445 replies to this topic

[Todd Lamb]

It was good to witness all the man drama and not be a part of it - then again half of it is forum-based and I see we're in the thick of it.

Random thoughts from the weekend:

Did Blake break anything when he threw his helmet MLB pitch style into the car after the race?
Did Charbs catch anything fishing? I did see a fishing pole...
Frank "Porn Stache" Todaro - great working with you!
Kyle "Caveman" Webb - best wiring guru on the planet at 9pm pulling the dash
Jeffy - glad you were able to fix Kyle's spaghetti wiring mess the next morning
Guess who was first to the cookie table at the Mazda dinner?
Hille - tough break bud!
Meat - good job in tech
Ernie - fast all weekend, learning what this stuff is all about at an early age
Bolanos - nice run, MOMO looks good
Congrats to Yanni Tsunami!

[Astro]

Update move over moliver number 50 jumped the start and did not protest the leaders is crying its ok i will take the one position penalty i guess would like other poeples opinion feel free.

Charb,
I was behind you and my video link is below (not sure how to embed). I did not give this to the race director but since you asked for opinions I thought I would share. You were full throttle and accelerating long before I got the Green signal on the radio (I could not see the flag). As far as the rules and where you were when the flag flew, I will leave to the officials.

http://youtu.be/dJStjWsfqZc


Nice charge from the back after your off in 11.

[Juan Pineda]

Update move over moliver number 50 jumped the start and did not protest the leaders is crying its ok...

Obviously the 50 did not jump the restart.

gjamie got the phone call about 1 hour ago another driver protested me on the restart I think he forgot to tell that he was sitiing back not keeping pace with the leaders...

Obviously the 50 was not sitting back. It appears that Charbonneau was the one laying back to get a jump.

leader jumped the start and pace car was off and i i was alongside of the car in front no pass wass compleated. green dropped and i was one...

This is perhaps the explanation for the penalty. You cannot pull alongside another car before the green flag drops (see CCR 20.10 Start Jumping.)

[Rob Burgoon]

Good move by NASA, Charb earned that DQ.

[Tom Sager]

Impressive win by Yiannis who took the green flag 5 times at Mid-Ohio this year and took the checker as the winner all 5 times. The "local guys" did quite well. Tough break for Justin Hille. What happened to his motor?

[High Chair]

Good move by NASA, Charb earned that DQ.

Rob the DQ was over turned and he was moved back to 6th; sorry to rain on your parade. And from that video there is no way to know when the green came out. Next

[High Chair]

Obviously the 50 did not jump the restart.



Obviously the 50 was not sitting back. It appears that Charbonneau was the one laying back to get a jump.




This is perhaps the explanation for the penalty. You cannot pull alongside another car before the green flag drops (see CCR 20.10 Start Jumping.)

Hay Piñata! Did you see the green drop in that video?

[Juan Pineda]

Did you see the green drop in that video?

Hey I'm just going by Charb's description. He says he was along side the 50 and then the green flag dropped. That's a jumped start.

[Astro]

correction...it is at http://team-nasa.com...pE (SpecMiata)/

[Blake Clements]

Todd,

It was a Hans and I was only placing it in a safe location.

Thanks for keeping up with what the 9th place finisher was doing, it is fans like you that keep me going.

Blake

[SaulSpeedwell]

Hey I'm just going by Charb's description. He says he was along side the 50 and then the green flag dropped. That's a jumped start.

Jumped starts are so rarely enforced (anywhere in the field) that you quickly learn you are a fool if you DON'T jump the start, and the real crime becomes the ultra-rare moment when it actually IS enforced.

Starts and restarts cause a lot of damage, somewhat nullify the point of qualifying, and place an unwarranted premium on having a radio spotter staring at the starter's elbow for the whole race. If we were to redesign road racing today, it would be "smarter" (and safer) if starts were single-file, and anyone passing before start/finish would be penalized (every time, starts and restarts). But "it has always been done that way", and so >=85% of the people will want it to stay the same.

[CruzanTom]

From the video posted, Charbs was still behind the car in front of him (50?) when the camera car (87) began accelerating (about 0:45 at 40 mph in the video). When Charbs started pulling alongside 50(?), the camera car was in full acceleration, too. Therefore, it seems both Charbs and the camera car (87) got a good restart but the 50(?) did not? No obvious grounds for a DQ in the video.

[Astro]

CruzanTom,
I started accelerating after I saw Charbs was gone...I did not wait for the green.

[Juan Pineda]

From the video posted, Charbs was still behind the car in front of him (50?) when the camera car (87) began accelerating (about 0:45 at 40 mph in the video). When Charbs started pulling alongside 50(?), the camera car was in full acceleration, too. Therefore, it seems both Charbs and the camera car (87) got a good restart but the 50(?) did not? No obvious grounds for a DQ in the video.

Well you would have to assume that the 50 and the 3 ahead of him both got a bad start because Charb had enough of a run to get beside the 3 too.

I hate jump starters. In addition to creating potentially dangerous situations, their MO of laying back screws the cars behind them. Too bad the rule is not enforced more often.

Saul, what you describe is essentially a Grand Am start.

[Tom Sager]

Well you would have to assume that the 50 and the 3 ahead of him both got a bad start because Charb had enough of a run to get beside the 3 too.

I hate jump starters. In addition to creating potentially dangerous situations, their MO of laying back screws the cars behind them. Too bad the rule is not enforced more often.

Saul, what you describe is essentially a Grand Am start.

Having done some Grand Am starts years ago, I didn't like them. The rules then (and maybe now) required that you stay in line after the green and until you reach the S/F line. Several times we had cars running into the rear of the car in front of them when the green flew as some got on the throttle at slightly different moments and some accelerated a bit faster (or slower). Some drivers were lifting off the throttle (or even braking) before they crossed the S/F. As I recall, there were some incidents of cars getting pushed and turned sideways on the start and bad things happened. I remember talking to other drivers who thought that start procedure was dangerous. I think that when you have a bunch of cars tightly bunched on a start, you're gonna have some issues here and there. Single file probably reduces that risk but probably means that on many tracks the middle and back of the pack can't see the green and/or are starting in a corner rather than on a straight.

As for fairer starts, more officials would have to be watching from more locations than just the S/F line IMO. In our low HP cars, it's sometimes tough to see when we get on the gas. Heck, at Road America we need almost full throttle just to climb the hill and if you're in a 1.6 there you need that and a push.

[LarryKing]

Great fun to watch - good show. Tough drive by Greg Stasiowski for the podium. He never gets much mention but is always in the hunt. Chris Williams put up a hard charge too.

The #69 checked-out every start/restart. What does DDG know that no one else does?

Why is there a truck parked in the grass on the outside of the track, and why is the corner station not holding yellow?

Why isn't the corner worker WAVING a yellow!!!

Also, why did NASA dispatch a safety vehicle to T1 on the last lap while the leaders were exiting the carousel? Scared me and I was sitting in the grandstands.

[Alex Bolanos]

The #69 checked-out every start/restart. What does DDG know that no one else does?

Let me know if you find it :/ To be fair, Yannis drove consistently all week but that car was hooked up... Setup, power, early race, late race, every session, pretty impressive.

Why isn't the corner worker WAVING a yellow!!!

Also, why did NASA dispatch a safety vehicle to T1 on the last lap while the leaders were exiting the carousel? Scared me and I was sitting in the grandstands.

This was total BS, Yannis and I thought it was going double yellow between two cars in the trap and a white F-250 in the middle of turn 1... we were waving our hands and slowing down. Greg and Chris saw that it was a local yellow and almost ran over me on the way to turn 2 (hence the 2 wide entry into the keyhole on the last lap). I'll try and post my video tonight.

[Danny Steyn]

This was total BS, Yannis and I thought it was going double yellow between two cars in the trap and a white F-250 in the middle of turn 1... we were waving our hands and slowing down. Greg and Chris saw that it was a local yellow and almost ran over me on the way to turn 2 (hence the 2 wide entry into the keyhole on the last lap). I'll try and post my video tonight.

Thanks for that Alex - from the SpeedcastTV feed we couldn't figure what happened in T1 on the last lap - suddenly you were being swarmed and we had not idea why. Look forward to seeing the video.

[Alex Bolanos]

My thoughts on the week in no particular order:

• Thanks to my Mom and Dad, Jeff LaBounty and Cory Collum at Autotechnik for putting up with Charbs and I, and all of the Florida guys that were pulling for us back home.
• Great to see the locals again, Webb/Todaro/Hille/Spencer/Stasiosky and the Texas boys all need to come down to FL and play in our sandbox!
• We spent lots of time on the setup back home at Apex Alignment down in Miami, this paid off big time as I never had to touch alignment or cornerweights all week. Thanks to Albert Lazo for being a huge help with short notice.
• Tires were more of a crapshoot than usual... Charb and I were on totally different tire strategies and running the same times, MO seems to change every single time we come. Nick Malatesta (who did fantastic for his first time at Mid Ohio) took a gamble switching from old to new on race day and went backwards. I had an old set that went great on Wed and quit on me in the qual race on Thurs...
• Tech was less intense than last year but Collins did a great job.
• NASA put on a great show, the format is much better than next week's (as covered in another thread).

• The whole week for me was a bit confusing. Didn't have the same advantage (pace wise) as last year, seemed like everyone was able to run in the .43s and the track didn't like relinquishing .42s with any kind of consistency. The field was very tight and other than Yannis there wasn't really a clear order for the fast 10, some people gained bigtime pace from Thurs to Fri while we stayed largely the same. Thurs' qual race was tough, started 20th and got stuck in a pack. The race ran short and I only made it to 13th. Fri's qual race was better, started 5th and was in position to get to at least 3rd when Alec Udell decided to outbrake himself and take out Justin Hille, Ernie Jr, and nearly me. Had to park it, Charb and Greg went by and I finished 5th.
• Grid turned out to be 8th for me which is definitely not where you want to start at Mid Ohio. I made a last minute tire pressure change and it worked, the car was good early and I was able to get through the pack to a distant 2nd. I could run Yannis' times but his car had legs on mine so I figured I'd gap Greg and take 2nd.... until the yellows came out. Now I had last year's 3rd place guy behind me to worry about which contributed to me falling asleep on the first restart. I thought the caution would help get some of my front tires back but the opposite happened, I struggled with understeer until the second yellow. LaBounty came on the radio and threatened to take my motor if I didn't glue myself to Yannis' bumper for the second restart, I got the hint and was with him up to the carousel where I made the only move I could. We gave eachother room but I bound the car up too much and lost the drag race to 1, bobbled turn 2, and lost the draft and the rest is history.

Overall it was a great week and I have a clean car and some great momentum going into the runoffs. By the way... if you find 2012 Momo catalogs randomly on the dashes of your race and pit vehicles during either of the events, I may know who the culprit is...

[suck fumes]

Hey Mike would you like to share what Yannis' shock Dyno graph looked like? I have a strong feeling that it may have been a little different than everyone elses but still within legal limits.