i was out early with engine problems...i know Glen had a small axle problem....

other than that..how did everyone do? who won?

 

anyone?

 

the vintage foos took over and every B series motor left with tears.

 

hahahahahahaha

 

I heard that Glen started from the back for the first race and got up to 29th out of 56. In the second race he went from 29th to 14th. All numbers approximate.

Scott, who has to go to a meeting...

 

Here is my off-the-cuff race report:

The car had a bunch of stuff done to it recently. Charles Madrid rewired my car completely, a vast improvement over the spaghetti wiring that was in the car previously. My shift lights started working again! John from Hytech installed his prototype header on the car along with a short exhaust that dumped under the shift ****. It's actually quieter than the DC Sports race header that was on the car previously. I attribute that to the deteriorated state of the muffler packing of the DC muffler. Sy from A51 added a Greddy e-Manage and did some preliminary tuning on the dyno, although I don't know if he is finished so I don't want to talk about numbers until it is okay with him. Some people were surprised I was using the e-Manage, and reading the instruction manual that comes with it, I can see why. The user controls are only a small part of the settings you can change compared to if you have the e-Manage software and a knowledgeable person to do the tuning.

I spent most of last week at Michelangelo Motorwerkes working on my car or dealing with various issues. I was very tired at the end of the week, and I was questioning myself what kind of race car hell I had gotten myself into. My stock Type R was pure plug and play compared to this!

So we went to Fontanta on Saturday morning. I was sort of depressed, but as we got to the track, my mood brightened. This was a race car only event, with 200+ cars from both TCRA and VARA all assembled to battle each other. "Old vs. New" was what the event was titled. Lots of cool cars! Chuck and Sy from Area 51 arrived to watch the festivities.

So I was excited to check out this configuration of the track, which was running 2/3 of the oval in addition to parts of the infield I had never been on before. So I went out cautiously to feel the car and the track. The asphalt is super well maintained. In fact that oval surface is the smoothest surface I have ever driven on. Very fun. The infield was not bad either, consisting of mostly 90 degree turns and some more complex transitions near the end before reentering the oval. You had to have some restraint in order to stay on the line and get good times there, and it was easy to overshoot one turn and mess up the rest.

Then, as Esteban aluded to, in the first practice of Saturday, my right front spindle sheared off! I was braking for a turn when suddenly my brake pedal went to the floor and I went off into the runoff zone. Luckily, I wasn't braking for something critical like the front chicane tire barriers or near any walls or else it would have been a catastrophe. As it was, I didn't know what happened except my brake went to the floor, so I just limped back to the pits. When we took off the wheel to look at the brakes, the spindle nut was gone! All that was left was the sheared off end of the spindle. Now I am an idiot when it comes to fixing this stuff. I thought I was done for. Richard, Sy, and Chuck jumped into action and started working on it. Axle was removed, and we tried to find another one. The only place that had the right one in stock was Mission Viejo. I also need a spindle nut. Also need the socket that fits. So Chuck and Sy drove all the way down to Mission Viejo to get the parts. Then as we waited for them to return, I got a call. There was a super traffic jam and they were stuck. Uh oh. As the race time got closer, it wasn't looking good. I consoled myself that today was just qualifying and there was always tomorrow and it would be fine if I started from the back of the grid--I would still get to drive. Then they arrived. Sy and Richard slammed the axle in and we were ready with 20 minutes to spare. A big THANKS to all three of them! (And to everyone else for moral support!) Whoohoo!

So I went into the qualifying race with almost no practice and started in 49th position. I was very conservative on the front chicane. Damn scary approaching tire barriers flat out in 5th gear and 7400 rpm with concrete on one side. So I was careful, but I slowly upped my entry speeds over time. Another tricky thing is that much of the course was marked with orange cones. Some drivers would be a bit...optimistic on how much room they had and they would knock cones all over the place. There were frequently 2-3 cones in the middle of the road in some turns, and they would shift position each lap as someone bumped them to a new position. You would turn in and have to instantly plot a new line through the cones each lap! Sometimes, it would become a mini-90 mph slalom to get around them while turning.

I was able to get to 25th by the end of the 9 lap race, which is where I started on Sunday.

After the race, I realized I had some understeer to get rid of. Don Mock (ITA CRX) was complaining about the greasy track surface causing a lot of understeer as well. My front tires (Toyo RA-1) are brand new and the rear tires are well used (2+ year old Taz Harvey hand-me-downs) which probably didn't help. I also have a wing but my splitter is not ready yet. I decided that I would raise the rear ride height a couple of threads and see how that helps. I could do it with tire pressure, but I think I had pretty good settings and I liked their feel. On Sunday morning, we did the adjustment and it did help quite a bit in practice. I guess I could have raised it one or two more notches, but I don't like to make last minute changes, so I left it alone.

The main race went pretty smoothly and I was able to get from 25th to 6th. The next guy above me was a full 2 seconds per lap slower on his best lap, so I would have gotten him if I had another lap or two, but oh well. I did my best. I did make lots of mistakes though, and my best lap was lap 7, which is during the time I was the most relaxed and smooth. Other times, I would try too hard to out brake or outmaneuver whoever was in front of me, and that costs time. Or I would get caught in traffic and have to defend from people behind me. I have a fair amount of driving experience, but I'm still a novice racer, so I am learning.

The engine felt great. Very smooth, good midrange. The high end tapered off, probably because I am revving past the stock cam powerband. Nothing we can do about that, since I want to keep stock cams for now.

Dan Davis won the race. I am not sure what he did, but he was a few ticks slower than me at the last TCRA race at Buttonwillow. Now he is much faster. Maybe the long oval straight was allowing him to stretch the legs of his E36 M3. So congratulations to him for the great improvement. Richard Holder is the "Killer Bee" USTCC Del Sol. If I had qualified better, I would have had lots of fun trying to keep up with him! Makes me want to run Hoosiers like him, if only it were in the budget.

I have some video of the practice, but the camera shut off mysteriously at the start of the race. Damn! Next time, I will put more padding under the camera to isolate it from the vibration. I can post video if someone can host it.

Here are the results for the group 2 race:

Position, Name, Car model, best lap

1. Dan Davis, BMW M3 3.0, 2:01.567
2. Anthony Dilaznzo, Porsche 911 2.7, 2:00.861
3. John Holder, BMW M3 2.3, 2:02.358
4. Richard Holder, Honda Del Sol 1.6, 2:02.843
5. Leonard Scott, Porsche 911S, 2:05.288
6. Glen Kawano, Integra R 1.8, 2:03.021
7. Andy Hope, Honda CRX 1.6, 2:06.212
8. Tsuyoshi Higashi, Honda Civic 1.8, 2:04.224
9. Andy Chan, BMW M3 2.3l, 2:04.888
10. Chris Houdre, Porsche 944 2.5 tb, 2:04.673
11. John Wilkins, Triumph Spitfire, 2:06.994
12. Jim Richmond, Porsche 944 2.5 tb, 2:06.005
13. Steve Heslov, BMW M3 2.3, 2:09.496
14. Bill Modisette, Porsche 911, 2:10.326
15. Mickey Cohen, Datsun 510 1.6, 2:07.435
16. Tim Aguinaga, BMW MB, 2:08.103
17. Jim Speer, A/R Sprint GTV, 2:07.312
18. Coe Westerfield, 914-6 2.8, 2:08.466
19. Ansun ****, BMW, 2:04.728
20. Lipin Joel, 1960 A/H Sprite, 2:14.229
21. Joe Yau Jr., Integra R 1.8, 2:06.337
22. Stuart Strolin, Porsche 912, 2:14.103
23. Ron Harris, Porsche 356, 2:14.897
24. Fred Trueman, Porsche 911S, 2:15.951
25. Christopher Monier, Lotus Super 7, 2:22.160
26. Stanley Siegel, Lotus Elan, 2:28.905
27. Jim Plavan, Porsche 911, 2:07.149
28. Gene Hilyard, Porsche 914-6 2.2, 2:07.439
29. Steve Link, Datsun 510, 2:03.657
30. Howard Glaesner, Porsche 911S, 2:34.460
31. David Quesmei, Porsche 911 3.2, 2:16.238
32. Bob Wass, A/R GTV, 3:08.738
33. Sammy Contino, Mclaren Mercury C, ---

Too much typing... I am not including people who did not finish... I am also not responsible for typos in the results, although you can correct me if I made a mistake.




[Modified by Gansan, 8:50 PM 7/29/2002]

 

ah finally the results
g00d review and nice work coming from behind glenn

how big is the vdo you got? you could sign up for an account at http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com

yshi - who wonders if glenn t00k any pix?

 

good job!

cant wait for the next race

 

Sorry, no pix, but my friend took some. I will take a look.

 

Wow this USTCC guy...

4. Richard Holder, Honda Del Sol 1.6, 2:02.843

was super fast!