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We didn't shoot any video during our rain driving, as it was pretty slow, but it sure was entertaining! Probably should have got a few laps on video to show how wet it really was. You know its bad when NOBODY will go out on track with you, but we didn't care - we were learning the track layout, and that's what mattered most. During lunch we saw the track drying and swapped the car back to the Forgestars mounted with 1 weekend old Hoosier A6 tires we used at TWS (I will talk more about the RAPID wear rate of A6s at the bottom of this post), which had
some tread left. Then we both took a full 20 minute session each in the dry. The times dropped from the 2:30-2:15 range in the wet to 1:53.8 in the dry for me and 1:57 for Amy.
During these afternoon dry sessions we would come in from the track to the hot pits, where Ryan was waiting to check/bleed down tire pressures and tire temps, while Brandon was shooting pictures from numerous locations. Ryan noted some tire temp issues and adjusted the camber and tire pressures to eventually get the temps even across each tire, and the performance felt better, too. It is always a big plus when we can have him at the track with us! He does track-side work with a World Challenge team (and is at COTA while I'm writing this) so this was nothing new for him, and in fact he said "this is the
least work I've ever done at a race weekend. I like it when drivers don't crash or blow up!" And the pictures always look SO much better when Brandon can come along, as well.
Left: We used up 3 of the 4 scrubs on Friday. We had one "keeper" and the rest were junk. Right: New tires going on for Saturday
I sent Amy out again in the final session of the day to get some more laps under her belt, and she got all the life out of the tires, taking 3 of 4 down to cord (and they wore almost perfectly across the tread). The above left pictures shows one of the fronts, which was down to base rubber across the entire tread and just into some Nylon cord on the edge. We brought a set of sticker A6 tires (the winnings from the NASA @ TWS weekend) and pulled the wheels off late that afternoon and took all of it to the NOLA Race shop for mounting and balancing. They were slammed but promised us they could get the tires ready by 7 am the next day.
Throughout the day Friday we had a number of NOLA track members and NASA racers stop by, including Mark Council with his S197 autocross car (black Mustang in above left pic) and another guy with an FR500S clone / ex-Miller School car (top right pic, blue Mustang). We ended up working on Mark's car a little in our paddock area, replacing some missing hardware from his Vorshlag camber plates (we bring tons of spares in the trailer). Since we ran out of tires at the end of the day and were out of work to do, we decided to hit the French Quarter in New Orleans and have a night out on the town. Mark joined the 4 of us from Vorshlag and we tore it UP!
The 4 of us loaded up in the F-350 and Mark followed us in his Mustang and then we got out to walk the Quarter. After stopping for the prerequisite beignets at
Cafe du Monde (a famous coffee stand that has been in business since 1862), we sauntered over to Bourbon Street "for a quick drink". Several rounds of Grenades later we sloshed our way to Mother's for some authentic Cajun food. And more drinking. The whole time we were talking with crazy cajun accents (since Brandon and I are both from Louisiana), after watching
this SNL sketch (
Maine Justice!) in the truck during our drive. Needless to say, there were
hundreds of gator sightings that night in our walks down in the Quarter!
We drank some fine beverages and ate some excellent cuisine and had a lot of fun that night. Amy was our designated driver and after doing some 4 wheel burnouts in the dually leaving our parking spot (she crazy!) we ended up at a Best Buy at 10 pm, where Brandon replaced his aging phone with a Samsung Galaxy S4 (which was so nice I got one myself a week later). We were all back at the hotel by 11 pm and up again to head to the track by 7 am.
Saturday May 4th - TT Race 1
We arrived at the track by 7 am, then we split into two groups. Ryan and Brandon went to the race shop to get the newly mounted tires, then they and Amy got that set of wheels mounted. At the same time I rushed off to 3 meetings: Instructors, Time Trial, then the HPDE 1&2 meeting to meet my student. I was signed up to instruct once again and had a brand new to HPDE student that owned this beautiful Parnelli Jones edition Saleen Mustang, shown below. Tracy and her boyfriend David were super nice and I worked with her for all 8 track sessions over the next 2 days, where she improved dramatically. Her supercharged Mustang sounded great and had excellent power, brakes, tires, and even a decent suspension - something I'm not used to in most new student's Mustangs! Brandon took more pics of this car located
here,
here and
here.
After this quick round of meetings I ran back to our paddock spot and they had the Mustang ready to go out on track. The plan was for me to run all 4 sessions on Saturday and one TT session Sunday, then have Amy drive 3 of the 4 TT sessions on Sunday. It was our best shot at winning more tires, or so we presumed. It is always difficult sharing a car in any form of racing, and TT is especially hard, as there are only 4 sessions per day to drive. And on Saturday, the first session doesn't count except for grid position (the "Warm-up"), but all 4 count on Sunday. My transponder was turned on, the video camera fired up, and I got to grid with about 3 cars ahead of me.
Left: Bradon's Ruckus helped made sure I made it to grid for HPDE instruction! Right: Shane Umbarger was there; he bought the 18x9" WedsSport wheels I used in STX
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