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NASA Time Trial event at MSR-Cresson - 3.1 mile course
Amy and I had both signed up to drive in TT3 in the same car, once again. Sharing a car and racing it in the same class
sucks, by the way. We are NOT going to do this again, because neither of us are getting enough seat time to learn the ever changing set-ups and/or familiarize ourselves with new tracks. More on that later in this post. So we arrived at MSR on Friday around 7:30 pm, quickly unloaded the car and then unhooked the trailer. By then it was pitch dark and we installed the rear wing using a flashlight, since I was worried about towing the car on an open trailer and adding excessive drag with the wing on (wasted effort - we towed on the way back with the wing installed and didn't see a dip at all in the borrowed V10 Ford F-250 truck's horrendous MPG, heh).
Note: All of these pics are from Sunday, as we didn't take any pics with our own camera on Saturday and Vorshlag's own Brandon arrived about 10 am Sunday and snapped the good ones from the event.
Vorshlag NASA @ MSR-C Photo Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...A-MSRC-031613/
Saturday NASA TT Results: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...-031613-X2.jpg
Sunday NASA TT Results: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...-031713-X2.jpg
The Time Trial group in our region has gotten too big and crowded to run on the smaller 1.7 mile road course that the NASA events are usually held on. So they put just the TT group out on the large 3.1 mile course... which is made up of the normal 1.7 mile course (which every other race and HPDE group drove all weekend) and the hyper-tight 1.3 mile course, joined together. Amy had driven the 1.3 mile course once, and the 1.7 mile course a couple of times, but joined into the 3.1 it is a different animal altogether... and it get's pretty complicated to remember, and the line changes dramatically, with a LOT of turns and transitions. They call it "16 turns" but that is just not even remotely correct - the 3.1 mile course is closer to 26 turns when you actually count the times you have to change direction. Not many 26 turn courses are easy to learn quickly, and MUCH more difficult to remember than the 11 turn 1.7 mile course most people normally run there. And what these 2D maps
don't show are the massive elevation changes, the many blind corners, and off camber sections just waiting to bite you and send you 4 off.
Ignore the "passing in green zone" stuff, that is for HPDE; TT has open passing. And this course is closer to 26 turns, not 16
So Saturday we had 4 TT sessions to run in, but the 1st one on Saturday doesn't count for times, only for grid position. So we had 3 real timed TT sessions between 2 drivers to fight over. That left us 3 actual timed sessions to figure out the 3.1 mile course and get a good lap time in. Sure, we could hop into an HPDE session for more seat time, and we both did, but it would be on the 1.7 mile course only. Since I had driven this 3.1 mile course
briefly back in 2011 (in our GRM E30 V8 - where I promptly exploded another T5 going over a rough patch in the transition from the 1.7 to the 1.3 course), Amy and I agreed that I would go out in the first "practice" session and she would ride along, which would normally DSQ my times in TT - but they don't count anyway. I tried to show her the line, what little I could remember of it, and failed miserably. She tried not to throw up as I slung the car around this unfamiliar course, and barely succeeded. Eventually she just closed her eyes and said "OK,
enough!"
We started the day on a sticker set of 295/40/18 Hoosier R6 tires and planned to switch to the sticker 315/30/18 Hoosier A6 tures if.... 1) we were getting beat or 2) if the 295s felt funky. By TT session 2, our first timed session I was out again on the 295s and Amy had done one HPDE session on the 1.7 course. Neither of us liked the feel of the 295s but I wanted to give them a little more time to show their stuff. I was also instructing a student in HPDE1 so I was running ragged that day, with our paddock spot a long way away from the grid. I was briefly in the TT3 lead on the 295s, but Amy and I agreed that the 295s weren't cutting it. They felt... very slow to react compared to the 315/30/18 Hoosiers and 315/35/18 Kumho V710s we had raced on for much of last year at various track events.
Left: Borrowed truck and trailer were handy, but left us without a lot of our tools. Right: Getting ready to go out on 315s
By 10:30 Olof had arrived at the track and the three of us quickly swapped wheels and tires for the wider Forgestar 18x11/12" wheels and shorter/wider 315/30/18 Hoosier A6 tires. Two sticker sets of Hoosiers in one day - nucking futs! Amy quickly went out for a few laps in another HPDE session to get a feel for the shorter A6s and she
really liked it, but still had no idea what line to take on the 3.1 course. She finally took to the 3.1 mile course in TT Session 3, but there was a little "incident" that shortened the session to
one lone hot lap (hence her abysmal 2:31 time followed by a 4:09, which was during the red flagged lap). This incident was some inadvertent "car-to-car" contact, which I have never seen in a Time Trial session in our region in the past 6 years. I don't want to get into it any more than to say that one TT driver was completely lost, was
driving the wrong course, and turned into another car.
Anyway, during that very brief session another TT3 driver had slipped into the lead ahead of me, just barely. Amy had one hot lap in a timed TT session for the day. I felt bad about it, since she only got one real timed lap in a TT session on Saturday, and offered up session 4 to her... but she agreed to let me go out in TT session 4 on the A6s, to try for the win, as I was a good bit faster than her, on this course which I knew a little better. We just had enough in class (5 cars) to pay out 2 tires to 1st place, if I could get back into the lead.
The TT3 class lead was razor thin - I was less than a tenth back with a 2:26 lap - but I had a feeling that the then 1st placed car, an LS1 powered Miata with big Hoosiers and aero, would pick up time in TT session 4. I had my secret weapon - switching to the 315 A6s would surely drop some major time! What I didn't know was -
he was doing the same damn thing!! Oh, the irony.
We both switched from R6 tires to A6s for TT session 4, and I was lined up right behind him on the formation lap.
Partial hot lap from Saturday (Day 1) TT session 4, before the camera shifted...
You can see part of TT session 4 in the video above, right until the camera shifted and pointed at the ceiling (ruining video for the rest of the weekend). So I go out, try to learn the feel of the very short/sticky A6 tires in this lone session, and quickly realize I'm catching the LS1 Miata hard on many turns of the 1st hot lap, so I back off and build a gap. That's where the video stops.
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