33 replies to this topic

[Ron Alan]

Not to often we get driving monsoon style rain in CA but we can now say we do...and it came mid race of the SM opener!! About zero visibility and driving rain through the window going over 5. I'm sure there wasn't one dry corner worker...though if they were waving flags you still may not have seen them!

Today was picture perfect CA weather Big congrats to Dan Cooper for his first SM win on Sat and a P2 today(with fast lap of the weekend!). Phillip Holifield continued his error less robotic driving today for his ?? win with a P2 behind Dan yesterday. A lot of grass mowing and mud flying this weekend as many decided to find the limits of there cars...but no double yellows

On a personal note, the SM community is the best and is amazing at coming together to help each other out. It was our weekend to have one of those "weekends"(starting Thurs at the test day). Tire gauge left in the engine bay, brake failure, blown motor, leaky fuel rail, throttle cable failure...and not one of these in the same session

After all this Kyle G managed to go out and set pole on Fri by close to a second over P2 only to be penalized 2 spots for contact..."bump drafting" May have to start another thread about this... At least we can say the pole lap was with no help.

So I'd like to publicly thank the following people for there help...

Larry Oka. Larry Oka Racing
Tom Wikersham. Competition Autoworks
Ray Meister
Steve Holifield
Dan Cooper(nut checks!)
Tupper Hull
Juan Pineda
David Bigger

And last but not least Phillip Holifield...one of the nicest, unselfish young men you'll ever meet who spent his entire Thurs. evening installing someone else's motor rather than relaxing and preparing for the next day.

Thank you again Ron and Kyle

[Alberto]

Eventful weekend. Sounds like I missed a lot of excitement.

Congrats to all.

[dp35]

Those Holifields are attracted to at the track motor swaps like a Catfish is to mud.

Sounds like a great weekend. Super bummed to miss it. Congrats to Dan, Phillip, Kyle, and the entire field for no FCC in those conditions.

[dtfastbear]

Congratulations, Dan and Phillip for the wins. Big props to Kyle for pole position. I was thinking about how wonderful it must have been in the paddock at T-Hill Saturday afternoon as some 40 mph+ gusts were blowing through Marin along with some heavy sideways rain... Ideal racing conditions, if you ask me.

Hope to see some some of you back out at T-Hill in a couple weeks.

Cheers,

Dean

[Steve Holifield]

On a personal note, the SM community is the best and is amazing at coming together to help each other out. It was our weekend to have one of those "weekends"

We all have one of those weekends from time to time and that is when the spirit of our sport really shines. I am glad to be a part of it.

Those Holifields are attracted to at the track motor swaps like a Catfish is to mud.

BIG CONGRATS to Dan and Phillip for the wins and Kyle for fast lap and perseverence. I couldn't be more proud of all of you!

[Juan Pineda]

It was a fun weekend indeed. Man, I would have liked some rain practice *before* the race! We had a great time watching videos of all the action on Saturday night. Congrats to all that survived!

-Juan

[Juan Pineda]

My Sunday race. Race pace not up the qual pace makes for an interesting race...

Enjoy!
-Juan

[Charlie Hayes]

Big congrats to Dan and Phil controlling the top 2 spots. It was awesome to watch the Saturday race. Very stoked Kyle managed that pole position slot and had my own feelings on why it was taken away. Very hard weekend to be there without a car and not racing.

[D Biggar]

Hey guys,

Great weekend...tons of fun. I absolutely love racing in the rain (the meteorologist in me), so this weekend was great. I'm glad I ran so well, and I have to thank the Holifields for helping me store, transport, and prep my car...and for giving me some tips, helping me to my first ITA podium. Congrats to Phil and Dan on the wins!

Here is my wonderful 2.5 lap run in the Group 17 race...in my off at the top of 9 I lose my exhaust (from the end of the down-tube back), so that ended my day early. An interesting start, but a fun race while it lasted.



Can't wait to race again!

-On a side note...I've put in a request for archived radar images, I'll loop them together tomorrow (if I get them) so you guys can see the "squall" we drove through...total hard core racing there

[Race Engineering]

Congrats to Dan and Phil on thier wins wish i could have been there to see it,Guess I need to come out there and race with you guys sometime soon. Perhaps Mike Allen will let
me stay in his rental house. Thanks for choosing Race Engineering power.

[Kyle Gayman]

Man, what a weekend. For the sake of keeping my own frustration quelled, I'll skip over the details. But I think I might frame the penalty notification slip I received from the stewards, just for kicks and angry memories...

Regardless, I want to thank everyone for helping us with the engine swap, especially Phillip Holifield. Lord knows that I'm next to useless when it comes to that stuff!

And congratulations to Dan Cooper and Phillip for the wins! You both drove like champs.

Remember fellas: B&D, B&D...

Kyle

[Juan Pineda]

@Biggar, it didn't really sound that much louder without the muffler. Great start!

[D Biggar]

@Biggar, it didn't really sound that much louder without the muffler. Great start!

Last time I [half] lost my exhaust (trend?), I blew sound...it also helps to heat up the seat.

Thanks!

EDIT: Here is the "monsoon"...
 willows.jpg   301.32KB   9 downloads

[dtfastbear]

Where's the saturday video with the rain and mud, guys??

[Juan Pineda]

My rain race was boring. Philip and Dan's are the ones you want to see!

[Dan Cooper]

Where's the saturday video with the rain and mud, guys??

Will be up as soon as I get some time!

[Barrett Tilley]

I would love to see more Vids of Saturday and Sunday as well. I lost my camera mount during race prep. I can't remember much from the Saturday rain race. I must have just closed my eyes. Phil and Dan were so far up the track that I just put it in safe mode to avoid hitting any cows. Then Kyle started catching me so I had to put the propellers back down into the water and throw enough mist into the air to hold him off. That is about the extend of my memory from Saturday.

Sunday is relatively vivid. Especially running out of gas on the cool down lap.

I am absolutely dumbfounded by the class and control that the SM field had in the monsoon. Impressive!

The speed of Phil, Dan, and Kyle is amazing. These guys are really hauling right now. Good job. Want to share some data with me?

Barrett

[Dan Cooper]

Tried to upload the Sunday race today. Vimeo and I REALLLY don't get along...will have to try again tomorrow...

Thanks for the kind words everyone!

Barrett - What's data??

[Juan Pineda]

Dan (and others),

I had problems with iMovie encoding to Vimeo. I got some strange encode failures. The solution was really obscure: turn off Time Machine. You need to do this even if you don't backup to an external device since Time Machine does backups to local storage now (unused disk space.)

I also uploaded the video directly to Vimeo instead of having iMovie do it. You may not have to do that, but if you do, here's how. The movie can be found in: ~/Movies/iMovie Projects/xxx.rcproject/Movies/720p.mov where xxx is your project name. You have to right click on the .rcproject file to look inside it to reach the movie file itself. I had to copy the movie file from there to my desktop and then point the Vimeo uploader to the file on the desktop.

Man, don't know how this has gotten so broken in the recent SW releases!

-Juan

[Phillip Holifield]

Big congrats to Kyle for having all sorts of problems and not just setting pole but blowing us away in qual. Dan drove brilliantly in tough conditions on Saturday to take the win and as soon as I thought Sunday's race was mine he put the pressure on and really made me work hard for it. Also thanks to Juan and my dad for setting up the Saturday night video party.

Vimeo is being difficult for me too but I'll get my video posted soon