Eagles Canyon Raceway - BFGoodrich Hot Lap Challenge
This was the main event of the weekend and the one I was most worried about. Once we arrived at ECR I found that Amy, who had left 15 minutes before us, had already arrived and set-up our truck/trailer in the perfect spot: right next to the track in the paddock area. We quickly set-up the new roll-out shade, which then became a popular spot for many competitors to hide from the sun throughout the day. I had the front toe set at 5/16" total out for the autocross, to help this pig to turn, so I reset the toe at the track to 1/8" total out (which is what we normally run for track use). We reset the tire pressures to 35F, 30R, bumped up the compression and rebound a bit on the Motons, and re-checked camber (-4° up front). The oil was topped off and everything was checked; after the first session the front tires had gotten up to 47 psi, so we lowered them to 37F/32R hot.
Left: Vorshlag trailer was an oasis of shade. Right: Picture of the Mustang from the ECR clubhouse deck
There was a driver's meeting at 9 am and one of the race organizers approached me about talking about the track, after they went over flags and passing rules. There were six of us in attendance that had driven ECR before, but somebody told them that I had more laps here than the others. I guess... maybe I did? I ran TTU in the first NASA event at ECR in 2008 (setting the fastest TT time and a TTU record in the E36 Alpha car, which has long since been smashed), had run two LeMons endurance races there in 2011, and dozens of other events over the past 5 years at this 2.5 mile road course. So I got up there and spoke to the racers for 10 minutes about the layout, the various turns, pit in/out, runoff areas, places that can get you, where corner stations were, etc. Basically: ECR is a great track with a bunch of tight turns joined by a variety of 1000-2000' straights, and the fun feature of 70' elevation changes in some areas. It's hard on brakes, bumpy in areas (good shocks help), horsepower pays off on the straights, but there is no high speed cornering and you rarely see cars exceed 125 mph. I talked about lap times as well: 2:15 is what Spec Miata runs, and a 2:00 flat is FAST for street tires and R compounds alike (AI record is 2 flat).
Left: ECR Track Map. Right: Running the Vorshlag E36 LS1 "Alpha" car at ECR in Oct, 2008
After the driver's meeting I ended up talking to a dozen more folks about tires, the course, and the surface. People came by the trailer all day to discuss set-ups and I was glad to help. Our car was far from the ringer that day, as there was some SERIOUS hardware that I knew would be fast, and a few of the locals were worth watching out for: Louize Gigliotti in the LG-prepped ZR1 and Todd Earlsey in the Evo Dynamics prepared EVO were two. Todd regularly runs in NASA TT and Louis sees all sorts of track events in crazy cars all the time. I talked a bit with Dave Michaels, who was driving the Lingenfelter (LPE) prepared 5th gen Camaro, which sounded pretty gnarly as well. There were several 500-800 whp cars in attendance that could be spoilers, but I was hoping that
ECR track experience would pay more dividends than
brute horsepower.
Well, it turns out that having
both didn't hurt!
The ZR1 had me worried because of his experience, skill, the fact that it started out as a $120K ZR1, the 345 Michelins I noticed it was riding on, and the fact that LG had prepped the heck out of this one (this is Lou's personal car). LGMotorsports knows Corvettes and this was no run-of-the mill ZR1, having a fully built motor, ported blower, custom splitter and wing, track-worthy suspension, carbon ceramic brakes, and lots of other modifications they have made to it for hill climb competitions (it recently dyno'd at 755 whp and 820 wtq). So yeah, our daily driven Mustang GT with a stock engine and some bolt-ons was a
bit out-gunned on the horsepower front. I felt like our Mustang wasn't probably going to hang with these crazy muscle cars, 600 whp GTRs, Lambos, ZL1 Camaro, C6 Corvettes and ZR1s if they were driven halfway well.
Left: Ed talking to race control, getting me sorted before going out on track. Right: A beautiful Cuda making laps, the ZR1 coming in.
I was also a little iffy about my tire choice, as the Nitto NT-05s were prone to overheating in the little 30 second autocross runs the day before. How would these handle track sessions in Texas summer heat? The answer is...
they didn't. I will go ahead and say something that a few HPDE gurus won't agree with:
Nitto NT-05s suck. These tires are greatly inferior to Yokohama AD08s, Bridgestone RE-11s, Hankook RS3, and Dunlop Star Specs that I've tracked and/or autocrossed with on this same car. The problem is - all of those other tires are under 200 treadwear, except the Dunlop, which has a maximum size of 275/35/18. I wanted
more tire for this car, because when I ran ECR in December 2011 in the Mustang (with quicker lap times) on 275/40/18 Bridgestone RE-11s it was very "rear traction limited". My hope was that these wider 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s would better take the heat and abuse that the Mustang would dish out. Bad call on my part.
After making a few slow parade laps behind a pace car I came in and waited in grid for the first real timed session of the day. This was about 10:30 am, which ended up being the coolest session of the day (where fastest laps were turned by many). After being told by the race director and camera crews to move to the front of the line, I ended up being the first car out (with I think Luis' ZR1, the LPE Camaro, and the Todd's EVO behind me). I mistakenly thought (from reading the Optima event regs) that we would only get 2 sessions all day and that each hot lap (3 laps per) would count
cumulatively (like at a One Lap of America event). They had said that any off could DSQ you for the session, too (also sort of like OLOA). So this meant I had to make every lap count, right out of the box, and have zero mistakes. When every lap counts you drive differently, and I hoped my prior ECR experience and aggressive driving would pay off.
So... the posted event regulations weren't actually how they ended up running the track portion. Instead it was all about getting one golden lap for the day, like any normal NASA Time Trial. That makes a lot more sense, and we finally confirmed this "just try to get one good lap" strategy by the 3rd session on track. Live and learn, and never trust the pre-published event regs (because to this point, few of them applied to this actual event). After seeing how much this series had grown in 2012, and how this was the first "big TV show" versions of the Optima Qualifier events, it wasn't a surprise that they would be tweaking the format as the weekend progressed. Its all good.
Click for in-car video from my first of seven on-track sessions of the day - and my slowest
So the in-car video from my first session is shown above. They lined me up first, with a group of 3 or 4 cars, with a scheduled 3 hot laps. They wanted to figure out spacing, camera panning, etc - eventually they had groups of 5 to 8 cars on track at once. I never saw anyone else in the first heat (except the EVO parked on an access road, after it blew off an inlet hose). I have to admit that it was a bit nerve racking having 2 bullet cameras added to your car (one pointing at me, one exterior) in addition to my own in-car video set-up, plus half a dozen manned and elevated camera stations around the track. The TV crew told us at the beginning of the day that they were trying to space us far enough apart on track so that each camera station could follow each car through the corners separately, for nearly 100% on-track video coverage for each driver. These camera stations were hard to miss, too - it was
WEIRD having guys way up on cranes with mounted SpeedTV cameras tracking you through a corner around Eagles Canyon. I've never been filmed from multiple TV cameras like this and it made me a bit nervous at the beginning of the day.
While many cars had problems, our little Mustang kept pounding out lap after lap
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