Thanks again for all the kind words guys. So, the weekend....
Regardless of how much ahead of the game I try to get, it’s always a last minute thrash to get the car ready. I’ve had a lot going on in my life the last month and it’s been a bit of a struggle all around. However, Like the the Beatles song goes, I get by with a little help from my friends. We worked on my car last weekend and then I had to head back to Georgia. Dan worked on my car after work for like five hours on Tuesday and then took a day off of work on Wednesday and worked from early in the morning until late at night. I arrived back in TN around mid-day and met Dan at the shop and continued to work in the scorching heat. Over the weekend, we finally had sorted the brakes thanks to Dan. The Penske’s went on, put it on the scales for corner balancing, and then a fresh alignment. Brian and Tara came by and made some new graphics/decals for the car. We finished up around 9pm and I headed straight to the hospital to spend the night. My girlfriend had a major surgery the previous week. Luckily she was released Thursday morning and I headed immediately to VIR.
I finally arrived at the track around 7:30pm. I checked in and did a quick around the paddock to see what other cars were there. There were some really heavy hitters: a Riley, a 700hp Superlite, Radicals, etc… I then went to work finishing up the last few things I needed to do to the car and adding the mound of sponsor stickers to the car. Fritz had a busy few weeks as well and finally arrived at the track around 9pm. We get a little more prep done and leave the track around 10:15pm. I made a Wal Mart run and then finally make it to the hotel around 11pm. One of my Southeast buddies was staying with me and arrived around 11:30pm. We stayed up a couple more hours talking car tech, looking at shock dyno’s etc…
I wake up at 6:15am and after a quick shower and breakfast, I arrive at the track at around 7. Hit the standard all hands meeting and then the UTCC meeting. There are 75+ cars in the UTCC. I know it’s going to be a zoo on track for the first session(which is a warm up session and doesn’t count for anything). I grid towards the back and have some really old tires on the car. I just want to get the car and driver up to temp. I’ve never seen that many off’s in a session, let alone a warm up. A couple of cars actually went metal to metal and were sent packing. I took it easy and adjusted to the car and the changes we had made.
By the time we had the first session, it was 11am and it was pretty close to being 100 degrees out. I put on a better set of used tires and reported to grid. I knew that this would be the fastest timed session of the day and needed to get a lap in early. I was able to find some mostly clean track and lay down a pretty good lap. Fritz had a camber bolt come loose and then 3rd gear blew out and he never got a timed lap Of course this would happen at this event. I hated to see it happen to him.
I ended up going out in one other session and my time became slower due to the heat. I called it a day and just walked around and caught up with a bunch of my track friends. The car felt great and, more than anything, I need to erase muscle memory and brake later and throttle input sooner. Overall, I’m really REALLY happy with the car right now. It’s finally starting to really come together. I ended up running a personal best on Sunday morning of 2:05. It was a cooler session as it was at 8:30am and I experimented with downshifting into 3rd gear in turn 1 and again in turn 4 opposed to being in 4th. It paid off. I now think I can also pick up some time being in 3rd going into roller coaster. I think on some fresh tires and a March or October day, the car is a low 2 car. With someone like Fritz driving, prob. A sub 2 car.
Two more track weekends left in the next two weekends. Both at Road Atlanta. Hoping to run a pretty quick lap at Road Atlanta at the NASA event. Time will tell(pun intended).
To all you guys building track/time trial/time attack cars… stop messing around and get your cars out here! We need more FD’s on track!
