Landed and Turing Laps

We landing close to are planned time.  We are at the far end of the paddock on the east side aisle.

We have the Miata on track now and turning laps.  The car did come in briefly to remove foliage from and Agricultural event, but still running.

Race Day Driver Lineup

After a tough Thursday and more work needed today before practice, it has not been the smoothest start to the weekend. After the repairs, we were able to get the cars on track. Both cars perform well when on the track. As few excursions did some damage to the front diffuser of the Z that will need to wait until we have more time to go through it.

 Once we got past the early issues, both cars performed well. Sparky was the clear King of the day smashing the rest of us. He found his line and put done some blistering laps. We are now off to rest, and will look forward to the run tomorrow.

As for the driving schedule here is  my  plan:

Day 2	Race Session I
D					Z
Start	Finish	Pilot	Notes		Start	Finish	Pilot	Notes
10:00 AM	11:27 AM	Troll	Estimated   23 laps		10:00 AM	11:51 AM	Hammer	Estimated   34 laps
11:39 AM	1:06 PM	Lugnut	Estimated  30 laps		12:03 PM	1:54 PM	Sparky	Estimated   34 laps
1:18 PM	2:45 PM	Picasso	Estimated   30 laps		2:06 PM	3:57 PM	Muddy	Estimated   24 laps
2:57 PM	4:24 PM	Hammer	Estimated   30 laps		4:09 PM	6:00 PM	Lugnut	Estimated   34 laps
4:36 PM	6:03 PM	Sparky	Estimated   30 laps

Friday Practice Schedule for Vodden the Hell

I put together a schedule for the up coming practice day.  If all goes here is the plan.

Friday, September 11, 2015

 4:00 am: RV and two tow vehicles leave Dublin to get to track 

 7:00 am: Arrive at track

 7:15 am: Setup Padlock

 9:00 am: Practice Session I starts

Driver Schedule

D					Z
Start	Finish	Pilot	Notes		Start	Finish	Pilot	Notes
9:00 AM	9:41 AM	Lugnut	Estimated      8 laps		9:00 AM	9:58 AM	Sparky	Estimated   10 laps
9:56 AM	10:23 AM	Hammer	Estimated       5 laps		10:13 AM	10:59 AM	Picasso	Estimated   10 laps
10:38 AM	11:05 AM	Greg	Estimated      5 laps		11:14 AM	12:00 PM	Hammer	Estimated   10 laps
11:20 AM	12:00 PM	Muddy	Estimated       8 laps

 12:00 pm:   Prep the cars for tech

 12:15 pm:   Tech the cars

   1:00 pm:   Practice Session II starts

Driver Schedule     

D					Z
Start	Finish	Pilot	Notes		Start	Finish	Pilot	Notes
1:00 PM	1:27 PM	Greg	Estimated     5 laps		1:00 PM	1:50 PM	Lugnut	Estimated   10 laps
1:42 PM	2:09 PM	Hammer	Estimated       5 laps		2:05 PM	2:55 PM	Muddy	Estimated   10 laps
2:24 PM	3:05 PM	Sparky	Estimated     8 laps		3:10 PM	4:00 PM	Greg	Estimated   10 laps
3:20 PM	4:01 PM	Picasso	Estimated       8 laps

 4:00 pm:   Beers open

 4:15 pm:   Car prep

 6:00 pm:   Dinner

    

Practice Day track is closed

We had a very nice practice day.  Both cars were on the track non-stop except for drivers changes.  We have a couple of odd noises that we are looking into and a radiator on the Z that makes a non-stop "card in the spokes" noise.  Other than that, the repair bill today is very light.

The uniform proclamation is we have too much brakes on the Z as everyone managed to lock them up on several occasions.  At least this is an easier problem to solve than not enough brakes.

At the end of sears point, there is a hairpin turn that they have made VERY sharp I guess to try and slow us down.  Many drivers ended up picking up a collection of cones.

The biggest "Off" of the day goes to Muddy.  He came in with mud on the car and said he had a little off.  Turns out is was a little off on the right, followed by a big spin off the left and a nice set of tracks through the grass.  We'll be called Muddy a while longer.

I think so far we have had to do more work on the truck than the cars.

On to repairs and tri-tip.

Practice day

Other than a late night last night, things have been going very smooth today. We set up camp and rolled both cars over to tech. Both cars have zero penalty laps, but ended up in class A (cars that look like contenders). We sure have then fooled as we are not likely to have a top 10, but we are happy they thinks the cars are likely to go the distance and we have no penalty points.

We have a great lunch, and have been out running practice laps ever since 1. Turn eleven is impossibly sharp so they keep stopping the session to pick up the cone that cars keep driving over.

Both cars are well set up and we have another two hours of practice to go.

Night racing

We rotated all the drivers (minus rod who now has a minor injury) and took turns driving at night and practicing.

Everyone did great except me who was having a great run except I forgot where the track went at the top of the hill. I passed a bunch of cars (who were slowing for the turn) and then I realized what was wrong and locked up the brakes and went right off the edge. Opps. At least there was no damage and and I fixed the problem on the next lap. Good thing it was practice, I'll have to behave tomorrow.

We are all off to early bed now to get ready for tomorrow.

Track closed, swapping on new breaks

The track is closed after some lighting strikes. The lighting has stayed away for the last hour so it looks like we'll get in our night practice so we are swapping the brake pads now while we have the time so we can go to sleep Tonight at least.

Weather is getting really windy

All of the easy ups have come down before we lose them and we are starting our last daylight run. We have a little rain, but we are hoping it is just a few drops. Tony and Claus will split the session.

In the RV we have dinner started once we get the drivers off the track we'll feed everyone and the start out night-time practice. We only get an hour for that so we'll suit up all the drivers and practice driver switches every couple of laps.

New drivers

Kirsten just came off her practice stint and had a great run.

Rod is taking his first turn behind the wheel. After all the time working on the car, it has become a good enough car that he is willing to actually get in it.

Tech update and practice

Tech went smooth today. We only have 2 items to clean up, move the fire extinguisher and fix the holes in the floor.

BS tech went less smooth. There was a regular team in Texas the showed up to a lot of races an then finally won one. All the mods from the last 5 races came under scrutiny and we had a lot of explaining to do. The engine from the z32 was the worst part of the grilling. In the end the put us is the A class (a first for us) which means they think we might have a chance of winning. We are choosing to focus on that as a big victory for us. In the end we ended up with 3 penalty laps which is survivable. I bit my tongue and almost asked for 31 to match the car type but didn't luckily.

Doug is out spinning practice laps and I go in next.

At the track

We just landed at the track after a smooth drive from the bay area. The tech line for safety and BS inspection was short so as soon as the car came off the trailer we headed to tech. With the sun here, we did all stop long enough to get sunscreen on everyone.

Karting Practice

Rod just e-mailed the schedule. There is an introductory Karting class offered on Friday, March 4 to practice at Infineon. Here is the web-site.

http://www.jimrussellusa.com/registrations?course_id=9

Anyone have interest?

Training Program

When I heard that Claus had run the last track in GT4 for countless hours, my first thoughts were those of one of my driving school instructors warning that "some people learn the line and get a head start, while others learn that crashing doesn't hurt".  Then Claus proceeded to have lap times 10 seconds a lap faster than me in the forward direction and about the same speed when they ran the track backwards.  10 seconds a lap!!!  Guess I need a new training routine for the next race.

So for considerably more than $500, I have a new TV, and with it a PS3 (as blu-ray player or course) and a copy of GT4.  I picked GT4 since it has both a Z31 and Sears point which seemed to cover both our car and the next race nicely. 

This weekend I got everything all set up.  At this point I wanted to report my best laptimes and start a friendly competition to see who could get the best times online and then compare those times to the actual track times in March.  Unfortunately GT4 doesn't work on the PS3, only the PS2 so that plan didn't work so well.  Feel free to post times anyways.

Anybody have a cheap PS2 for sale?