Since I couldn’t be there, I’m dying for some race results/videos and reality TV type stories of the going’s on in the paddock! Hope the weather cooperated and everyone kept the car out of the hard stuff.
VIR Race Results
allenr
#3
Weather did not cooperate. Cobetto won both races. Complete results are on mylaps.
Videos/Report to come…
allenr
#4
After some great racing experience but also some regrets from the season opener, I was looking forward to this event. This is long but I can probably type almost as fast as you can read…
The weather report held for Saturday. Every lap of every session was wet. I know my weaknesses and one of them is rain driving. I had to adjust my goals for the day to improving my wet driving skills and surviving. I was glad to get the much needed experience in the rain, but definitely disappointed knowing I would be towards the rear of the field. I qualified 9th out of 12, a full 10 seconds behind Carlton on pole :blink:.
Before the race start, we were all glued to the radar screen on the Drivegear crew’s laptop. The track was currently dry but a big storm was estimated to begin at start time. Some drivers were calling family members miles away to see if the rain was falling yet. Everyone seemed to choose a different setup combination with tires, pressures, and sway bar. Knowing that I would be slow in the wet no matter what, we gambled with a full dry setup. It was looking great for us until the rain started to come down toward the end of the warm up lap. I would say that it became a “wet race” within just a few seconds of the drop of the green. Some were caught off guard. Herrington spun in the exit of T1 and some cars had to take evasive action. Grace was slowed by that incident which put him in the middle of the 944 pack. He ended up getting hit by a spinning Porsche later that lap, which ended his race and caused significant body damage. I was keeping Carter in my sights until my wiper settings failed. That combined with a broken defroster forced me to take my hand of the wheel about every second to manually tap the stick just to be able to see. I don’t recommend getting crossed up through the esses with one hand on the wheel and zero visibility. That slowed me down quite a bit. I wasn’t too worried as there was no one to race with in front or behind, so I just settled in and tried to focus on improving my rain driving. There were also yellow flags everywhere, wrecked cars, safety vehicles, and debris and oil on the track. The real race was happening for the lead where Cobetto and Davidson had a great back and forth battle. Cobetto was ahead at the finish to take the win. Davidson’s camera apparently failed so we wont get to see it for ourselves :(.
I was mentally spent after the race and happy just to make it out in one piece. I was definitely frustrated by my finish but I got some great experience in the rain. I can’t remember the last time I improved so much as a driver in one day at the track. That didn’t stop me from begging for dry weather on Sunday…
We were surprised to find that the track was still soaked for qualifying on Sunday :ohmy:. It hadn’t rained since the night before and the sun was shining so I decided again to go with the 100% dry setup. Unfortunately I was wrong again and there was never a dry line. But after Saturday I was more confident in the rain, so this time I was ‘only’ 6 seconds off Cobetto’s pole to qualify in 8th. Still pretty slow but I’m slowly improving too.
I was thrilled to find a totally dry track for the 40 minute race. This would be our first 40 minute race that was not cut short by a double yellow. Knowing that the track would be slick, I decided to go with a little more understeer than usual. This would make tire management more difficult in the race, but It would help me to get the power down on a dirty track. I got a fantastic jump from 8th up to 3rd for a brief moment before settling into 4th behind Cobetto, Jonny, and Carter. I was thrilled to be back in my element on a dry surface. After probably throwing away the win last month because of a lack of traffic management skills, I had been thinking a lot about that aspect of my game. I was much more aggressive in traffic this time, which along with some luck in traffic (coincidence?) helped me to reel in Jonny. I was killing him on the brakes, but he definitely had more horsepower than my junkyard engine. I kept drilling it into my head to manage tires and drive a more conservative race for the longer distance, which caused me to give up a great opportunity to pass Jonny into T1. I’m still kicking myself over that one 
. I also had to work to hold off skip and mikeD for a while, but our pack of 3 (cobetto had a comfortable lead) pulled out a gap to 5th place. Tire management made it difficult to be consistent since I was backing off slightly in different turns each lap depending on the gap in front and behind. I ended up going off with 2 laps to go to avoid hitting Jonny who slowed a lot more at the end of the back straight than I had expected. That caused me to lose 4th place to skip. Cobetto won and jonny got by carter for 2nd.
I never got a clean lap with traffic and checking up slightly on the brakes for jonny, but I still was 3rd fastest by lap time. I really believe that I was the fastest car in the race except for maybe cobetto. If I had qualified better than 8th and gotten in front of Jon and Carter early on, I have no doubt I could have finished second and maybe challenged cobetto. If only qualifying had been scheduled 30 minutes later… :S
video: http://www.vimeo.com/3917145
I was very satisfied with my improvement in traffic, but I was definitely overly conservative for the 40 minute race. I don’t know if I could have made any adjustments to avoid going off at the end of the back straight knowing what I knew, but I would have very likely had a podium without that. Congrats to cobetto on sweeping the weekend and making it 3/4 so far this year.
Off track highlights:
-The Grace camp worked late Saturday and early Sunday doing some “buzz saw body work” to fix the car for Sunday. But that’s only a highlight if your room is not directly above their garage ;).
-T. Wilson declares war on the mid-atlantic region with a baby in his arms. Let’s leave the women and children out of it ;).
-Skip’s camp grills for the official specE30 cookout on both days. There were no farm animals or mediocre driving (besides me in the wet) involved ;).
So a 7th and a 5th is not at all what I had hoped for going into the weekend, but I made huge improvements on my rain driving and I showed a lot of improvement in traffic, too. There’s a chance I’ll have competitive horsepower by April summit point so watch out!
Complete results: http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=396966
MikeD
#6
Qualified 2nd both days and finished second and 8th. Chris got by me in the first race at the beginning of roller coaster on the last lap with a nice pass. I have to give it to him he did an awesome job. Amazing race probably the best driving i’ve ever done. Chris never fails to amaze me. He is an excellent driver.
At the beginning of sunday’s race 10 seconds before the green flag was dropped my car started to sputter and when I went to give it the beans there was nothing there. The car sputtered intermittently for the remainder of the race. If you look closely you can see my hand reaching down to flip the ignition on and off to try and clear it up. I lost a few positions on the the start but I got all the way back up to 5th but regrettably made some poor decisions in traffic which ultimately cost me the race. The video is tough for me to watch but I will try and learn as much as I can from my bad decisions.
Here’s a good clip of Chris’s pass for the lead on saturday. From the one and only Todd Reid!
Go to the last lap on the back-straight
allenr
#7
Thanks for the video mike. You chris and carlton were unbelievable in the rain on saturday.
Here are some pictures from sunday:
MikeD
#9
allenr wrote:
[quote]Thanks for the video mike. You chris and carlton were unbelievable in the rain on saturday.
Here are some pictures from sunday:
http://s326.photobucket.com/albums/k432/allenr00/VIR%20march%2009/[/quote]
Thanks for the compliments man. Like I said it’s hard to practice for racing in the rain.
smithk3933
#12
How did the horsepower measurement exercise work out or did the conditions cause a delay in getting it done?
MikeD
#14
smithk3933 wrote:
Which exercise are you referring to? The maxQdata or the VIR dyno? I used my maxqdata on saturday but it didn’t work on sunday.
smithk3933
#15
Mike,
yeah that one! I thought they were going to use the data collector and then go to the dyno to compare the results to establish some accuracy…
MikeD
#16
smithk3933 wrote:
[quote]Mike,
yeah that one! I thought they were going to use the data collector and then go to the dyno to compare the results to establish some accuracy…[/quote]
He talked about it and it sounds like a pretty good idea. I have my data and have plenty of dyno data to compare it to. Carter does as well so we should have a pretty good idea of if it’s a viable alternative to the dyno or not after a few more days of collecting data.
nasachris
#18
So after looking at the laptop I figure that, at some point, the rain is going to make it into our race. Wet or dry? Well I figure that it is dry NOW and we may get at least 5 min of dry so I should go dry and just work it the best I can when the wet comes. I roll on to grid with 7 minutes to go and, of course, the sprinkles start. Frig!
On the pace lap I must look like a complete goob. I’m tossing the car around and overbraking to try to get an idea where there is some grip. Green flag drops and I hear Carleton booger a shift and Skip gets picked behind Carleton. Mikey plays defense going into one so I fade left for a setup to turn one and just try to stay with Mikey. I got a little bit of a run out of turn one and was able to get up and close to Mikey at the kink before turn 3. Mikey gave me some good room and I jump the curb at the kink to gain position. By the uphill esses the rain is getting harder and Mike is right on my six. I’m really pushing to try to get some good heat in the tires before the rain comes in earnest because it will be nearly impossible to do so when it really starts coming down. I slide through turn 10 at a pretty good pace and have to use the curb at the exit. I look back, thinking that I should have put some space on Mikey. No dice. Mike is right there and that is how the entire race went. I would make a pass on some traffic and think, “ok I should be able to breathe a little now but no way. Mike is ROCKING right through traffic, hammering it into the braking zone and using every bit of track. I looked back many times and watched those front wheels making little corrections, balancing the car at the very ragged edge. Mike is driving REALLY well. It was about lap 3 when we got held up by a spec 3 in turn 3. Mike gets a run and sticks a great pass in 4. We round turn 5 and I see an EV crew dragging one of the guys that went off. The guy in front of Mike is being EXTREMELY cautious and holds up Mikey. I saw this happen and backed off the throttle for a split second and then started rolling into it so I could time when I would hit full throttle for just after passing the EV crew. It gave me enough momentum to try to gain position on Mike, drivers left, heading into the uphill esses. Mike gave me enough room to be there but I’m quite sure that the outside edge of my left tires were tossing up red clay and the thought went through my head, " Cobetto, uh, are you really sure you want to be right here right now?” I got beside Mike and was able to stick the re-pass. On the next to the last lap Mike got around me in turn one and so it was time to follow him around some. I just could not make up and distance on Mike. I wasn’t losing ground but I wasn’t gaining any either.
White Flag waving at Start. Mike was perfect going into the Oak Tree section but got boogered by a couple of cars and that gave me a shot. I stayed in third and couldn’t get the torque out of Oak tree to gain anything on Mike who had bumped down to second, which I knew because I saw his car jump left on the gear change. Todd Reid was right in front of Mike and very slowly mike pulled away in Todds draft. As we started into the braking zone at the end of the back straight I figured it was now or never. Todd, who is very fast and good in the rain had been very slow through oak tree. I figured that he was probably on a dry setup and anticipated that he would probably brake much earlier than Mike and I had been doing going into the braking zone at the end of the back straight. Mike was about 1.5 car lengths in front of me and right behind Todd. I looked through Mikes windshield and waited for Todds brakelights to come on. They went on and I stayed in the throttle just enough to shoot past Mike and Todd and then got on the binders. Mike went around Todd on the right and slid right in behind me. Only four more turns to go but there were 4 cars in front of us. At that point it was just a matter of shooting the gaps. I went for one gap and Mike went for another. I honestly didn’t know who was going to win the race until the exit of 17.
I told Mike that that race was in the top three for me. Absolutely a freakin blast. Mike drove an absolutely awesome race!!! He drove ballsy, smart, clean, smooth and mistake free. We have a lot of drivers in the Mid Atlantic that are factors and Mikey D is most certainly on that list. I mean, GAWWWWWDAMN, Mike, you really REALLY rocked it out.
I have considered selling my car and building something else but the Gods honest truth is that I don’t know anywhere else where I could have as much fun. I love these cars and the close competition but what is really special is the camaraderie that exists among the cast of characters that drive. In the past year I have watched everyone’s game improve dramatically. But no one is a jerk. Everyone is cool and willing to help one another. I am truly proud to be in this class and honored to be friends with y’all. Thank you Carter for building this.
2009 is set to be REALLY fun!
Peace,
Chris Cobetto
MikeD
#20
Chris I really appreciate the kind words. It means a lot to me as I’ve tried very hard to become a better race car driver and it finally seems to be paying off. I have to admit I owe a lot of my skill set to watching and learning from you and some of the other drivers in Spec E30. You drove and absolutely amazing race on Saturday and I honestly can’t remember a race where I did not know what the outcome of the race was going to be until the exit of the final turn. Never a dull moment 100% on the ragged edge the entire race! What a blast. I have also thought of building another car but time and time again the racing is just too much fun to let go. Again thanks for the kind words and I am really looking forward to some more great racing this season.