Sitting at some steak joint/bar near our hotel in Lexington, OH, BSing w/ Brock Jr and some other folks. Hearing some great stories here. Oh, and got busted for bagging on Brock's route instructions... I guess his wife tattled on us. ;)
I'd relay some stories, but I can't type that fast... and I sure can't remember that fast.
QUOTE OF THE DAY, overheard over the radio at the start of a session, attributed to Brock Jr.:
"Do we allow hubcaps?" "If you were at the driver's meeting, you know that this is NOT the SCCA!"
Just about 250 miles to run tonight. Might actually be in bed before midnight!
Mid-Ohio Raceway tomorrow. Back to the Tire Rack for the dry (unless it rains) skidpad, then we're done.
But, we've decided that since we're "in the groove", the trip home is *only* a 3-tank trip... so we're making the FAST autocross in Brooksville our last unofficial "One Lap" event!
This is an interesting car. A modded Neon SRT4, nothing spectacular... but an interesting One Lap classing conundrum. This car can't run in "Economy" because apparently Chrysler does not consider it an "economy" car. But, one could take a base Neon and swap onto it EVERY piece of an SRT4, and the resulting car WOULD be legal in the "Economy" class. This is essentially what the fast Subaru in our class did... of course, then they boosted it to the point that it blew up!
Not sure exactly what happened with the car above. I know it went off in the fast S section that I was entering in 5th gear and downshifting to 4th in... perhaps he tried to flat-foot it? It looked a lot like the right rear tire hooked in the dirt (not sure if you can see it in the photo, but that corner is BENT) and tossed the car. Also looked like the car slid on the pavement on the driver's side for a bit. I expect it was a really fun ride... right up until it wasn't.
The afternoon track session was much faster, Loren ran about 2.5 seconds faster than in the morning. Unfortunately, most of his competition kicked it up a notch, as well. The top car (Amanda) dropped back due to her limited slip differential giving up mid-session. The next two improved by about 1.2 seconds each, keeping them ahead of Loren.
They sent a minivan out in our afternoon session today. Our group has become rather "tight" with 4 cars in the same class running close times going out together each day, so we talked him into running behind our group rather than at the front or in the middle. That sucker caught up with me near the end of the last lap! Of course, it's not your typical minivan. More of a Honda/Acura "minivan race car". Other than the fact that it's bright orange, it's rather unassuming in appearance... until you look inside and see no interior and lots of custom fabrication. Some folks go all out for the One Lap!
There aren't a lot of rules in the One Lap of America. As far as car prep, there are NO rules. With that in mind, Jeff opted to further lighten the car for the dragstrip by removing the passenger seat and... the trunk lid. I guess it worked, Jeff finished first in class at the dragstrip with a 15.2 ET.
Amanda still loves us even though we talk crap about her. :-) Her response to the "but not men" bit was "so you're a boy, huh?" Touche!
The folks running in economy class are fun to hang out with, we're having a great time. Today we ran the road course at O'Reilly (formerly Indianapolis Raceway Park before it became hip to name facilities after their sponsors) for two events, and did one drag race event. Loren drove the road course, Jeff did the dragstrip.
As usual, Loren did "okay" in the morning, finishing 4th in class, but leaving a lot on the table as he learned another new track. The track consisted of a half-mile dragstrip straight followed by a really fast (5th, then 4th gear in the Sentra) set of sweeping turns and a somewhat tighter section that felt a lot like an autocross, but faster (3rd and 4th gear).
Rolled into Indianapolis around 12:30 this morning. Of course, we're back in on EST now, so it was really 1:30am. So, we got a good 5.5 hours of sleep and now we're headed to the track.
As Jeff says, we've got to "lay the smack down" today!
(you had to know I'd use that line at some point this week)
Note: This was typed last night, no connectivity so it didn't get posted.
Okay, so adjustment of the shock damping and driver attitude put Jeff in a much better place for this afternoon. Just a touch ahead of Mr. Dubler in the Pontiac, a little behind the Honda, and a few light years behind Amanda. (you see, Amanda had been driving with a broken front strut... Fed Ex delivered a replacement while she was driving in the first session and they replaced it during lunch... she was Flyin' this afternoon!)
We noticed the exhaust was a little louder than normal before Jeff went out this afternoon, and we diagnosed the problem as a leaking flex pipe. Not a terminal problem... yet. But, rather than worry about it or wait until it breaks, we decided to find a local exhaust shop and get it fixed.
So we left the track at about 3:00, got to the Midas in Pueblo at about 3:20, and by 4:50, we were back on the road. The guys at Midas were great, got us right in and took good care of us. Chris (forgive us if we got the name wrong... there's a good chance that we are!) did an awesome job of welding in the new flex pipe, adding an additional hanger and doing some patchwork welding on the muffler. We killed an hour and a half, but we're now confident in the one thing that we expected to break this week. Got some Chinese food while we were waiting, too!
Now we're headed toward I-70 to sprint East and then South to Wichita. Staying with a friend there, and rockin' on down to Hallett in Tulsa in the morning.
Hey, did you notice we're currently 3rd in our class? It ain't over yet... but we're pretty happy about that! Now if we can pick off the 2nd place car and put some kind of a curse on Amanda to slow her down...
Loren lived within about 2 hours of Hallett for 15 years and never once drove the track. Since he was the "wheel man" today, that finally changed. The day was helped along greatly with some some support from some old friends from the Wichita Region SCCA, Robert Foster and Dave Gird, who provided some valuable insight on how to get around the track fast in a front wheel drive car. The morning session was "good", but not great. Still good enough for 3rd in class, 2 seconds from Mike in the Civic, 8 seconds from Amanda in First.
Kicked it up a notch for the afternoon session. Was definitely faster, but haven't seen results yet.
Thanks to Robert Foster for the still photos above!
On our way to O'Reilly in Indianapolis now. 600+ miles to go.
QUOTE OF THE DAY, Robert Dubler:
"The coefficient of friction is same between asphalt and grass. Is different only if there is water."
In spite of the hazards surrounding this turn, Jeff says it's not the scariest turn on the course. The afternoon session will be another run at the same course. We made some shock adjustments to match the car to Jeff's driving style.
It's funny, Loren likes the car stiff. Yesterday we were full stiff in front and 2/3 turn from stiff in the rear. This track isn't quite as smooth, so we went with 3/4 turn in front and 1.5 turns in the rear. But, Jeff's driving style is so different, that we're going MUCH softer in the front to give him enough bite to handle his aggressive turn-ins.
We have completely different driving styles. Fortunately, we've got the car setup so that we can transition between drivers with simple shock adjustments.
Turn 10 at Pueblo is the last turn on the course and leads into their dragstrip, so it's 1/4 mile... plus another 1/4 mile of runoff. A half-mile long straght for the road course! This
turn is fast, and if you screw it up, you could either end up in the tire wall on the outside, or beyond that, there are concrete walls on both sides of the track!
Very cool that there's a worker station right there and they allowed us to step right up next to the apex of this turn to take photos!
QUOTE OF THE DAY, track manager or somebody watching Jeff's first lap at turn 10 (watch the video):
"That's a wall spot waiting to happen"
