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By 6 pm the racing was wrapped up and NASA threw a great Saturday night party, as always. This one was special: they had a massive crawfish boil, lots of beer and soft drinks, chicken cooked on a grill, and the School of Rock kids ROCKED THE HOUSE for almost 2 hours. We had a great time relaxing, bench racing, drinking and eating with racers and friends. After the Passing Under Yellow Practice fiasco and then getting run off track only two sessions later, I was more than ready for a few stiff drinks, heh. What a crazy day!
Left: They had an amazing spread of food. Right: I got another TT3 lap record certificate and trophy - wish that 1:37.790 lap was mine, tho!
An old college / racing buddy Chris Ramey (who is a National Champion autocrosser and who also spent several years racing wheel to wheel in SCCA) did his first NASA TT event in his red C6 Z06 and he had an absolute blast, so I'm sure we'll see him back. We had a big group at a table eating and drinking, with Marc Sherrin, Jason Toth, Adam Faust, me, Amy and Todd Earsley... then Ramey started making Scotch and Sodas and we floated a keg of Shiner. Amy was still feeling cruddy so we left early and crashed out at about 9:30 pm.
Left: Chris Ramey was always known as Captain Oversteer - and he didn't disappoint! Right: Jamie Beck's 2013 GT has all of our goodies
This was an unusual day for Time Trial - TT1 had an astonishing 9 entries, TTB had 6, TT3 had 5, and every class was unusually brimming with drivers. I was happy to end up in 5th overall out of the entire TT group, to win TT3 and to reset our old lap record by such a large margin, which was even quicker than the new TT2 lap record. They gave out trophies and lap record certificates - and while our's had the wrong time and even Vorshlag was misspelled, its the thought that counts.
NASA TT - Sunday at TWS
Left: Spec Miatas "bump drafting". Right: The Costas "ResQ" Supra, former stage rally car, made its asphalt debut with Jason Toth driving
We got to the track early, Amy was still under the weather and not driving for the day, so I went out in TT Session 1. Well, before that it got a bit crowded and busy in our paddock area, Amy was kind of out of it, and we brought no crew with us. So I'm doing my pre-track checks: tire pressures, fluid levels, visual inspection of tires, torquing lug nuts, and put about half a quart of oil in.... and apparently left the oil fill cap off. Someone was talking to me and I got distracted.
I went out in the first session and felt like it was a
little down on grip in left hand turns. Never saw any smoke or indication that anything was wrong. I put in a 1:48.712 lap, throwing away some time in Turn 14 where I slid the car and lost time - its obvious in the video but not worth editing and trying to match the data to. Speaking of that, Brandon is having a helluva time with the data merge and it is apparently due to the abnormal video file format that my Sony HD vidcam puts out, so we're on the hunt for a new video camera that uses the same SD cards. I don't want a GoPro, but something with a real lens and that can use a remote start/stop/off like our existing unit.
Left: Sunday's TT Session 1, my only session of the day. Right: Sunday end of day TT official results
I tried a second hot lap in that session, it was a clear lap but I slowed down to a 1:49 and change and it was obvious the car was slowing down. I took a cool down and came in. I hopped out of the car while Amy opened the hood - "Terry, COME HERE PLEASE." She showed me that there was OIL EVERYWHERE. The oil cap, that I had left off, had fallen down in the engine compartment from where I left it. I checked the oil level and the engine was about a quart low (but we run this motor with +1 quart over full). Its amazing what a TOTAL MESS you can make with quart of oil! I fished out the oil cap, undamaged, cleaned up some of the oil mess, but it had pumped engine oil down and through the wheels all over the right front tire. This was big old mess that could have been bad. Didn't hurt the motor, never lost oil pressure, but this explains why the grip fell off in hot lap 2.
Left: Leaving the oil cap off for 2 laps spilled a quart of oil out. Right: It was pumping through the wheel. This was my own damned fault!
Hot engine oil on a brake caliper could have flashed over, caught fire, and ended up in a very stupid mistake. It was still 77°F and overcast in that session, so we had the same conditions as Saturday. I thought about it and I could have gone out in TT session 2, but there was so much oil all over the car and I was once again about 6 seconds ahead of 2nd place that we didn't risk it. Amy still felt like crap, so after we stuck around to watch TT session 2, we loaded up and headed back to Dallas before lunch. TT1 got faster and their times dipped into the 1:45s to 1:46 range, but we just weren't going to catch them at our power levels on this high speed track. Any why should we? Those cars have nearly
double the power per pound carried.
It looked like it was going to rain any minute, and sure enough, after we got 10 minutes from the track it started to rain and continued to come down throughout most of our 3+ hour trip back to Dallas. I really wanted to save this set of Hoosiers for the Global Time Attack event at Road Atlanta in a couple of weeks, so it was a good decision to opt out of the last 3 TT sessions of the day. Conserving consumables.
We watched live timing for the remaining TT sessions and SU races via Race Monitor on the way back, which was pretty exciting. TTB was a heck of a battle with our customer Allan Page in an E46 M3 fighting against Dysen Pham in an S2000, which has been almost unstoppable in our region ever since these cars got a "dyno reclass" and essentially 12 free points to play with for mods. Allan had taken the lead early on, reset the TTB record, then Dysen switched from Maxxis tires to a sticker set of Hoosier A6s and retook the lead and got down to a 1:52.824 for the win with Allan at a 1:52.972 - close finish! Another customer of ours, Norm Wilhelm (shown above), had a dominant win in TTD in a BRZ on MCS dampers and Vorshlag plates we supplied him with. Norm ended up besting the 2nd place TTD FT86 chassis twin by 2 seconds.
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