Christien

Are you lapping? If so, don't we need to be there for 11:45 driver's meeting?

Dale Gribble

i may or may not be depending on a bunch of factors....if you show up late...they can bring you up to speed after the fact..it's not set in stone and will probably run a bit late

jumper5836

Photos I took are here. PM me if you would lke the high res of particular photos.

http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s...slideshow=true

Dale Gribble

jumper,

it turns out the GT3RS belongs to the track owner i believe...they had a private 20 minute lapping session after the drivers....the GT3RS MOVES! Moves on a whole new scale of the term MOVES. BMW's are just roadblocks for it.

jumper5836

I should have stuck around then to get some of it on the track, I figured it was just there for show.

Christien

Thanks for the pics - pm sent!

Omar, again apologies for not taking you out for a few laps - I'm actually kind of glad I left when I did. I felt like absolute **** - heat exhaustion. Just too much time in the sun, not enough water (though I drank probably at least 2L) and no AC in the car. By the time I got home I had a massive headache and nausea. I'm gettin' old...

Anyway, I had fun yesterday, although I think they could've organized things a bit better - there was a ton of traffic out there, and a too much downtime. I'd rather just have an open track for several hours, then maybe some time trials at the end of the day. There was 20-30 min. of empty track getting the drifters set up, then another 20-30 min. getting the lappers set up. And the time attack seemed to take forever. But whatever, it was still a fun day!

After watching my in-car video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQf1ZDtHMCQ) I see that my lap times were crap. My best lap was my first, about a 1:37. After that my coil was overheating again. This is an ongoing problem I've been chasing since this time last year - when the car gets hot, it runs at about 60% horsepower - it's especially noticeable on the back straight at Mosport, where I top out at about 5000 rpm in 3rd gear. My early 911 became a water-cooled yesterday I found that by pouring water over the coil it would cool much faster and I could get back on the track. As if that wasn't enough, I then had transmission problems. Basically, my tranny was forcing me to get my rpm-match perfect on downshifts, esp. into second, otherwise it would grind horribly. There were a few corners I ended up doing in neutral before I could get it in gear to accelerate.

It's too bad, because I felt like I was driving pretty well (by my own standards - no doubt there were a lot of good drivers out there, and I was getting smoked!) but I'm not sure if I really set a baseline for lap times. If I could've concentrated more on my driving rather than my shifting, I could probably shave 2 or 3 seconds off my time.

Oh, and while taking a break cooling off in the air-conditioned lounge at the start of the drag strip, I was somewhat amused to note that a majorly-modded Civic was smoking the big-block american muscle cars - 8.something at 160 mph! Man, I hate drag racing

Dale Gribble

Not a problem man, i appreciate the offer, and hopefully there will be an opportunity in the future. As far as sweating and electrolyte loss went....i lost about 2 pounds of random water weight from the beginning of the day till the end...despite choming down on some random beef jerkey and drinking about 6 bottles of water, powerade, and redbull (which in retrospect was a bad choice cause i couldn't sleep once i got back home). I dont know how those nascar guys do it...they're nuts.


yeah that always seems to be the problem when you try to cater to everyone...there ends up being extra downtime...which could be minimized if the people for the drift and stuff were ready to go and on time...i usually just chalk it up to the "**** happens" category and go check out the import models.


One of these days i WILL get off my *** and buy a GPS based lap timer...i swear! then we can get our actual lap times and some good baseline data to improve on.

I hate civics....there's so many of them that you can buy forged internals and motors for pennies on the dollar. A porsche exhaust is 3Grand....a civic motor with aftermarket cams and crank is probably the same or less


thanks for comming out and supporting my buddy's event guys....appreciate it greatly.

Greg: i didn't even know there was going to be a separate exotic car session...we should get in on that next time The Ford RS200 groupe B rally car also went out for some guest tour laps.

Christien

You hit it on the head with the price differential of German vs. Japanese cars. When you were telling me about what you had into the RX7, it got me thinking. I think it might be time to retire the old girl from the track and get a car more suited to it. Not Japanese - sorry, I couldn't do that, but maybe take the plunge and "convert" my 83 944 to a track car. Of course, it's not a turbo, so that may suck. But I think as my driving improves I might just be asking to much of a 35-year old car with expensive replacement parts.

How do you expect the RX7 to handle Mosport? I rarely see Japanese cars at Mosport, and I rarely see European cars at TMP. What gives there? Is it just the crowd the different track attract, or are Europeans more suited to the higher speeds of Mosport?

Dale Gribble

^ its a cost issue...to rent mosport you need marshalls and stuff...plus its about 300-400$ to lap the pro course.

places like N1 auto run 50$ shannonville lapping days...CSCS is about 120$ around cayuga..its much more affordable. plus you don't need marshalls.just pay the track owner his fee and let a bunch of crazy kids loose with an understanding that crashing hurts

also a lot of people are afraid of walling their cars up....some of these kids spend every dime they have on their cars...it would take them another couple of years to build it back to the same spec if they crumpled em.

regarding the Seven, bob took it around the track a couple of times to take some notes on what needs immediate attention. Once it gets setup though..it will be well suited to all kinds of tracks and should do very well at mosport. The aero package i am going to use has been wind tunnel tested by the number 1 rotary shop in the world (they're the only privateer team to ever win the JGTC championship overall...definilty a trustworthy technical source) so i expect downforce to be a non-issue. once i find a good alignment setting and drop in a power motor...it'll be ready to rock.

Christien

Hmm, interesting. Good to know, too. God knows I know the pain of hitting the wall at Mosport! It's too bad some of the guys there yesterday won't ever know the thrill of driving Mosport. There were some pretty good drivers there, and all of them really young. I mean, TMP and Dunnville are fun, better than doing nothing on a Saturday afternoon, but they just can't compare to Mosport. It's good practice for track driving, setting up the car, tire pressures, etc. but it's all fun and games.

Was I mistaken, or did the pink and blue Mazda speed whatever-it's-called do all 3 of grip, drifting and drag? That's pretty impressive! And a hell of a tire budget!

Dale Gribble

pink and blue?
the Mazdaspeed 3 that was fully wrapped in vynil right?
i'm not sure..that was a mazda corporate car..so i guess tires wern't an issue for him

Christien

Yeah, it was completely decal-ed. Not exactly my taste in bodywork, but hey, whatever floats your boat Any car that can compete in all 3 is doing something right...

Dale Gribble

christien,

PMing your regarding laptimes.

Christien

Thanks!