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Well qualifying went way beyond my expectations in terms of position, but not in terms of speed. I knew the speed was there and did some mental visualization last night running a perfect lap. I could visual a good lap as right around a high 58 or low 59 and what do you know, that's what happened. I also had fresh tires so that certainly helped as well.
So the race on Sunday unfortunately was not to expectations. I started well, running in third, but soon fell back to eventually 8th place. With each successive pass I started feeling more pressure. Eventually I took 8 too tight and got up too high on the curb resulting in a spin. This dropped me back to 16th and more adventures with others, finally finishing 13th. I am seeing a coach tomorrow at Sonoma and we are going to spend some time discussing how to cope with my performance anxiety. More to come...
So digging in a little deeper to my race results at Thunderhill- Several factors came into play. First, a total lack of practice put me on the back foot all weekend. It was wet all day on Friday practice, so our first dry day was Saturday qualify and race. Unfortunately with my level of experience, I need all the practice I can get to get comfortable pushing the car at each track. Thunderhill is fairly technical and the corners where I was loosing time in my Sunday race all began with Turn 8, the highest speed corner on the track. It is and should be a flat out corner, failure to execute that will leave you vulnerable to a pass in 9 or 10- two corners where the track works with you to push hard. T9 is uphill, you can carry a lot more speed then it looks like, and the technique to really push requires an early turn in and precise placement of the car. T10 is banked and this is a corner that is very forgiving, so not really technical, but one you can push very hard. So lack of practice meant a lack of comfort in 8, leading to discomfort in 9 at higher entry speeds and also not enough practice to explore limits in 10. Obviously I put it all together to qualify 3rd in a very deep pool of 28 experienced drivers, so why couldn't I extend that performance in the race?
Well, in addition to the lack of practice I mentioned above, to put it bluntly, I choked. The pressure dealing with holding back drivers behind me caused me to tense up and go slower, particularly in T8. This leads to a downward spiral that resulted in a 13th place finish. Ughhhly! I've had a lot of discussions with my coach and other racers and team members about it since, and obviously I need to develop some strategies to deal with this in the future. I have a book I'm reading
, that I hope will give me some tools to work on. As well I'm a big fan of visualization, and I need to work on visualizing a successful race in the same conditions. Finally, good news is that it wasn't as bad as it felt, I only dropped to sixth at midpoint, but well.. you have to watch the video to see. Last, I have a lot of race experience, not in race cars, but in slot cars at a high level. The mental game is the same, I know how to handle pressure and get in the zone so I need to draw on that experience too. Lot's to think about and work on before the next race!
Well, it was another one of those weekends unfortunately. Saturday morning qualifying was always going to be dicey with only 15 minutes in our session, you barely had time to warm up the tires and get a good lap in. Saturday turned cool and unfortunately we missed our pressures by a little over pound on the tires, and mine never really got up to temp/pressure. It didn't help that I pushed too hard early and had a couple of offs that dropped me back into traffic that held me up in a couple of critical areas each lap. So, three other racers were able to beat my time from the morning session and I dropped back to a 9th starting position.
So Saturday's race start was clean, but very soon I started dropping back through the field. I couldn't maintain the pace as the car started sliding around. As I struggled doubts about my ability started to form- I was really thinking maybe this racing stuff isn't for me, LOL! Finally by lap five I was down to 17th place and suddenly my rear tire lost all air. Turns out there was a screw in my tire that I must have picked up on the way to the grid. I had a slow leak all race until I lost all air at the end. It's a weird feeling to go from 'I suck' to, 'Oh, it's my car'- a feeling of relief and disappointment at the same time.
Oh well. There's always Sunday. I shrugged off the bad luck and put together my plan for Sunday. Sunday's race started at 8:20 in the morning so I didn't want to end up like Saturday's qualifying so I planned to do the morning warmup. Also it had the benefit of testing out the available grip with my 2nd heat cycle tires. Sometimes our Hoosiers have a 2nd cycle 'blues'. Also I mentally prepared myself to focus on my performance, hit my marks and get in the zone. Practice went great, by the end I was getting down to my best lap, so I felt ready and the car felt great.
The race itself unfortunately was short. The three Flat Out drivers all got together in Turn 2. I was the meat in the sandwich as Tom tapped me and spun me into my other teammate Whitney. My front bodywork was knocked out and my day was done. Tom and Whiney continued although neither had a great race. Here's the (short) video:
The damage was really minor- I was able to put the nose back on after I parked way off the course and could have continued if my body clips hadn't sheered off in the collision. Just not my weekend. Here's a shot of the car after:
So not much to show for 4 days at buttonwillow except for a new personal best in Qualifying on Saturday:
Well- I have not been too good about updates on this thread, but after reading Lar's epic midwest, east coast tour thread it motivated me to continue. So let's first fill in an important detail- after the race in Thunderhill where I, well choked, we went testing in Sonoma. Everything went well until the final practice session in the afternoon when I came through 8 and 8A only to hit some sort of fluid exiting 8. Those of you who know Sonoma know that is not a place to loose it- especially at 90+ MPH. Car half spun and backed into the wall, then caught on fire! I quickly jumped out and because it was a test day, help was slow to arrive. I pulled my fire bottle but the trigger cable broke so I just watched it burn. What happened was the rear suspension folded over, bending the frame where the fuel hose connects to the fuel filler cap and left the hose open with fumes coming up to the now hot tire and brake laying on top. It took about 4- 5 minutes for help to come, and by this time the tail was in complete flames! Luckily in the end the fire mostly was on the fiberglass tail and just heat damage to the intake and a few other parts, the most expensive being the ECU.
Photos:
Aftermath, fuel hose wide open
Tail fully roasted
So after Thill there was a sense that this was driver error, but very careful review of the data and video showed no change in inputs one lap to the incident, it just let go. Only explanation was some sort of fluid left behind by another car in my test session. Here's the video lap previous played next to the lap with the off in slow motion through the corner to show how similar everything was:
Not a confidence building week! Ugh. This all happened before Buttonwillow posted above. It made me pause and do some serious reflection. First the cost, but then the confidence you loose in such an incident is not something that just comes back overnight despite how much you wish it would. Confidence in this case in the car, the track, the tires etc. Sonoma is an unforgiving place but so are a lot of tracks. We drive around at or near the limit and most times there is not an issue, but occasionally something like this reminds you it is a risky business!
So after a couple of less than great race weekends; Thill and then Buttonwillow, not to mention the fire at Sonoma, I was looking forward to getting on my home track and having a good solid weekend. Practice and qualifying went well. Experimented with loosening up the car and found it a little more comfortable at the limit. For qualifying because of my flat at Buttonwillow, I had one new and three slightly used tires. Felt weird at first but it settled down and I was able to get to a PR good enough for 8th on the grid.
The first race of the weekend started out well, moved up to 6th thanks to others dropping out, then a double yellow. The ensuing restart caught me out and dropped me several places. Gathered it back up and started to work my way back when suddenly a strange vibration:
Well, spoiler alert if you don't watch the video, the vibration was a complete failure of my engine, resulting in another FIRE!
Unfortunately the fire was worse this time than the previous one. It melted all my wiring as well as engine accessories and the intake. Double ugh. Needless to say my weekend was over.
No need for self reflection here, just a big hit to the wallet!
I realized I didn't give the complete story about the engine failure. First off, this motor has run four hard full seasons of racing- 8 to 10 weekends a year. Second, I haven't been kind to it to say the least and over that four seasons there were at least four instances of mechanical overrevs and a couple of times where we had overheating due to failed belts or a closed radiator intake. At the end of last year we sent the engine to SCCA enterprises for a top end rebuild because we had another overheating incident. In hind sight we should have done a complete top and bottom rebuild. Best guess on the failure was a failed rod bolt. I didn't recognize the vibration as an engine failure- so running all the way back to the pits as I tried to do, caused comprehensive damage and the fire. Next time I'm just pulling off and shutting down! That fire probably doubled the cost of just a motor replacement!
I give all this background because it's not a normal event in our class. We have lots of motors with fours seasons on them and no rebuilds that are running more than great, they are winning races. Bobby Saks just won the June Sprints at Road America with one and that is a horsepower track if there ever was one! These are tough motors and are artificially limited to 6750 RPM for durability. I zinged mine as high as 8900 RPM more than once and even without the rebuild it lasted several seasons from that event. Who knows, maybe the failure would happened eventually, I just made it happen sooner. Bottom line, these are great motors, if your treat them right they will last a long time.
Look, you can see through the block!
Great work by the SCCA workers putting the fire out!
Sonoma- the last major of the year! So many expectations going in- this is the site of this year's Runoff's- everyone has had it on their calendar for a while. As did I, but as things got closer to the date, my plans for establishing a performance reference were thrown out the window with a fresh motor. At least two races are required to break in our motors, and until then you are running heavier, slower break in oil. Not a huge difference in top end performance but definitely a loss in low and mid range torque of 3- 5%. Also not huge, but just enough to loose a car length are two coming out of some corners. At Sonoma it was readily apparent out of 7 and a little out of 8A. These two corners set you up for a chance at a small draft down the highest speed section of the track.
Originally my goals were to qualify solidly in the top 15, but that went out the window with the new motor. Ultimately while I had initial pace, it went away as others became familiar with the track and I qualified 22nd. I estimated that the new motor costs me about 3 tenths of a second, but my pace was off greater than that. With 50+ entrants it was a deep field and I had good company, but not confidence inspiring for how things might go at the runoffs.
So Saturday's race set up for low expectations- other than a finish, LOL! Start set me back further due to a car in front missing a gear- all the way to 32nd place and had to scramble all the way back to 24th but hey, a finish after not finishing 3 races in a row-it was nice. Here's the video:
On to Sunday's race. We noticed Saturday the winner Mike Miserendino had a much higher rear ride height than anyone else. So we raised the rear to see if that might help, thinking that we were too into the bump stops around 3, 3A and the carousel 6. This did help quite a bit especially in the bumps. Instead of almost loosing it in some spots we had better grip and more control. Pace was better too, close to the top 15 and probably solidly there with a motor fully broken in.
Here's Sunday's race video- start looks worse than Saturday but actually in terms of position not as bad. Had a good run going but got caught out in 7 attempting a pass- at that point the race became a practice run. Lot's of passing going through the field in both videos due to the bad starts so they're pretty entertaining:
Final thoughts after Sonoma are that the results not up to snuff and I left with still a ? as to how I'm going to find more speed for the runoffs. New motor mucked up the results a bit, but not that much, so I have a lot of work to do finding more speed- setup? driver? Some of both- I suspect 20% setup, 80% driver. Ugh..
Next up the Rose Cup race at Portland...home track so hopefully a confidence boost!
Yes, the title of this latest post is all about success, finally! Last weekend was the Rose Cup race, while technically not a Major, all the fast guys were here and it has the feel of a Major. It is a non- SCCA event put on in conjunction with SCCA, NW Conference, and Cascade Sports Car Club. This year we also had a round of the Pirelli World Challenge during the event. It was a fun and busy weekend.
Local Racer Eddie Nakato got a ride in a Cayman GT4 for the Pro Race! Eddie was my coach and mechanic when I first started racing.
Field lining up for practice- SRF driver Patrick Byrne was also in the Pro GT3 category driving a Huracan..
Personally, my goals for the race weekend again were tempered due to the new motor- I simply hoped to be in the top ten and planned on working on the car setup to get it to be more neutral/loose mid corner and set aside our practice day to work on the setup. To my surprise, right from the start of practice I was 4th fastest, and each session my times stayed in the top 3- 5. From the second session on we progressed to adding more and more changes to the car to dial out the understeer. Mid day with more aggressive changes it felt like we were going backwards, so we went extreme on the changes and just like that, boom the car was transformed. I don't quite know how to describe it, the feeling of suddenly having one of the fastest cars on the track! Grip felt like it improved everywhere, I feared that the direction we were going would make the rear grip too loose in slower corners, but it actually helped! And in mid to high speed corners I was able to get right to the limit, step over and recover. This was never possible before, always if I stepped over the limit before, the back end would come around and it was not recoverable.
At the end of day's practice it was a transformative experience- Not only was the car better, I was driving more aggressively and my times dropped accordingly. Even more impressive to me was the ability to hang with drivers at the front of the grid that I had never been able to keep up with. Lap after lap- it really felt good. Now, there was still the issue of the motor breaking in, and while my times were very close to the top times, I was not able to stay tucked in launching from the last corner leading to the back straight. Like before at Sonoma, the break-in oil left me down on torque just enough that a car length or two gap would open on exit and I couldn't maintain a good draft. This cost me a couple tenths every lap. Overall very pleased and the lap times showed it!
Friday was our first qualifying, and with an afternoon session the times were going to be higher than the scheduled qualifying the next day in the morning. Here's the results:
Yes, third! The best part was that I did the entire session following Steve and Phil Fogg- the difference on their best lap was the draft. And while Todd Harris and his son Calvin were scrubbing their tires in and not really going for an ultimate fast lap, I left Friday feeling really positive about the races coming up on Saturday and Sunday!
04-09-2018, 02:44 AM
