48 replies to this topic

[Ron Alan]

Question is which day will Mr Thomas decide to run...MmHmmm???? Craig is running Sat. so my money is Sat! Cooper and I will be up to watch Sat...just in case anyone else needs a delivery of anything!

[dtfastbear]

I get in the car when my wife tells me to get in the car.

If there's any possibility of rain on Saturday, I'm sure I'll race on Saturday. If it's clearly going to be sunny both days, then it's just up to when Laura would prefer to drive.

I can't even remember when I last drove a spec miata at Thunderhill, but I must say I'm **very** excited to race this weekend!

Cheers,

Dean

[Charlie Hayes]

Weather seems like it doesn't want to make its mind up yet. Ready for it either way.

[D Biggar]

I would expect the possibility of a wet Friday, but the weekend should be dry.

[gkmccready]

Schedule looks good, Dean do you have a head count? Or better yet an entry list?

Who's double dipping in PT?

[Brian Leong]

Who's double dipping in PT?

I'm in for PTE as well!

[dtfastbear]

Laura or I will probably be running PTE both days.

BTW - Now at 23 SM entries for the weekend.

[Duncan]

Wish I could make it, but my cars still apart. I'll be out for sure in May.

Duncan

[gkmccready]

Anybody willing to share some AiM data from the weekend with me? I'm dog slow and could use to see some entry speeds because I'm sure I'm over-braking all over...

[Brian Leong]

Here is my video of the Saturday race if anyone is interested. I got caught up in the mayhem along with the others. There is more going on behind me as well, so maybe someone can show what was going on behind.

[Duncan]

Wow. That was exciting to watch. Hard to see what triggered it from the video.

[Charlie Hayes]

Well overall good weekend. Hard racing today through a total cluster



Good times with Jaimie though. I was glad to pull that turn 1 move two times in a row.

Learned a few things to better myself and the car. See you all in May.

[Ron Alan]

Mixed class/traffic...love it or hate it...can be your best friend or enemy. Ownage Jamie!

Congrats to DG for the win...springs in the right location make a difference! Nice job KL for getting back to P2 after the off!

Maybe see you guys in June!

[Alberto]

Here is my video of the Saturday race if anyone is interested. I got caught up in the mayhem along with the others. There is more going on behind me as well, so maybe someone can show what was going on behind.

Oh man.... That doesn't look good....

[dtfastbear]

Glenn,

I'm happy to share my AIM data from the Saturday PT race. PM me your email address.

In other news, HUGE THANKS to Dave Sparks for his heads-up driving saving my (and his) ass on Saturday morning in PT practice...



This was a clinic by me on what NOT to do when you go 4-off in the mud outside T1.

Cheers,

Dean

[dtfastbear]

Well, that weekend didn't go exactly as planned...

Huge bummer for all those with damage at the beginning of the Saturday race, and big bummer for all the rest of the SM's and E30's that didn't get to race because of the accident. The melee started with a missed shift that caused a chain reaction of cars behind splitting to the sides. Then, one of the cars off on the right in the mud tried to come right back onto the racing surface. That car had a big impact with the car that missed the shift initially (but was back under control at this point) causing the chain reaction of contact. It's the worst case scenario - exit of a fast turn, cars three wide and right on each others' bumpers.

Congrats to Charlie for his pole position - sorry you didn't get to have a sprint race to try and back it up with a win.

Sunday, I missed the middle part of the race, but I saw the last 15 minutes or so of the 50 minute race, and there were some GREAT battles going on through the field. Props to Dan who appears to have figured out the 99. Kyle - sorry some out of class racing cost you the lead, but strong showing nonetheless. Jaime and Charlie - fantastic battling back and forth for the latter part of the race. It was fun to watch. Other great battles through the field, too.

On the downside, I'm still waiting to hear about the list of pass-under-yellow infractions. I know there were several, and I suspect the penalties will be pretty nasty, especially for anyone who did it more than once in the same race.

Let's look forward to May.

Cheers,

Dean

[Barrett Tilley]

Crazy first turn. Here is a video that explains a bit from David Sparks Youtube account.

http://youtu.be/kEk1KZ_nf2I

BT

(I was not there. After all the discussion I wanted to see what happened.)

[dtfastbear]

Hey gang,

I just heard from the NASA Race Director that they had an issue about halfway through the 50-minute race with the T&S software and are calling the results "unofficial" at this point until they can go through all of the hand-written car/lap records/counts that they do during the race. Also, there were a LOT of passes under yellow called in as well as car to car contact. It wasn't pretty. They're still sorting through these, as well, before calling the results final. So, please don't send in those Toyo-bucks forms just yet.

If anyone has any creative ideas on how to better encourage flag discipline other than severe, escalating penalties, the NASA officials are all ears.

Cheers,

Dean

[Glen McCready]

If anyone has any creative ideas on how to better encourage flag discipline other than severe, escalating penalties, the NASA officials are all ears.

Let us run a scanner on the same freq as race control so we can hear the flags as well as try and see them? Penalties are already pretty severe with a PUY = DQ and rest of the year on probation the first time, and suspension for the rest of the year on a second offense... no?

Is it a flag stand positioning problem? or a drivers not looking problem? I'm the newbie, so I'm just asking. :-)

[dtfastbear]

If it were a flag stand positioning problem, then it's likely that there would be a big concentration of violations at one or two specific turns. I don't believe the data supports that theory, so I draw the conclusion that it is the amount of attention/priority the drivers are giving to looking for flags versus driving/passing. Last year I got busted for a pass under yellow, and I know exactly why I missed it. I was coming up through T1 at Infineon and was hot on the tail of a competitor. I became so focused on that car that I never looked at the T1 stand (which you can very clearly see with a flag in my video) and then almost ran into the back of a car that checked up at T3 because there was a safety vehicle at the top of the hill.

A local NorCal SM driver who only races occasionally now has developed an ground-breaking flag system for AMA motorcycle racing. There's a small display that goes in the rider's helmet, in the line of sight. Sort of like a heads up display. I'm not sure what all information they can convey to the riders, but at the very least it can tell them when there is a yellow flag on track, perhaps even which turn(s) the flags are in. Until that becomes affordable for club racing, though, we need drivers to develop better habits and make scanning for flags an integral part of their driving.

They've used Raceivers in the past for some classes, and I don't think it was that successful. I'm not sure why. You wouldn't want all of the control tower chatter, so you essentially need another dedicated official to just broadcast specific information on that channel. Don't know if that was the main issue or not. I can tell you that having a good proactive spotter is a HUGE luxury and benefit!!

Dean