VIR Race Results

#1

Okay, I know that old guy Vic Hall won a race(s) at VIR, but how 'bout some post race stories…

Help out a guy who has to live vicariuosly through your racing.

Vic, how’d ya do it? Grace/Palacio, why did you let him get away?

RP

#2

Lots of action in the mid pack too. :evil:

#3

Paul, how was the mid-pack action?

RP

#4

[quote=“Patton” post=73246]Okay, I know that old guy Vic Hall won a race(s) at VIR, but how 'bout some post race stories…

Help out a guy who has to live vicariuosly through your racing.

Vic, how’d ya do it? Grace/Palacio, why did you let him get away?

RP[/quote]

Robert,
Only one thing was missing from making this the perfect weekend and that was getting to catch up with you! You gonna make it up to Summit in August, or VIR in October?

The short version:
Saturday race was possibly my favorite, most boring, race ever. Eric and Robert duked it out behind me while I checked out.

Sunday was a lot more fun, but darned if Robert didn’t out-race Eric and I! I can’t WAIT for Summit Point!
-Vic

#5

Excessive heat all weekend so I forgot to get the GoPro going in lieu of cool suit and water bottle. One of the worst weekends I have ever seen with cars pissing oil all over the track.

On Sat…
-Warmup was chaos due to oil dry on the front straight at the start. Complete whiteout at 100+mph. Scary!
-Qualifying sucked; to many slow Miata’s, GTS and 944s.
-Race. Start was 4 wide before the kink. 2nd lap till the end of the race was excessive blocking so several of us didn’t get the chance to watch the Robert-Eric battle. :-/ Herrington spun out at the exit of oak tree and parked dead center sideways in the track while 5+ cars scattered like a swarm of startled roaches. I think the only carnage of the day was Mariani’s bumper.
-Awards. Dan Unkefer retired from NASA. Grace skipped the awards ceremony to claim his 2nd place NASA prize in order to pickup a bumper for Mariani. :lol:
-Afterparty… lots of free beer, Cubu Libre, trash talk, and some really disgusting pin-ups planted in a some E30s.

On Sunday
-Qualifying… 1/2 lap in a Miata bit the wall in the brake zone of 11. Black flag all. Return to track for 2 green laps. I qualified 16th since I not smart enough to inflate my tires properly.
-Race…Sunday bloody Sunday…1st lap with looming armageddon type clouds, a couple folks bailed back into the paddock. Clean start then Greg and Scott went off track after oak tree due to a unexpected bump (not by me) followed by a full course yellow. After that was cleaned up i believe there was GTS car that rolled. Back to green, had fun grabbing 8th and running with Travis Wilson who gave me a few helping pushes.

I’m hoping that a few folks post (or email) me some videos soon!

#6

Dang, Travis was there? Paul, you were racing with a legend!

Vic, is that your old car that you were racing?

Sounds like there were not enough green flag laps.

RP

#7

I had a blast. It’s a long tow from Savannah but VIR is worth it. I’ve not been to VIR in 2yrs. I was pleased to find that I didn’t suck as much as I feared I would suck.

It was really great to be back at VIR again. Parking between David Harrington and Carter Hunt gave me an opportunity to get to know both of them better. I had a great time hanging out with the Mid-Atl racers that I only see a couple times during the year. The most likely event for the Mid-Atl guys to come down is often Road Atlanta and because parking there is tricky, they don’t always get to park right with us and conduct bonding activities with the enthusiasm that SpecE30 is renown for.

Saturday’s qual was spooky. The dust from the oil-dry created the most complete obscuration I’ve ever seen. Completely blind for several anxious seconds just before entering a 120mph braking zone. Dislike.

To my frustration I forgot all my camera gear, so it’s all pretty fuzzy in my recall.

Saturday race was great fun. I got an excellent start by dropping down to 2nd gear just before the green. I think we went into the turn one braking zone 4 wide. Entirely surrounded by my SpecE30 buddies, everyone seemed to come out of the turn entirely unscathed.

I saw David astride the exit of Oaktree as I approached but I couldn’t tell where the space was to get by…inside or outside. I dialed it back a bunch so I’d have the traction available to choose which way to not hit him as I came around the tirewall. I later required a beer for my fabulous effort to not tbone him. Beer-debt is serious.

A couple laps later Mariani went off and he went hard to catch up to me. He was a ways back as we headed into the Rollercoaster. I figured he’d catch up to me by Hogpen so I’d let him by as we came on to the front stretch. He’s faster than I so there’s no sense me dicking him by blocking him out while he’s trying to chase back up the field. Then I noticed that he didn’t seem to be braking. I was way in front of him, just about to turn across his line, but he wasn’t braking. “Holy shit”, I thought. So instead of turning to set up for Rollercoaster I held the car straight so we might both be able to survive whatever the heck was going on. He went by me on my left and launched over the hill in a cloud of angry tire smoke. His brakes apparently failed.

Sunday qual. There’s a lot of hills to crest at VIR and there seems to be a fair # of folks that have not yet experienced the sudden horror of flying over a crest, under FCY, only to find a pack of cars barely moving on the other side. In this case the pack collected back up short of Oaktree. I got up nice and tight with the cars in front of me, while I watched my rear view mirror full knowing what was about to happen. Sure enough, within seconds there were cars flying thru South Bend only to find no place to go. I had a couple layers of cars behind me so I was safe but farther back I saw lots of locked up tires and cars, mostly Miaters I think, E & E’ing into the weeds. I didn’t have much sympathy for them. They should know better then to come hustling over a crest under FCY.

The best thing about Sunday was that the rain pretty much held off. It rained just enough to get things a little wet, but not any more.

Sitting in the grid, with dry tires on like everyone else, splotches of rain starting hitting my windshield. There were delays so we sat on the grid for a while. I sat there watching the rain and the clouds, thinking unhappy thoughts, and hummed/muttered a little “go away little sprinkles, I have dry tires on” ditty.

I had a good qual so I started in better position Sunday. I would soon piss that away tho. The start was uneventful and the pack of us went into 1. I’m not much into rubbing is racing and that showed as I failed to cement a position in turn 2 and 3 that some more aggressiveness would have won. I think I got the position in 4 and that created a problem for the other guy (Greg Smith?) because it impacted his speed going into the S’s

Greg was behind me going into Oaktree and I figured that he was far enough back that I didn’t have to worry about him taking an inside line. I was wrong about that. He went inside so I tried to come up with a new plan that would allow both of us to get out of the turn ok. I went 2 off at turn exit to give him more room to make it work. The pass wasn’t quite yet completed. His LR wheel was at my FR wheel with about 1mm of separation. It was all over in about 2secs. It was dicey because I had 2 wheels in wet grass so I did not have much in the way of reserve traction, and all it would take is for some feature in the grass to move my front corner towards him by a hair and he’d be punted over my bow. I got off the gas so his rear bumper could get forward of my front bumper so the cars could get clear. It was looking good. It was damn close, but I was drawing back and he was getting clear. Which is when I got tapped in the rear.

It wasn’t much of a tap. Not even worth noticing. But it was all it took to move my RF into Greg’s LR at exactly the wrong moment. “pink”.

“FUUUUCK” I yelled and hit the brakes trying desperately hard to give Greg the space necessary to recover his drifting car. Yelling curses the whole damn time I watched mortified as my friend’s car rotated across my bow and then towards the wall.

The whole damn pack passed me while I was busy being mortified. I knew I was faster than some of those guys so I chased after them as hard as I dared under the iffy conditions, but then the lead Miaters came up and, being the gracious SpecE30 type, I lost multiple car lengths letting them by. Then I started catching back up again, got on Al’s tail, and had to start laughing as I recognized his determination to keep me behind him. Then some more Miaters caught up and I let them by too. So by the time I quit laughing I’d lost more car lengths. Finally on the last 1/2 lap I was able to get serious about Al, but there wasn’t enough time.

The drive home was 8hrs of rain storms. I had a big smile on my face tho. I’d finally gotten back to VIR. I’d not sucked nor crashed my car. No mechanicals, no goatscrews with trailer nor tow vehicle, and the rain had held off until after I was done. All good.

#8

Great racing with Vic and Robert both days! Looking forward to being back in October and the September battles at Road Atlanta and Watkins.

#9

Fun weekend with the SE guys coming up and Vic making his long over due return to SE30. Here is my video from Saturday’s race - after qualifying 0.01 seconds apart I was looking forward to a good battle with Vic but it wasn’t to be. Fell down to P4 in T10 of the first lap and ended up fighting Eric and Rick for P2 while Vic checked out: http://youtu.be/Th6bPPINh1E

Sunday was fun (depending who you ask!) with some light rain in a few corners, some off roading, and a full course yellow to bunch up the field for a “green-white-checkers” finish. Sunday video to come…

#10

sigh just not enough time to type out all the stories. Suffice to say that if you weren’t there, you missed out. Had so much fun hanging out in the paddock with everyone. Was very pleased to find the camaraderie still very much alive with the Spec E30 crowd, even if BeerTech retired, due to lack of talent, good looks, and a complete disregard for personal hygiene. Thank god that Malt Liquor Tech was still very much in the zone.
-Vic

#11

Here’s Sunday video, figured out the brake points a little too late :pinch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5fFSrvDlf0&feature=share&list=UUpIpV81HSq9P2odYuoCoD8A

#12

[quote=“victorhall” post=73267]sigh just not enough time to type out all the stories. Suffice to say that if you weren’t there, you missed out. Had so much fun hanging out in the paddock with everyone. Was very pleased to find the camaraderie still very much alive with the Spec E30 crowd, even if BeerTech retired, due to lack of talent, good looks, and a complete disregard for personal hygiene. Thank god that Malt Liquor Tech was still very much in the zone.
-Vic[/quote]

MLT FTW!

#13

[quote=“epalacio19” post=73268]Here’s Sunday video, figured out the brake points a little too late :pinch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5fFSrvDlf0&feature=share&list=UUpIpV81HSq9P2odYuoCoD8A[/quote]

HHhhhmmm…thought I had the brake points figured out until I decided to flat foot turn 1 :slight_smile: D’OH!!!
Great running Eric!
-Vic

#14

[quote=“victorhall” post=73270][quote=“epalacio19” post=73268]HHhhhmmm…thought I had the brake points figured out until I decided to flat foot turn 1 :slight_smile: D’OH!!!
Great running Eric!
-Vic[/quote]

It was a graceful attempt I must say. Great running with the both of you guys.

#15

Sunday’s race was a little more interesting:

http://youtu.be/tjWowpj31H0

#16

The convertible is at a disadvantage with the long straights…on Sunday I was able to draft a 944 and that helped a bunch. Otherwise had fun, Running the UTCC with my Chumpcar took too much time and energy…

Surprised no one asked me why the hell I built an iC…

Al

#17

[quote=“FARTBREF” post=73302]

Surprised no one asked me why the hell I built an iC…

Al[/quote]

You’re Al freaking Taylor. I didn’t think you NEEDED a reason :slight_smile: Great seeing you Al. I think your convertible would fare much better at Summit, which is why you need to make the haul up north. You’ve got a place to crash!!
-Vic

#18

[quote=“victorhall” post=73304]You’ve got a place to crash!!
-Vic[/quote]

Aren’t there several at Summit Point? :whistle:

#19

Other race stories? Wasn’t Travis there?

Scott Gress, thanks for the nice write-up. Greg’s car okay?

RP

#20

[quote=“juliancates” post=73317]

Aren’t there several at Summit Point? :whistle:[/quote]

ZIIIIIINGGER!!!