Epic Fail…Again….

Sorry for the late post, should have done this over a week ago.  I guess I was too busy licking my wounds of failure.  March 31st was the biggest event of the year and crucial for my NASA-TT title defense.  Starting out competing on the FIR West track I had to wrestle with the car and took a chance on strategy by missing the 2nd session in order to save my tires for the final session on the track.  I was .4 down going into the 3rd session, but made an adjustment to the car I hoped would give me what I needed to get the win.  Immediately the car was better, but I still had to work hard to keep the car on the road.  I ran a 1:07.3, beating my competition by one tenth of a second!  So with this momentum on my side I planned to go for another win in the night portion of the event on FIR Main.  I skipped the first session as it was still in the day time and I knew the track would be faster when the sun went down.  I took the gamble and went out in the 2nd session.  My attempt to jockey for gird position was probably my undoing as there were too many cars fighting for the same space as soon as we got on track.  I was able to lay back and create a gap so I could put in 2 solid laps.  I got a safe lap in and then really put the hammer down for the 2nd.  As I was coming into the final sector I realized I had caught the others too fast and was going to have an interesting time navigating the final turn with 2 other cars possibly in my way.  This however, was short lived as my foot slipped off the brake pedal as I went to heel-toe-downshift from 4th to 3rd gear.  This put my in a situation of either hit the other 2 cars or go straight into the tire wall.  I chose the latter only getting on the brakes moments before I hit the wall.  Black Betty is one tough broad as her damage was only cosmetic.  I refired the engine, back up and got off track.  When you are down, you really know who your friends are as no less than 5 people came over and put Black Betty back together with some duct tape love.  I was going to go back out and go for the win but another issue on track prevented me from having a shot at it.  My time was actually .2 faster than anyone else, but since I hit the wall my time didn’t count.  So a win and a 7th place finish is what I got out of it, that and a damaged car….  So only a few weeks left till the next event and I am working flat out to get Black Betty ready for redemption at INDE.

Ok so I crashed my car, everything is ok, great.  But what about the Radical!?  Well in racing I have learned that 1 is none and 2 is 1.  We started the day with 2 Radicals, but after 1 practice and qualifying session there was only 1 Radical.  So I lost my ride for the remainder of the day and didn’t get to race as planned, but as it turned out I was pretty busy with my car as it is, so maybe it worked out for the best.

Radical Opportunity

How many people you know that when they participated in their first car race that they get to do it in a competitive purpose built racecar, not many right? Well tomorrow during the 7th Annual NASA-AZ Night Event at Firebird Raceway I will be driving the yellow #777 Radical SR3 from Arizona Pain Specialists along side Dr. Paul Lynch in the black #102 SR8 Radical. This was a deal that came together within the last 10 days, but I did get some laps in the car at Spring Mountain Raceway last weekend to familiarize myself with the car. Even though the competition will be tough at what is NASA-AZ’s biggest event of the year, the car is strong enough that if the driver does his job the car can finish on the podium. Thus my job is to drive smart, keep the car on the road and off other cars and finish on the podium.

Here is a lap I took in the car I’ll be driving. Recon Lap

AMP Testday Audi Style!

The Audi Style 24 Hours of Lemons Racing Team came to me month or so ago looking for some Rubber Toed help.  I worked with the team prior to the test with suspension setup mainly.  The car had been suffering from terminal understeer and massive front tire wear.  I came up with a different spring rate solution that I was confident would help with both the understeer and front tire wear.  The test would prove whether I was an idiot or if I knew what I was talking about.  We had 2 days at AMP with NASA-AZ and I was on double duty as usual, mixing HPDE3 instruction, working and testing with the team whenever I could.  Since I had not driven the car previously I didn’t know just how bad the understeer was, but the team informed me it was a night and day difference.  The terminal understeer was now just understeer.  We worked on the car mostly over the 2 days sorting out various issues, etc.  But at the end of the day Sunday 5 of us had 15-20 minute consecutive runs with the car.  Next event for them is Infineon March 24&25, checkout their website: http://audistyleracing.com

Epic Fail, Part Hopefully Never Again!

Round 3&4 of the NASA-AZ Time Trial Championship took me to Chuckwalla Raceway located in Desert Center, CA.  It’s a fast, wide open and challenging track.  Knowing the local SoCal crew would be there ready to go fast from the first session Saturday.  So I got in some practice runs Friday to familiarize myself with the circuit and make my plan of attack.  Although, my car was fast, I didn’t feel fast enough.  Saturday morning I scoped out my competition and found I would be fighting against the reigning Socal and National TTD Champion and Emilio from 949 with his wicked fast SuperMiata.  I set my time in the 3nd session and was driving around try and size up the competition.  Right as I was thinking I could be in good shape, Emilio appeared in my rear view and quickly dispatched of me.  3rd place was the best I could do Saturday and it was the best I could hope for Sunday.  I went out in the 1st session Sunday, but it didn’t help much as I still got smoked and took 3rd place again.

So onto the Time Attack where I was planning to get some redemption.  This time I was driving Aaron Hiar’s sweet RX-8.  As I completed my outlap I knew I was going to be too fast for the cars in front.  I got some spacing but it wasn’t enough, so I had to back off towards the end of my 1st hotlap.  Onto the final and I had everything set, except for carrying too much speed into turn 7 and spinning on exit.  My time was way fast enough to win, but I threw it away.  So that capped off my epic fail weekend.  Time to get some work done on Black Betty and raise my game or else I’m toast!

Epic Battle Part 1

Hopefully this will be the first of many epic battle write-ups this year.  Round 1 was on January 14th and 15th at the Firebird Main “Fast Configuration” Track.  All of the NASA Time Trial TTD track records are up for grabs this year as Tage Evanson has prepared his car to challenge for them.  Saturday we all introduced ourselves to the fast configuration and quickly realized it was going to be a close battle.  I opted to use the last 2 sessions of the day after seeing the time of 1:08.5 that I would to beat.  In the final run I put in a 1:08.4 to take the win for the day.  However, there was no celebration as I knew Sunday would be the real fight.  Tage and I both went out in the 2nd session and I quickly found myself in traffic and although I was on a 1:07.5 laptime, I didn’t space myself out properly and hit traffic before I could complete the lap.  Rain would prevent both of us from running the in the 3rd session, setting up for a final run winner take all showdown.  Tage led the way out, so we both got to gauge our strengths and weaknesses.  Unfortunately, although I improved my time, Tage did even better and took the win and track record with a 1:07.9.  Getting beat in the first event of the year was not how I wanted to start things out, but it has motivated me to identify my weaknesses and improve.

On to UMS Time Attack, where I drove Robert Smithson’s wicked Turbo Miata.  Again, I made a mistake and got stuck in 6th gear, but it was good enough to take 3rd in class.

NASA-TT: 1:08.2
UMA TA: 1:06