76 replies to this topic

[Caveman-kwebb99]

Just a Commie...

[SaulSpeedwell]

Circuit of Texas, Asshole!

Or

Too many Stoopid Texans listened to Governor Goodhair Memorial Boondoggle

It looks like a "Chia Head" but, apparently, it is not.

"The bust was initially used by Dairy Waste Management (www.cowwow.com), a company which manufactures COW WOW, a liquid fertilizer made from dairy cow manure without the manure odor. Last year they commissioned busts of Perry and Bill White, former mayor of Houston and Perry’s opponent in the 2010 gubernatorial election. The “hair” of each candidate was ivy nourished by Cow Wow, and voters were asked to vote for their favorite hair (www.votecowwow.com). Nobody had to split hairs in that race – Bill White won by a landslide. Ivy can certainly level a playing scalp. At last year’s ACL Music Festival in Austin, Rick’s larger-than-life head entertained thousands of concert-goers who kissed his cheeks, picked his nose, inspected his ears and tickled his ivy."

Available on Ebay!!!
http://www.ebay.com/...=item25670a0f13

[steveracer]

It looks like a "Chia Head" but, apparently, it is not.

"The bust was initially used by Dairy Waste Management (www.cowwow.com), a company which manufactures COW WOW, a liquid fertilizer made from dairy cow manure without the manure odor. Last year they commissioned busts of Perry and Bill White, former mayor of Houston and Perry’s opponent in the 2010 gubernatorial election. The “hair” of each candidate was ivy nourished by Cow Wow, and voters were asked to vote for their favorite hair (www.votecowwow.com). Nobody had to split hairs in that race – Bill White won by a landslide. Ivy can certainly level a playing scalp. At last year’s ACL Music Festival in Austin, Rick’s larger-than-life head entertained thousands of concert-goers who kissed his cheeks, picked his nose, inspected his ears and tickled his ivy."

Available on Ebay!!!
http://www.ebay.com/...=item25670a0f13

HA!
Excellent find! You're my new Hero.

Wonder how long before DPS came to visit me if I sent one of these to him?

[robertcope]

Here's my COTA video. It's not a SM, but it is a Miata and it is driving on COTA:



There's a decent "Track Notes" thread here: http://www.trackjunk...rack-notes-ccw/

I plan to put together my thoughts once I have more time to digest them.

robert

[Jim Drago]

Very nice video, driving it pretty hard! Street tires? Car sounds really good!
Jim

[robertcope]

Very nice video, driving it pretty hard! Street tires?

I'm running 205/50/15 NT01s. Suspension is Tein Flex with 10/6 springs (550/325) with Racing Beat sways. Motor is a stock 90K unit with probably 30K track miles and the "usual" I/H/E stuff. Nothing too exotic!

I'm sure it could be pushed harder, not that I'm embarrassed by my effort in the video. This was my first session on the track with it dry, although it was cold (38-42F or so) and we were all trying to behave ourselves so as to make a good impression. Obviously, we want to go back and as the first DE group out there we felt some responsibility in terms of setting a good impression of 'amateurs' in general.

robert

[suck fumes]

So are Ferrari guys special or something? That why they can pass at will and everyone else has to be waived by?

[robertcope]

So are Ferrari guys special or something? That why they can pass at will and everyone else has to be waived by?

I guess I don't know what Ferrari guys you are talking about. At a typical DE event, which is not a race, you need a point from the car in front before you can pass. I'm sure you can see how this helps to make the environment safe for everyone. At this event, we were forced to pass (with a point) on only on the straights, which is really quite annoying; COTA was nervous about having "amateurs" on the track. Hopefully we helped change their opinion on that.

Are you talking about the Challenge Ferrari that was running with us? It had to wait for a point just like everyone else. You'll notice him sitting patiently behind me in this video, even. That car is ridiculously fast (it helps that it is well driven, too).

robert

[Johnny D]

[mdavis]

Thanks for sharing Robert! How about Brian W? I thought he was going to post something.

[HoneyBadger - BrianW]

Thanks for sharing Robert! How about Brian W? I thought he was going to post something.

I will, I have just been busy and havent had time to look at the video yet. I'll do it soon.

[HoneyBadger - BrianW]

I recently attended a Drivers Edge one day DE here. It rained the entire morning and I only got one clean dry lap in the afternoon, so take these notes for what they are, a fairly limited view of what the track will be like under fully dry conditions with more experience. That said, here are my thoughts/notes as well as a video of my clear lap.

Notes:

Facility:
The facility is second to none, a real class act! I attended the F1 race back in November and the facility was nice then, but they are continuing to improve things and I can't wait to experience it when its 100% completed. This weekend we were limited to the garages and paddock area, so I wasn't able to walk around the rest of the facility. Overall I would say that the management of the track is not nearly as bad as they have been getting portrayed. They have limited experience with amateur racing and even less with DE's. The event ran smoothly and while they were pretty restrictive, they did allow us to have a good time.

Track:
The track itself is a work of art. I have never had the privilege to drive a facility this nice. The track has quite a bit of grip, especially in the wet. The way the course is designed, it has the tendency to lure you into decreasing radius corners with quite a bit of speed, making it tricky in spots, even in a slow car like ours.

Turn 1: Coming into turn one is a pretty impressive hill fourth gear entry, second gear corner. Tight left hand turn with a very wide entry.
Turn 2: down hill left hand corner shifting to third mid corner, flat out.
Turn 3-5: Fourth gear entry, high speed left, right, left combination. Liberal use of curbing on both the left and right to straighten things out. I was not able to take this series flat, but it might be possible with more time. There is significant time to be had in this series if you get things correct (I didn't). A correct entry and timing is everything in this series. If you get your timing off a little early, it has a way of compounding itself with each subsequent corner.
Turn 6: Decreasing radius right hand corner. Fourth gear entry, third gear exit. This corner will catch you out if you aren't careful. You build up quite a bit of speed through the S's and you have to reel it back in to complete this corner.
Turn 7: standard left hand corner, nothing special
Turn 8:Right hand corner third gear entry. Stay tight to the right to setup for turn 9 which is a flat out run to turn 11.
Turn 9: Left hand third gear corner, get on the gas early to maximize speed coming into turn 11.
Turn 10: Not really a turn out our speeds. Slight left hand kink.
Turn 11: Very tight left hand hairpin. Second gear corner leading onto the longest straight. Obviously a very important corner. Get on the gas early and then find a book to read for the back straight.
Turn 12: Second gear left hand corner. Nothing particularly special.
Turn 13: Third gear right hand corner. I struggled with getting back to gas early enough with this corner. Not sure if I was just messing it up, but the car just didnt want to seem to let me get back to gas as early as I would like. This corner sets you up for turn 14 for the run into 15.
Turn 14: Third gear, right hand corner. Nothing really to talk about.
Turn 15: Second gear tight left hand corner. Wide entry with ample runoff.
Turn 16-18: Multiple apex right hand corner. Third gear entry, fourth gear exit. Stay wide on entry and its an easy flat out corner.
Turn 19: High speed left hand corner. Reminds me of turn 1 at Hallett. Either third or fourth gear corner, slight break before hand and back to gas to settle the car. I say third of fourth gear, I was taking the corner in third, but I think with a little more confidence it can be done in fourth. There is quite a bit of room on the exit.
Turn 20: Fourth gear entry, third gear corner. This corner is greater than 90deg. It will catch you out the first couple of times through. Other than that, nothing special, leads onto the front straight so important to be back to gas early.

Here is my one and only dry clear lap. I am sure many things can be improved, I'm late to gas almost everywhere, I blew the timing coming into the S's, but hopefully it will give you a flavor of what the track is like.


http://youtu.be/y-WuMjzJ7V4

[Danny Steyn]

Brian
thanks for posting this - we all appreciate the insight

[suck fumes]

Should be a hoot to drive in the rain. Looks like slow motion in a Miata since the track is so large haha.

[robertcope]

Brian's notes are really quite good. I had a few things to add.

The S's: Take a look at my video. You will notice that inside the pretty red and white curbing there are some orange bumps. I didn't ever test them, but I heard that they were not very nice to run over. They're inside a lot of the apexes around the track.

T13: My take on this one: slow down, go deep, trail brake to rotate the car, get back on the gas ASAP. There is a lot of track to turn with, although I'm not sure you really want to use it all, it is there if you need it.

T15: I'm still not sure how to take this one. Lots of debate about straightening it out vs running the outside of it. I felt like I should have been approaching it much faster but never figured out how to do it. The important thing is to realize that it leads to a pretty long 'straight'... T16-T19 is flat out.

T19: I put a rear wheel off on the curbing on the right, and unlike all of the other curbing on the track that I ran on, it did not feel good at all. I did not repeat this, so maybe it is fine and I was just surprised. This is really quite a fast corner with a lot of track on the other side of it. You can and should use a lot of the curbing on the apex.

T20: As he said, this one caught me off guard more than once. It is a sharp turn. I think the confusing part is that it has a nice rise to it that looks like it might help suck you around the corner a bit, but it does not seem to help at all.

This track is super smooth (duh). I might be crazy, but I felt like I had a lot more control over the car than usual; it just did exactly what I asked it to, and when it did get a out of shape, was easy to correct. I suspect that is because the suspension was not having to work nearly as much as hard would at, say, TWS. It probably also helped that I wasn't going "flat out", too.

robert

[Lee Thomas]

I recently attended a Drivers Edge one day DE here. It rained the entire morning and I only got one clean dry lap in the afternoon, so take these notes for what they are, a fairly limited view of what the track will be like under fully dry conditions with more experience. That said, here are my thoughts/notes as well as a video of my clear lap.

...
[

Awesome. Thank you!

[davidw]

Cotex, that was too funny for me lol

 

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