a standing start.
Straightaway talent…wow, or bad exit speeds?
And, I’m in Atlanta being a Monday morning quarterback.
Good/better luck tomorrow.
RP
ukrbmw
#8
[quote=“Steve D” post=59647]I am one big, giant pile of suck. Tomorrow’s gotta be better, right?
Thursday Qualifying Race[/quote]
Wow Steve - rough run. I’m sure you’ll have better luck tomorrow!
King_Tut
#9
I didn’t know that we were even allowed to race convertibles. I had to look it up. Definitely a punt by the #36. Good luck the rest of the weekend Steve.
Fred42
#13
Sorry about the lack of updates folks (I’d make a terrible reporter) but I kinda had my hands full. Summary: Mid-O is a ton of fun IN THE DRY. (Note to self: get some rain tires. take them to race).
Survived to the championship race on Saturday - got a good start then got overexcited coming out of the keyhole and stepped too hard on the gas. Went zipping around in a nice little loop. At that point my brain kicked back in and I went into survival mode. Had to take to the (did I mention WET) grass to avoid carnage in T10 but managed to stay out of the wall. Hung on to finish 14th (and glad to have it!)
Congrats to Eric - he did an awesome job on the slickest, most treacherous track I’ve even been on!
Matt_H
#14
Nationals Report:
I’ll leave out most of the boring details and just hit the high points…
Headgasket failed in the 5th session on Wednesday. We decided to gamble that the head was fine and just replace the gasket because we didn’t have a spare head anyway. Got it back together Thursday in time for the race, but it only made the recon lap before it failed again. Head must be warped.
Since the #47 was down for the count and my dad had supersized to GTS he generously let me drive the #40+ in SE30. That left me just the Friday qual session to learn the different car. I qualified ok, but blew the standing start in the race because A.) we’ve never done standing starts and B.) that AKG shifter takes a little different touch to get into 2nd quickly. After leaving T1 in DFL I managed to work back up to 13th and have a great time battling with Eric.
A last and a 13th had me starting Saturday’s race in 16th. A decent 1-2 shift and a little accidental blocking further up in the pack led to a great start. I was running pretty well before being caught up in the T10 carnage (Thanks for not hitting me Fred.), but managed to finish up 9th.
With one car dropping a decent amount of oil everywhere, the track went from tricky to downright stupid slippery.
Anyway, my week could have gone better, but also could have gone much worse. On the balance I had a great time and enjoyed putting faces with a bunch of the names we see around here. Hope to do it again next year.
Matt
King_Tut
#15
Any idea what caused the headgasket to fail? Was the cooling system working properly and were the water temps good?
Matt_H
#16
Water temp showed fine, but I just have the stock gauge. I’m guessing that it lost the water first and the pick-up was just in air. Without a pressure warning light I didn’t know anything was wrong.
A cooling system pressure warning light is now on the to-do list. We’ll also likely convert to the later style cooling system.