I just returned home from the NASA Time Trial event. I needed to qualify at this one of a few time trial events held by NASA across the country to be able to run the famous Street Tuner Magazine, "Time Attack" in november.

This time, i was able to bring a friend with me to ride in the car in the first session. He has a 928 as well. In the second session , I was able to click off a 1:49.7 with only 1 really clean lap. The last session , I put my friend in shotgun again and we went out to drive some traffic. It was a good day for some track time at Infinion raceway. 85 degree temps, 45 car field and was able to drive the car to and from the event again. Instead of a full set of tires and my spares bag, i had a passenger and 2 front tires and rims.

Now, the long dry spell. next race: Sears Point (Infinion Raceway) over labor day August 31 to Sept 2nd.

Mk

 

Just enough time to get everything up to snuff.

 

So is that time good enough to qualify, or do you just have to enter an event to qualify?
August 31st, this is a longer time off then mine (August 23rd), and you have a running car...

 

are you going to be able to pull it off? best of luck on the rebuild! Its hard enough doint it when you have a winter to work on it over!

The time didnt matter so much with the qualification, but placing 1st or 2nd did. since there were only a few competitors in the unlimited or limited class, it was just a matter of showing up practically. There was a speedGT Vet there, and it was a monster. best of everything. however, the owner was just getting track time and was on race rubber and only running 1:51s. this car was a beast. he said it had the LS7 engine, and was built out to be 640hp. (engine dyno) its also a 7 liter, so it can't run speedGT (only LS2 6 liters can run there) anyway, lots of Evos and subaru's. Kind of cool having one of the oldest cars out there and being one of the fastest, with very little modified compared to the others. my car with the passenger was 3200lbs. got to check with the times, but i think the 200lbs was worth about 1.5 to 2 seconds for the laps i was dragging his dead weight around with me! With the extra 200lbs in it, it was quite hard to toss the car around.

MK

 

Mark, did you notice the passenger weight more in the handling or in the accelleration?

 

Time Trials are a blast - Ken Osage and I run them along with our races - We're going through the summer dry spell here too - next race isn't until the end of July.

We're VERY jealous of you CA guys with all the great tracks and dry weather!!!!

Quick question for the racers - any of you guys experience starter problems? My solenoid is biting the dust - wondering if it's heat related - and is it worth is using a heat shield type wrap?


Chuck


83 Kiln Red 928S

 

Hi Mark,

Did you drive the 928 to the track or trailer it? In either case nice job on the 49.7!

 

I noticed it almost everywhere. Im used to really tossing the 928 around in the twisty sections and it just seemed that i was getting a ton of body roll with the extra 200lbs and my shift points were furhter down the track. at one point, i couldnt even reach one and just ended up redline-ing.

the last session i went out and set the wing 5 degrees more to see what it felt like and it did make the car push more. my lap time was 1:50.2 but its hard to run a flyer on the 1st lap with little tire warm up time. then, i picked up the passenger. i was really only going to play around with traffic and give him a good ride, but then i really wanted to see what would happend if i really tried.
I went almost as hard as i could on the last lap before the checker. 1:52.2 . I think i probably could have shaved 1-.5 seconds off that if i REALLY had to , but it wasnt comfortable or safe to push it with the passenger. the weight effected acceleration, but the handling in the turns and braking were much worse. I guess with ballast, you can put the weight where it was needed, but with no tuning you just end up with an unbalanced car and extra weight.

mk

 

oh yes, always driven to the track (unless little Jack comes with me to thunderhill now, then we put it on a trailer)

this time, i picked up a friend at 8:30am and was running at the track at 11am. we got to Sears in about 1 hour, averaging about 70mph. (something you just cant do with the trailer. Plus, its alwasy nice to get around 20mpg on the way, vs the 11mpg with the trailer and Tahoe pulling it

the 1:49 was ok. i really was expecting a 1:48xx, as my best is still 1:47.9, but that may have been a perfect day with lots of race rubber on the track. these nasa days are mostly street cars on the track, and many of the guys were saying the track was real slick...... However, i would have thought my new wing and splitter would produce some better times, but they were with my little stock wing on stilts and no splitter. I give up!

Mk