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These two cars went on to clobber me 1-2 in Unlimited RWD. Somehow my limited running time still held onto 3rd place
The car was relatively fine, but I was not, and I was pissed - at myself for not feeling any drop off in braking, not feeling any warning at a total brake system failure, and ignoring the other signs (pads). Looking at the brakes after the shunt, the rear pads were down to about 1/4 thickness but the fronts were down to 1/8th, at best. While they loaded up our gear and got another tire & wheel installed I fought through pain and brief stints of back spasms for a few hours. Somehow in there I did a 10 minute videotaped interview with Whiteline, standing in front of the car. I don't remember much of that. I mostly just lied down in the trailer that afternoon, and we knew our weekend was over.
Brad was shoveling gravel out of the car and removing the brake duct hoses - there's still gravel coming out weeks later
Amy and Brandon had called our hotel and managed to check out of our 2 rooms by 12:15, raced into town and got all of our gear, while Brad and I watched part of one of the Trans Am races. We stuck around for another few hours so Brandon could shoot some more pics of the GTA drivers and paddock, but we decided to leave early and head back to Dallas by about 4:30 pm. I was a wreck and that was the most miserable drive. We made it about 5 hours, with me downing Advil and applying Icy-Hot patches several times, then stopped for the night. We got back on the road Saturday morning and made it back by about 3 pm, and I laid on the couch for the next 36 hours.
When I got back to shop on Monday I made a doctor's appointment and the guys unloaded the car, and we saw the extent of the damage. It wasn't as bad as my back, that's for sure, and we had it fixed and back on track for Amy to drive a mere 10 days later. The actual repair work only took about 2 days and not many parts.
I'm trying to see the good side to this event, so please humor me while I bench race a bit here, heh. Since there's not a results page up on the GTA website for this event yet I put this page (above) together from a Facebook data dump they posted. Looks like my session 2 times from Friday were still faster than about 29 other GTA drivers (14th overall) with only 19 laps taken on this course, using a very worn out set of mis-matched tires. Many drivers picked lots of time on Saturday, including fellow NASA Texas TT competitor Todd Earsley, who dropped a staggering 10 seconds on Day 2.
The TT3 track record at Road Atlanta is a 1:29.64 (linked
here), so I needed to drop about 8 seconds to be competitive, yet the ST3 track record is a 1:35.3, set just this last weekend (same rules as TT3). Knowing where I typically place relative to Todd's EVO when he is racing on street tires, like he was at GTA, I
think I can bench race my way there. For a few weeks after this event I was NOT going to ever go back to this track, but after a bit of time and healing, I'm now thinking... yea. Gotta get back on that horse. We'll do NASA Nationals, and the Test day before. I am hoarding sets of Hoosiers now to be able to take at least 2 sticker sets + a set of R6s to test on for Nationals at the end of August. Its gonna be
hot!
Lessons Learned + Brake System Upgrades + Safety Gear
We've had 5 weeks to investigate the car, and think about what went wrong. Please learn from my mistakes.
1. Don't ever take your braking system for granted. If you are tracking your car at a road course, make sure you have adequate and fresh brake fluid. Fresh brake pads and un-cracked rotors. For heavier and faster cars, seriously consider brake cooling. And if you have one of the heaviest/fastest cars on the grid, consider MORE brake cooling.
2. Don't skimp or shortcut on your safety gear. Fires, rollovers and crashes don't care that wearing all of that gear is inconvenient, costly or cumbersome. Get a quality set of 6-point racing harnesses and make sure they are TIGHT. Wearing a Head and Neck device is a pretty smart use of safety gear, and a fire-retardant driving suit/gloves/shoes is also a smart investment.
3. If you are to the point of investing in aerodynamic aids and aero testing to lower lap times, its probably long past time to have already installed a full roll cage.
4. When going to a new (to you) track and you want to get up to speed quickly, watch some good in-car videos and/or find this track in a driving simulator video game and invest the time to learn the track before you arrive.
Yep, I know... I'm not following my own advice here, but I'm working on all of these things.
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