aeshultz

A big Thank You to everyone who braved the typical Mid-Ohio weather this past weekend - a special award should go to everyone who survived the Saturday Enduro downpour.
You should have seen Norm Goldrich showing his heels to the "fly-in-from-the-coast-and-meet-the-Farnlacher/Racer's Group/KellyMoss-transporter-and-crew-Cup-Car" brigade. Good going, Norm. Sorry you weren't able to finish what you started, but you put on a h*ll of a good show.
Thanks again to for coming out to play.

Eric in Chicago

Thanks, too bad about Sat.
Any results??

aeshultz

If I had had the sense to grab results sheets, I'd post 'em. I do remember Gary Grigsby won the Saturday Enduro, and perhaps F class in Sprint. The rest were a blur.
You might check www.morpca.org in a few days.

John H

I just have to brag and say that Joe Lash and I won the Saturday Enduro Class D (only because we had Hoosier rains and Alan Coleman did not). Apparently Turtles do it better in the rain. It was fun but scary driving in the rain that never stopped during the whole race. Fastest lap in D on Saturday was a 2:03 and on Sunday the top D class cars were running 1:42's if that gives you an idea of the conditions.

Joe (who is a poster here on occasion) won the Rookie Award.

jerome951

Yes, Grigsby won the Saturday enduro, beating Jim Child by 0.775 sec. Pretty incredible considering the conditions and an hour race.

I'll post a longer story about my experience in the enduro, but all I can say is that it was the only time I ever WANTED to start from the back row. Instead, I ended up on the front row in well-worn RA1s that were downright treacherous. I ran about 5 laps and came into the pits to put on my rains. I lost several laps but at least I was able to keep the car safely on the track.

Here are the top 10 finishers from Saturday's enduro along w/ their class (only the first 3 drivers were on the lead lap):
Grigsby F
Child F
T. Heath F
D Wasser I
Amongero I
Brensinger B
P Small E
S Gerard I
Sciarrino I
D Adams I

That should give you an idea of the conditions considering B, C, D, E, etc. were running. Some of the smarter guys didn't even go out.

I'll post some video later as I just arrived back home.

Later,
Jerome
E #301

mikew968

Congrads to Grigby and Child!!!

i guess all that running DE's in the rain does payoff. Great showing for the 968's!!!

analogmike

Norm was flying! Sad to see him in the gravel after the long straight. A lot of turbos had trouble.

He should beat us lowly cup cars, he has less weight and about twice our torque

P.S. it's FarnBacher let's not get Horst angry!

have fun!

ngoldrich

Thanks for the kind words.

Well after 14 races last year with no mechanicals, I guess it was my time :-)

Sprint - Sunday -
I did not drive in the rain on saturday (no return on investment for my car with a locked rear spool). That meant I started qualifying from about the 50th position. Very tough to get a clean lap (as it was for most everyone). Anyways, I qualified with a 1:31 which put me third since Michael Cawley and BJ Zacharias in Rene's cool GT3RS went a bit faster. On the start I passed both and shortly had almost a whole straight lead. My early lap was 1:30.18 - so things were getting better.

Now the not fun part - at the end of the back straight over 160 MPH, my ABS failed - yes, I am not kidding. That is why there were no black tire marks at all. Firm pedal, no clamping of the rotors. I had a split second to try and scrub some speed. That did not work. The cars was not exactly straight, (and I knew I had to go in straight) so I lit the rear tires up just enough to complete the rotation and put in the clutch and full brake so I ended up going straight (and backwards into the gravel). The car was still running when I stopped.

The only thing that I kept telling myself is get the damn car straight so it does not roll.

I was really luck. It did not even hurt the body. After the race they pulled me out and I drove back to the garage.

We checked out the car and it appeared fine. But I was not about to risk the ABS again. I have a switch on my dash to turn off the ABS and I ran without it for the enduro.

On the drive home I was talking to Rick Deman and he let me know this ABS failure happened a lot with my version of ABS. Many people complained of the exact same problem. So I think I am pulling the ABS out. I think I will be simply replacing it with a dual master cylinder/balance bar setup - so I dont have to worry about it again (once in 15 years of racing is enough for me)...

Enduro - Sunday -

They used the same qualifying grid position - I started 3rd. On the start I again passed and pulled a nice gap. Ran 1:30 again, I had a great lead for the first 25 minutes of the enduro. There was then a double yellow which bunched up the field again. On the restart, I could tell something just was not right. The car accelerated about 70% of how it runs normally. It got a little better and the gauges all looked fine - so I ran a bit more, came in for my pitstop - left it idling in the pits - all gauges still looked good and it sounded good. When I pulled back on track I immediately knew something was not right. It again was not pulling normally and it was not making boost - and if I got on it hard the turbos were making a strange noise - so I just pulled in the pits.

Anyways, a long story, it was still nice to see a lot of rennlisters and the competition was awesome. And the driving was very good in the group!

It was very nice actually meeting more rennlisters...

BillK935, how did you do ?

Also my friend and garage mate, Rick, with his very cool 996 TT World Challenge car did very well despite sorting a new car which is not yet handling near to his liking. He was driving the wheels off of it...

** Disclaimer - all noted times were from my dual in car timing units -
AIM MXL Pro and Spa Laptimer with Encoded serialized beacon (so other beacons dont mess up my timing). Both units were within hundredths of a second of each other.

Interesting because the PCA setup is off/different by several tenths of a second. Not a big deal, just interesting.

Norm

ngoldrich

AnalogMike,

You are correct I do have more torque, probably even weigh a good bit less (2480 wet - without driver), but I am tremendously impressed with how darn quick you guys get those supercup cars. Besides being awesome looking, they seem to handle incredibly - and actually accelerate fast too -yes I know not nearly as fast as mine :-). I seriously thought about getting one before I purchased this car.

A friend of mine for many years reminded me when we raced against each other a lot that you leverage the things your car does well. Mine accelerates great and handles pretty well - although I am always on the edge to drive it fast... If I could get the car to handle more like a GT3RSR it would be that much better. I am not complaining, because it has definitely has taught me to be comfortable driving on the limit everywhere...

Which car were you in ?

Norm

Jean

Impressive stuff Norm, glad you did not hurt yourself, and thanks for your great write-up. For some people like me, so far away, we live it through descriptions like yours.

Was Rick DeMan racing as well in his turbo? How does your car compare to it as far as performance is concerned.

If any of you guys has a video of the race showing Norm and other Rennlisters, please post a link, it will be great to watch.

Geoffrey

Norm,

Was the the old 3 channel or your new 4 channel racing ABS brain in the car?

Bill935K3

HI Norm -everybody,
Started 9th in the sprint, I I think I got up to 6th with picking of a couple and your misfortrune. About two or 3 laps from the end got a loud rap our of the engine. suspect a rod bearing. Alexander and Oriwitz were having a hell of a good battle right behind me. I had to keep an eye on them as I did not have the track figured out well enough to pull away and also in a couple of spots if I tried to take the line I needed they would jump in on the corner entry. They were crushing me in a couple of spots!! - in particular I was leaving too much on the table in the chicane entering the key hole, Racing ABS is really cool but I keep hearing about failures. Brake failures at the end of straits suck - been there done that and have the tee shirt.
Anolog Mike is right folkes with weight and power beating them with a GT1 is nothing to brag about. The way I figure it. Cup cars hold a edge in braking distance, twisty stuff under 80 MPH with better mechanical grip and faster weight transfer side to side. In high speed sweepers we should hold a slight edge due to down force and a a long strait we will pull a cup car 100+ yards. In a race we have one other advantage in that we can generally work traffic easier. Places like Mid-Ohio and Lime Rock make the cups shine. They are are really niffty cars.
It is a scrutineering issue and not fair to those who have made the investment to do it now; but it is too bad when they were new on the market that ABS and traction controll were not ruled out of the non factory built GT classes.
Well I better get to work I expect this was an expensivie weekend. Hope to make it to the Glen

ngoldrich

Geoffrey, still the 3 channel :-)

Jean, Rick's turbo was indeed as fast as mine or maybe even a bit more, and he is a great driver...

Bill, your description of GT1 vs cup cars sounds correct to me as well. Well said.

Norm

aeshultz

Norm & Bill;
Thanks for the play-by-play. We were all wondering what happened. Glad to see you both came out OK.

JCP911S

My first time ever at Mid-O.... what a roller-coaster! Never did get a handle on it and spent the race in the back fighting off 944s. Fun track but tough to learn.... especially against a home town crowd. In my group you could throw a couple-second blanket over almost the whole field! Wild place.