121 replies to this topic

[Bench Racer]

If remembered correctly Drago started this doll em up deal a few months ago with his same size queens.

 

     For my Texan friends, 4 seed squeaks by 1 seed. Before you ask, yes next week they will Pack the Birds.

[Alex Bolanos]

 

Any other questions?         

[Alex Bolanos]

3 wins and a second in the Florida Majors?  It's all down hill from here surely.  Great seeing and racing with everyone these two crazy weeks, how awesome is our class that 57 and 80 of us congregate near Cuba to duke it out.  Thanks as always to the boys at Autotechnik for the sled and horsies as well as the offtrack shenanigans and laughs, big shout out to Danny from G-Loc for coming down both weekends and providing great brakes and customer support that is unmatched, and Hoosier/SCCA for confusing us as to which races are Major, Minor, Super, or just Club  

 

Cheers!

[Bench Racer]

Alex, great job, got to love the profile picture. Intended to meet you and dad at Road America, didn't get it done, as you young bucks say, me bad.

 

Picture #2, plumbers crack transferred from Beloit to Atlanta.

 

Picture 3#, was tech using a magnifying mirror and scale to look and measure the STR?

[Todd Lamb]

What a fun weekend. Great weather, no drama, and exciting racing.  Our newly built VVT was together for all of 5 days before it came back apart in tech. Thanks to East Street for the help during teardown and providing the power to compete up front. Glad to see all passed tech with no issues.

 

Congrats to Jim and Alex for the wins, and Michael for the podium. It was such a blast racing for the win on Saturday - side by side, fighting for every inch, but racing clean and fair. That's what makes this class so special. 77 cars and no yellow flags - great job everyone!

 

I had a great car on Saturday, and decided since it was new that it could be better, so we made setup changes Saturday night. I don't usually get the setup wrong, but I fully admit I blew it for Sunday. The car was all over the place, to the point where I realized I was out of contention and holding Danny up, so I let him through to try and catch the leaders while I slid around trying to hang on to the draft.

 

We also campaigned the 2 Global MX-5's in T3 to do some testing and see how the cars stacked up in the class. They are no match for the cars in T3 (by about a 3 second differential) even with a hardtop but we managed to pull off a win on Saturday with a little strategy/luck and Luis Gavignano finished P3. Mazda is working with SCCA to make the car more competitive in the T3 class, and/or get it reclassified in T4. There were 4 GMX-5's in the race, and hopefully even more will come out at future events - they are a BLAST to drive!

 

Had the chance to work with Craig Janssen again, continuing our coaching from Indy last year. He continues to learn and improve which is always great to see. Senter Smith and Andy Devoto were with us this weekend as well - always fun to hang out with them and see their smiles after every session.

[Johnny D]

https://www.scca.com/videos/2030246

 

https://www.scca.com/videos/2030280

 

https://www.scca.com/videos/2030292

 

https://www.scca.com/videos/2030310

[MPR22]

Sunday's opening laps Starting P29 (yeah I know I must suck).  Finished P13 got as high as P9 but me and my shifter could not get along. 

 

 

[Richard Astacio]

Sunday's opening laps Starting P29 (yeah I know I must suck).  Finished P13 got as high as P9 but me and my shifter could not get along. 

 

 

 

Nice run! What kind of camera do you use?

[Preston Pardus]

Video from race one which shows the battle for 4th.

[Cnj]

Jim is stuck in Dallas with about 45 min of sleep on airport floor

Yup, anyone flying to or through DFW had a long night due to the storms. We left Tampa at 5.20 and got off the plane at DFW at 2am. At least I could go home from there. Sorry to hear you (Jim) did not have a place to stay (we must have been on another flight or I'd have offered you a place to stay).

Anyway, this was my first Sebring experience. Had a blast. I expected to be humbled - and was. I went with the goal of finishing above the fold and managed to do that both days. With no car damage. I learned a tad late that you need to practice with a team mate "before" qualifying if you want a decent position, so I paid the price and had to make up positions during the race as I learned the track.

It was good to see the South African and to have someone understand my accent Great as always to spend some time chatting to Skip, Craig and others. Bummed to see Blakes car damage (OPM did a heroic job straightening it).

My car had no damage, but decided to have a series of failures. Exhaust broke while putting it on the trailer. New one. Diff burned up during practice. Installed another on Thursday night. Gearbox started to go Friday so Drago got a sale. The X-Factor guys were heros (with some help from Steve and MPR) in making this all work. I can't imagine this weekend without their help. Thanks guys.

Todd Lamb spent more time trying to beat the early apexer out of me. Maybe after a few more weekends with him I'll fully translate what my head knows into what my hands and feet actually do. Bad habits are hard to unlearn.... but Todd is great at helping me get there.

There was a pretty bad wreck on Sunday in SRF just before we started the race. Long Red flag. I understand the two drivers walked to the ambulance. Hope they are OK.

Other than the downer of the SRF incident (and spending more money than I should on this sport), it was an awesome weekend.

CNJ

[Danny Steyn]

It was good to see the South African and to have someone understand my accent  

CNJ

 

Good to see you Craig - been too long, glad to hear that you and the rest of the Texas contingent** enjoyed your Sebring experience - one of my favorite tracks in the series. Hope to see you soon 

 

** except of course #slowlivesmatter - damn BFC had a shitty weekend, but then again we have all been there. Hurry back SLM, trailer will not be the same without you!

[Jim Drago]

That was Gary reporting on Jim's status. He was just using Jim's account. 

exactly correct

[MPR22]

Nice run! What kind of camera do you use?

It's a Mobius. Very light.

[Todd Lamb]

Yeah that SRF wreck was not good. It was the two SRF3 leaders having contact in T17. They bounced off each other and got collected by John Greene (who I just bought my new truck from last week). John landed upside down and was hit hard TEN seconds later by another car. I've seen the in-car from John and all I can say is that must have been really terrible sitting there upside down waiting to get hit. He has a punctured leg and sore back, but should be ok. The other driver that was airlifted is also expected to recover.

[chris haldeman]

Thanks for the update Todd. Glad to hear all the drivers will be ok. It is always a scary site to see the red flag fly and ambulances roll out on track.

[MPR22]

Try to keep this brief.  

 

New track for us so we had no grand expectations of beating up on the home team.  The track to me is one of those that is easy to be competent at but hard to make real speed.  Every corner (17 of the damn things) has .1-.2 tenths from good to great.  So a good time is like 2 seconds off a great time.  

 

Qual 1 sucked, Chris and I messed up 15 on our only true lap in qual 1 before they shortened the qual.  It was suppose to be 25 mins but that turned into 14 with other incidents in prior sessions and an incident in our session.  We chose to wait to go out last essentially losing a lap and that was about all it took to put is like 40 and 30.  

 

Qual 2 better but still didn't make a clean lap and with it being 15 mins there wasn't time to get back together and make some time.  I think he was mid teens and I managed a spectacular 29th. 

 

Race 1 Car was ok, not tip top, trans/shifter hated me or I hated it and made the 2/5 shift the norm out of the hairpin.  That equaled a stellar p28.  

Race 2 Car was much better, watch the video.  trans/shifter still hated me and I made the 2/5 3 times in 13 laps.  So that cost me lots of time and at least 4 or 5 positions.  Started p29 and managed to get to P9 and slide back to P13.  Last couple of laps I was off of the little train i was in and just slopping around track trying out different lines.  

 

Thank you to X-Factor racing for a great handling and great engine.  The car was a top5 car, driver was a top 20 so somewhere in between was the result.

 

Missed having my dad at this event, can't imagine what he would have thought of the nightlife experience.  Would be good for him to get some exposure to a different culture.

 

See you fast guys at NOLA where Chris and I have a little more chops and expect to have you all behind us crying about our cars. 

[Jim Drago]

Try to keep this brief.  

 

New track for us so we had no grand expectations of beating up on the home team.  The track to me is one of those that is easy to be competent at but hard to make real speed.  Every corner (17 of the damn things) has .1-.2 tenths from good to great.  So a good time is like 2 seconds off a great time.  

 

Qual 1 sucked, Chris and I messed up 15 on our only true lap in qual 1 before they shortened the qual.  It was suppose to be 25 mins but that turned into 14 with other incidents in prior sessions and an incident in our session.  We chose to wait to go out last essentially losing a lap and that was about all it took to put is like 40 and 30.  

 

Qual 2 better but still didn't make a clean lap and with it being 15 mins there wasn't time to get back together and make some time.  I think he was mid teens and I managed a spectacular 29th. 

 

Race 1 Car was ok, not tip top, trans/shifter hated me or I hated it and made the 2/5 shift the norm out of the hairpin.  That equaled a stellar p28.  

Race 2 Car was much better, watch the video.  trans/shifter still hated me and I made the 2/5 3 times in 13 laps.  So that cost me lots of time and at least 4 or 5 positions.  Started p29 and managed to get to P9 and slide back to P13.  Last couple of laps I was off of the little train i was in and just slopping around track trying out different lines.  

 

Thank you to X-Factor racing for a great handling and great engine.  The car was a top5 car, driver was a top 20 so somewhere in between was the result.

 

Missed having my dad at this event, can't imagine what he would have thought of the nightlife experience.  Would be good for him to get some exposure to a different culture.

 

See you fast guys at NOLA where Chris and I have a little more chops and expect to have you all behind us crying about our cars. 

Good seeing you guys at places we arent used to seeing you.. hopefully that trend continues all year at these supertours where all of can meet up with anyone of 15-20 drivers can win.

[Danny Steyn]

My STL races are generally not quite as exciting as my Spec Miata races, but Sebring STL Race 1 was an exception. Nick Leverone and I crossed the finish line 17/1,000ths of a second apart in a hotly contested race. If you want to see and hear what a 210HP MX-5 sounds like, come for a ride with me in this video. Watch the full video, or watch the lap record lap (lap 9) at 17:30, or watch the final lap with the side by side finish from 24:45. Set a new Sebring STL lap record of 2:27.715 (with a great draft from Nick). 

 

[Jim Drago]

I watched that race last night. It was fun. 

[Bench Racer]

Gentle on the egg. Great stuff.