continued from above
Anyway, since I was the quickest car to show up for grid on Sunday 's session 2 grid, I lined up P1, which makes for a nice, traffic-free session - well, for at least 2 laps, until you catch the back of the field.
Here's the best lap on Sunday
Luckily I was able to find a tiny bit more time and my first lap 1:51.530 time was a new lap record and took the lead in TT3. But not by much! Jerry Khory slapped on a new set of Pirelli slicks and dropped FOUR seconds, nipping at my heels by less than a tenth of a second. GAH! I didn't see that coming. Now his ST2/TT2 car running in TT3 gave me a bit more reason to be concerned, but Jerry was cool and agreed to be re-classed if he beat me in a later session. In the end I held onto the TT3 win by .071 sec and scored another lap record and 2 more Hoosier tires; 4 tires for the weekend. That was a smidge quicker than the newly set AI qualifying (1:52.9) and race lap records (1:53.8), set by Mike Patterson on the way to four wins in American Iron over the weekend, in his AST equipped 4th gen LS1. So that's 3 lap records for TT3 at the 3 NASA Texas events so far this year.
Amy was struggling a bit but managed to get down to a 1:59.721 in her last session, just eeking under the 2 minute mark. The high speeds were a bit more intimidating to her, but with more seat time I'm sure she'd find the time that was in the car.
Sunday TT Final Results: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/N...ay%20Final.pdf
There was a heated battle in TTB among several Vorshlag/AST equipped E46 M3s, with Allen Page taking the win. And KenO got his car's right side damage all fixed up, from the TT incident at MSR-C. Sadly there was another TT incident this event, and more meetings other changes in TT will follow.
The red E36 above has a PlastiDip spray paint job, which was interesting to talk about, too. And while I didn't instruct at this event I was definitely busy, working on a number of people's cars who had issues, including the OEM splitter that decided to come off at 145mph on a Leguna Seca, another stranded car we helped get towed and repaired in town, wheel changes, and other various "hey, come take a look at this" requests. But it is all good, as this is why we come to these events - to meet folks and try to help out. And sometimes, just maybe, win a set of tires.
We didn't leave the TWS site until 7 pm Sunday, and ate dinner with Costas and several other friends in town, so we got home about 2 am. Long day, long weekend, but Vorshlag was slammed on Monday and I had to hit the ground running. Because the shop was packed, orders overflowing, and in less than 2 weeks we had another NASA event to prep for...
Drag Racing at North Star Dragway, April 28, 2013
Just to show how little time off we actually get from racing, this
last Sunday I went drag racing with my friend Ed - who has helped us at countless events over the past few years. It was my pleasure to go help
him at the track for a change! Amy, Ed and I towed out to this 1/8th mile strip in Denton, TX and spent the day sorting out his 4th gen LT1 powered, 275mm Drag Radial Firebird.
This was the first time he had this car out in 4.5 years, and a lot of the recent work on the rear suspension and exhaust has been done at Vorshlag. Used to run 5.30s in the 1/8th, so it isn't slow.
Anyway, had a good time and I learned a lot about the "Texas 275" and "Extreme 275" classes of drag racing. Good stuff.
What's Next?
As I write this we are
thrashing to load up and head out to New Orleans for the
NASA @ NOLA, May 4-5th. The newly won set of Hoosier A6 tires just arrived, as did our new tire machine, new Vorshlag jackets (just in time for a cold snap today) and new Vorshlag embroidered track chairs. We signed up for the Friday test-n-tune day to try to learn this new track, which I took all of 4 laps on in January when I was there for the BFG Rival test event. Amy and I are both driving again and we hope to continue the TT3 streak... fingers crossed!
My new F-350 Ford Powerstroke dually finally arrived and we hooked up the enclosed trailer yesterday at Janco, tweaking the heights and getting it all set-up right. It tows SO WELL I cannot believe it took me this long to buy a dually. And for once we are racing the Mustang with almost no changes - 2 events the same in a row. Granted, we only had 2 weeks between events, but still... doesn't happen often.
And we also got some good quotes and pictures of the red Mustang in the latest issue of NASA SPEED NEWS in an aero article written by
ThinkFAST author (great
racing book!) and aero guru Neil Roberts. The article is linked
here and the entire May issue is
here.
We have lots of shocks and springs in stock at the moment for the S197 Mustang. The Vorshlag/Bilstein StreetPro kits are here along with a number of M-5300 lowering spring options. The AST 4150s are in stock and shipping out for this chassis as well as BMW E36 and Subaru GD STi 4150 models. And we have even more new products coming, as we are working furiously to catch up with this new level of parts demand from Vorshlag. If you have a back-ordered camber plate - thank you for your patience, as we now have every camber plate car model shipping except one, which is due next week. We are also making production batches of both E36 and E46 BMW LS1 kits, with headers and mounts coming together quickly.
Check back in a "week or two" for my write-up after NOLA, and for some other exciting S197 suspension development news.
Cheers!