:. Racing .:. May Daze R/R
Results: My Laps
One is the Loneliest Number
Every May in RMDIV, we have the "Western Sprints" event. Normally it's at Sandia down in New Mexico's Rio Grande region, but this year they
took a hiatus, so CDR threw the event at Pikes Peak International Raceway.
PPIR was closed a few years back when bought by some group, but this year, it's reopened, so SCCA is back for the first time in at least 3 years. Looking forward
to trying a new track, Angela and loaded up and headed down Saturday night, ready to race on Sunday. Like before, my eager crew (read: Mom and Dad) met us
there, ready to sling tires and check chains and all that good stuff.
Registration was a bit thin for whatever reason, with small car counts in all classes. I was the lone DSR to make the trip down, so I thought maybe
I'd have a chance at pipping the old track record.
Sunday
The weather was classic Colorado early spring: Mid 70's temperature, light breeze blowing, everything spectacularly green, and miles-tall
cloud formations everywhere in the sky, rolling in over the backdrop of the Colorado Rockies. Throughout most of the weekend, we could see storms roiling over the
top of Pikes Peak to the north, but the Chief of Weather mercifully kept all of our sessions dry, and nobody had to deal with a wet track.
I headed out for our first practice session, really looking forward at testing myself against the oval turn 1-2-3 complex. Rather than run NASCAR 1 and 2, we dip down off
of the oval through a flat section for T1/2/3, then climb back up on the oval briefly before diving down into "the junk" as driver's call it, on the infield section. Preparation
for this race had included a new muffler from Rilltech - since I'd been blowing 103+ dB at HPR, and a bevy of new brake system parts to try and find the persistent late-race soft
pedal issue that's been plauging me. Only concern was a slighlty leaky LF shock, discovered too late to get it sent off and rebuilt for the weekend.
I followed Chris Doyle in his ESR for a few laps to try and get a quicker feel for the line. The brakes felt good, but curiously I was having a lot of trouble getting whoa'd down.
The 4th lap in, The pedal started to go squishy and I thought to myself "ah...here we go again." 5th lap around, and I couldn't even get slowed down in time coming off the oval, so I took the escape
road and short-cutted my way into pits.
A quick look at the car showed a loose right-rear brake line feeding into the caliper, and plenty of brake fluid splashed around. We tightened it up, cleaned up the mess, and prepared
the car for qualifying.
Qualifying was fun, brief, and a bit ragged, as you can see from the video. Having only gotten a few laps at speed due to my aborted practice session, I worked my way up to max
effort as quickly as I could, but I
felt - and the video confirms - that I wasn't using all of the track on turn-in and track-out. On the upside, the car did feel pretty good, other than some front-end porpoise-like behavior
over some of the low speed stuff. Perhaps not having my damping set very well, or simply a consequence of the LF shock not pulling its weight. A few laps in, I set a 54.7, which
would be my best of the weekend. The next lap, I had a monster spin after hitting a big bump in Turn 1, narrowly missing the inside wall. I thought I had the clutch in while spinning, which
turned out to be the dead pedal, so I munched the starter, and had to be flat-towed in at the end of the session. We push-started the car for the race. Slightly spooked by the spin, I added several degrees
of rear wing to make sure I didn't get bitten again.
We cleaned the countryside out of the car as best we could. I noted that the LF shock had really started to hemorrhage oil, so at this point, I assumed it was pretty well 100% blown. Ah well.
Sunday's race was pretty much uneventful, as I had several seconds on the rest of the field. With nobody to push me too hard, I ran quickish laps, but nothing very great. Still was tentative in
T1/2/3 after the sudden spin earlier in the day. Towards the end I mostly noticed how tired my neck and arms were getting from holding all the way through
T1/2/3. The track is surprisingly physical with all the bumping and rattling about you take.
Paul Leonard (GSX-R Radical) stopped by, and after confirming with Richard that the starters would interchange, AC and I headed up to Monument to purloin Paul's starter for my car, unfortunately
missing Saturday grub, and evidently a hilariously bawdy "repair show" by the Spec 7 crowd.
Monday
Sunday morning we strapped on the geriatric Goodyears from the HPR weekend. Overnight analysis of the datatraces had shown some oil pressure dips still, so I added another quart (!) of oil
and went out to gather some data. On the data, not even the Accusump seemed to make any noteworthy difference in the datalog, so this remains an ongoing question mark as
to the cause of the oil pressure dips to 30 and under while braking hard. Various experiments with the breather system, pressure sensor, and a few other bits exacted no change.
Qualifying also was relativley uneventful. Data showed good enough oil pressure now, so I did a few laps, with a best of a mid 55. I could feel, and the data showed, that extra wing hurting the
car down the straights, and I was spending a lot more time nursing the car through the infield corners as the additional rear wing overpowered the front of the car. I backed it down a bit for the race,
to about 3*. Still too much, as it turns out.
The race was a surprise. On one hand, frustrating, but on the other, miles and away more fun than the day before. I could tell on the outlap that the car was somewhat walking wounded. Even at pacelap speeds,
it didn't want to turn right, and I seemed to have all kinds of trouble getting heat into the tires. They'd been fine the day before, plenty of tread, but maybe that was one heat-cycle too many. One of
the perils of used tires, maybe - ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.
The surprise was finding that I had some close competition, in the form of a fellow named Zach Craigo. He was driving the same '03 Van Diemen that I'd run against yesterday, but
he'd replaced whatever driver had been there the day before. He was right on my tail from the start, and drafted by easily at the beginning of lap 2, as I struggled to get some grip from my tires. He pulled
steadily away for a few laps until I finally could extract some grip out of the car, and I tried to chase him down.
We proceded to run the race doing laps all within the 54.9 to 55.2 range - basically our qualifying laps for 25 laps. Awesome fun. Despite a horsepower advantage, I could never quite get him on the straight,
and with my car's compromised handling, he was murdering me onto the oval, so I could never make up the difference in exit speed. I experimented throughout the race to see if I could find a
better way out of the corner, but it either wasn't there, or I didn't find it. On the upside, in contrast to my tentative treating of T1/2/3 from Monday
the red mist had me comfortably flat out every lap this time around, trying to chase down the win. If ever there was an object lesson in "...corner onto the longest straight",
and the consequences of getting *schooled* through it, this is it!
Each lap it looked like I might have a chance. He was obviously pushing hard too - car bottoming here and there, getting sideways, missing apexes here and there, great stuff.
Looking at the video, looks like I mayhap should have added a downshift out
of the slowest last corner, and coming off the oval, but I never put that together during the weekend. I had a few opportunities with lapped traffic to perhaps squeeze past, but
each time decided I had to back off. Most thrilling was several three-wide blasts down the back straight, with all of us jockeying for track space. Thrilling stuff. Nearly made a pass stick on the last lap,
but didn't quite manage it, and finished a slightly chagrined second. However, great fun to have somebody to race closely with!
Looking forward to a rematch next time out, with a healthier car, and for sure a determined driver!
Biggest takeaway from the weekend was realizing how much more fun it is to have close competition - whether they should be close to you or not. Sunday's race was as boring as it gets in a DSR (read: not very),
but really paled in comparison to chasing down somebody the next day. I hope we can preserve the competition we've had recently in the local CSR/DSR/FB series, since that close racing is really
what it's all about.
Looks like the inter-race list isn't too bad. Broken speed sensor mount, broken rain light mount,
and sending the shocks off to Long Island to get a checkup. Next stop, July National at HPR, to see how badly it hurts when the big boys thump on you!
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VIDEO: Sunday Qualifying Spin (43MB, 5 mins WMV)
VIDEO: Monday Race (43MB, 5 mins WMV)
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