First 2010 Race Weekend

Last weekend was the first SCCA regional race weekend of 2010 at Thunderhill. Due to some business travel and an excessive number of weeks spent sick in January, our build was behind schedule and I finished bolting the car together the morning of the test day Thursday. I’m an organization nut so being unprepared is not my style and we were definitely behind on this one. The car hadn’t been on the dyno and it hadn’t run for more than twenty minutes at a go.

There was a lot of “new” this weekend. All new car built from the ground up. New trailer. Even a new race suit! My old OMP was simply too small and with the new head-restraint seat in the car, it was too tight for me to comfortably turn the wheel while belted in. SafeRacer is awesome and shipped me four different Alpinestars and Sparco race suits I could try to see which fit me best. I will write up a review later but I ultimately settled on the Alpinestars 2010 GP Pro. It is lightweight and feels soft like pajamas with the Carbon-X base layer. My last suit tended to hang on me like an oven mitt but the Alpinestars suit fits like it is bespoke.

Thursday was the test day so I cautiously scrubbed in tires, bedded brakes and made sure there were no leaks over the three afternoon sessions. Times were slow which I expected with the new Toyo RA-1 tires – they take a number of sessions before they can rip a fast lap. Thursday was about making sure the car held together and I have to give a huge thanks to my chief mechanic Thomas Barrett for his assistance in the build process. We didn’t experience a single mechanical issue all weekend long thanks to his skill and attention to detail.

For the first race, I qualified the car 11th with non-ideal tires and had a good race running the car up to 7th place but ultimately giving back a couple of spots and finishing 9th. Being brand new and with limited testing, the handling wasn’t ideal but we did make some changes that were heading us in the right direction. The new motor from Mike Haag of Haag Performance ran like a top but it was obvious on the straights that we need to finish breaking it in to get that last bit of power.

Qualifying for the second race did not go as planned when one of my belts popped out of the camlock and I had to bring the car back to pit road to get it resolved. A big brake lock up on my first flying lap and poor cooperation with another car led to a mediocre lap time. Somehow I lucked out with 10th but ultimately a torrential downpour came through and I didn’t have rain tires. I tried running on 4/32″ tires but I could barely get into 3rd gear before hydroplaning in a straight line. There simply wasn’t enough water channeling and I decided not to risk the new car or my fellow drivers by sitting out the Sunday race.

Not a perfect weekend but it was very solid for our first outing. Race lap times were within a second of the winner with a completely untested and undeveloped car. We’ll be fully sorted for the Laguna event at the end of the month and with the insanity of the build process behind us, there won’t be any further strategic mistakes like showing up without rain tires.

Results from MyLaps

Regional #1 Qualifying (11th OA, 9th in SMT)
Regional #1 Race (9th OA, 7th in SMT)
Regional #2 Qualifying (10th OA, 9th in SMT)
Regional #2 Race (DNS)