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TT session 3, Session 4 and session 5 time sheets from Friday
For the Friday's final TT session (TT session 5) we we removed the Grey Forgestar 18x12's with the well worn R6s and slapped on the white Forgestar set with the the used set of Hoosier A6 tires. Clouds were rolling in, temperatures were dropping, and at the beginning of this late afternoon session it was down to 88°F. Amy and I had to swap wheels without any power tools, so it took a while and we barely made it to grid in time. Then we had another long delay on grid, as had been the case several times previously.
During this grid delay Brian Smyer shot the pictures above, as well as several others that he put into
his blog post.
"I fell in love with this mustang from Vorshlag so thought I would share a few images from Miller Motorsports Park" Brian also got some great images out on track, which I have scattered through this post (anything without the Vorshlag watermark was taken by him). Good stuff. After he took the above two pics the clouds rolled in and
it started to look like rain again. Winds picked up, and many of the cars went out on sticker tires in this session, thinking it might be one of our last dry times for a bit (storms were predicted to roll in hard for Friday night/Saturday).
I left a gap to the rest of the field on the out lap, because I had been catching several cars gridded higher than me on the 1st and 2nd laps out, time and again. This session looked like the best conditions we had seen all week, and I had what I thought would be faster tires and some clear track ahead. I got a good run out of the last turn and pushed the revs in 5th gear down the front straight. With the higher AoA on the wing I only saw an indicated 150 mph into the braking zone (down from 155), but it seemed to stop fine. As I'm rolling into the throttle exiting Turn 1... the rear tires washed out, lots of counter steer, no help. I put 2 wheels off on the exit of T1 at 100+ mph and blew the lap. Took a cool down lap and tried to set up to try again.
After my 2 off I had let about 6 cars that were behind me go by, after I had gathered it up. So my next hot laps involved getting held up by virtually all of these cars as I re-passed them. The tires quickly felt greasy and the car was oversteering more than it had all week. My 2nd lap was only a 2:09.031, on the A6 tires. I knew I was in trouble and took another cool down lap, where I let a few of the same cars back around me, trying not to impede their laps. Started another hot lap, it was looking better on predictive timing, then exiting Turn 6 and I got blocked by two of the SAME cars that I had pointed by on my cool down, including one of the same cars that had blocked me on my previous hot lap. Very frustrating, my session was blown, the A6 tires were now overheated, so I threw in the towel and came into the pits. In that session Mayfield was 1.5 seconds quicker than his previous best, down to a blistering 2:04.170. Nagel ran a 2:07.808 as well, so it was a good session to get a fast lap in. My 2 off and subsequent blocked laps blew the session for me, but the tires never felt very good anyways.
After this session we buttoned up the trailer, left the Mustang out in the rain, and headed to the airport through a sandstorm to pick up Ryan and Brandon, who finally made it to SLC by about 4:30 pm. This was the night we switched hotels and the better accommodations, free drinks at the bar, and a good meal in SLC raised our spirits.
Day 3 - Saturday
We arrived at the track at 7 am and got to work on the car. We had a new game plan - don't wait until Sunday to put the sticker tires on, as the weather was too unpredictable and any of the next 4 sessions might be our last chance at a dry track. So Ryan and Brandon had the scrub A6 tires dismounted and the lone set of brand new "sticker" 315/30/18 A6 tires went on ($130 mounting charge from the Hoosier guys, ouch). Ryan tweaked the front swaybar, dialed some wing back DOWN, and I went out on track. It was 71 degrees, still very windy, but sunny and dry. Track was green from rains the night before, but I went out and pushed it hard anyway.
I was gridded behind Nagel and gapped him hugely on the out lap, so I wouldn't catch him on the first lap. Since he was running Yokohama slicks that took several laps to heat up he was a good bit slower for the first 3-4 laps in every session, and I still caught him by Turn 6 on the first hot lap. Got a little held up into T6 but took the pass on the exit. What freaked me out was his brake lights didn't work almost the entire week (they were operational by Sunday), so I had to gauge at when he got on the brakes, which was a bit earlier than me into T5 and T6. After I got around him it put me on a bad trajectory into T7 (Whitchcraft) and I got a little bit of curb into T8, and again into T11, which really caused the car to bumpsteer hard. I knew the pass and both subsequent curb touches had cost me some time, but I still managed a 2:06.6 on my first hot lap with the new A6 tires.
Dropped two full seconds on my first lap on stickers, with tons of mistakes and delays... man, I was regretting only bringing that one set of new tires! The previous 2 days felt like a big waste of time, now.
Time Trial Results for TT session 6 and 7 on Saturday
On my second hot lap in this session I was on a flyer when my foot slipped off the brake pedal downshifitng and braking into T6, and I almost had an off. I managed to gather it up, with the left front tire getting way out onto the outside curbing mid-corner, and of course that lap was blown. At that point I wanted to "bank" the first 2:06 lap and started a cool down to then come into the pits... but I changed my mind at the last second and went ahead and took a 3rd hot lap. I had already turned off the video so I don't have details but apparently I got fairly clean track and managed to drop 3 more tenths and put in a 2:06.356. Considering that these were A6 tires, with which I almost always put in my best laps on the 1st lap and they fall off a cliff after that, I knew the car had more in it. After that 2nd 2:06 lap I came in to bank it. This new time briefly pushed me into 3rd place in TT3, ahead of Nagel. Most everyone was faster in that session and Nagel dropped a good bit of time on his 5th lap, and jumped back ahead of me back into 3rd with a 2:05.562. Mayfield dropped
another 9 tenths to a 2:03.170 and finally jumped ahead of Ken Smith (who had a 2:03.3 from TT session 3) for the TT3 lead. In this session Smith had put in a 2:04.110, with the rest of the class was 2 seconds behind me in 4th position. The two tight battles in TT3 were between Mayfield and Smith for 1st in the 2:03s and Nagel and me for 3rd in the 2:05-2:06 range.
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