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In-car video from Day 1, Session 3 laps... best of 40.66 seconds.
The track layout looked simple enough - eight turns and very little camber change, but with the ample rumble strips and high speed offsets it was pretty tricky. Many GTA drivers had offs and there was even one pretty good sized crash (Mustang lost brakes and backed into a tire barrier, totaling the car). Ken and I were pounding out 15-20+ laps in each twenty minute GTA session, whereas the other Time Attack series regulars would take three lap stints and call it quits (warm up, hot lap, cool down). And when you see the insane turbo cars that GTA caters to, it kind of makes sense. In their unusual categories they have Enthusiast, Street, Limited, and Unlimited, with further FWD/AWD/RWD segregation in each class.
The Unlimited AWD and Overall winner, GST's "Subaru" with 670 whp and 2500 pounds with a composite body and lots of aero.
Showing the GST's rear mounted radiator and diffuser, plus the massive driver & controls setback.
So what moves you up a class? Your tires. Almost 100% of the rules revolved around
tire treadwear, something I have never seen before. That meant that the even the lowest preparation level Street & Enthusiast cars running on 140+ treadwear tires
still had 600whp or more. I'm not making this up - these GTA cars are no joke when it comes to power. There isn't much difference in preparation/power from there to Limited and Unlimited, just the tire compounds. Limited was 60-140 TW and Unlimited was 0-60 TW. What did I bring? 40 treadwear Kumho V710s, which moved me all the way to Unlimited RWD. In a street car that weighs 3540 pounds... oh boy.
Well nobody else showed in Unlimited RWD, so I had a class to myself. But that meant there would be no payout for a win either. Still, I wanted to compare my times to the overall fastest, if I could be close. Surprisingly Ken and I weren't doing half bad on the first day, with the 2nd and 3rd fastest times in the earlier sessions (we ran more laps per session and I guess figured the course out sooner?). By the end of day one, I had fallen to 4th quickest time overall. The Mustang was VERY loose on all corners and I was chasing the set-up all day. Turns out all of these
handling complications were from the tires. Two new tires up front overpowering the very worn out rears. I'm such a dummy... I know better than to run old tires with new tires!
After a big delay getting into the gate at TMS (they wanted to keep us out until 10 am!), we finally got back inside by 9:15am for the Saturday portion of the GTA event. I had stopped by the shop and grabbed the used 315/30/18 Hoosier A6's that Amy and I had run at the Solo Nationals a couple of weeks earlier. They were half gone, but still in better shape than the rear Kumho's, and laughably the A6's had a higher treadwear than the V710's! (using treadwear as an indicator of grip is a mistake, IMHO). So we were going to ask the "tire guys" that follow the GTA circuit to swap tires on the Forgestar wheels for us, but their machine would have trashed the lips.
Ed and JasomM instead took the wheels to a local Discount Tire, swapped the V710's for the A6's, and made it back with six minutes to go before our first session of the day. With air tools, two jacks, and many hands we got the wheels bolted on and took to the track in time to get in some quick laps.
I made three laps, came into the hot pits for a tire bleed... nobody was there. Crap! Drove into the paddock, bled the tires down, then had to wait in line to get back on track (since I left the hot pits). I finally made it back out and within a few laps I had busted off some 39 second runs. Woo! That was my goal - break into the 39's and I did it in the first session. I did another four or five 39 second laps just to make sure, then I came in. My original goal was once I ducked under a 40 second lap, I was going to stop for the day and try to preserve these semi-fresh A6's for some additional autocross use later this year, before we switch to the 2013 GT for our ESP thrills.
I felt great and was thinking I was sitting in 3rd place overall, against some crazy ass race cars. The GTA crew didn't have the official times displayed for another hour and right before session two was about to start, the printout was displayed for session one... and my name was nowhere to be found. WTF?!
In-car video from my Day 2, Session 1B runs... which don't count, because the transponder was tuned off!
Oh no.... (lightbulb)
Oh no! I quickly ran to the car, opened the hood, and immediately realized that I screwed up and left the wired AMB transponder turned off for the entire first session! GRRR! I was so mad at myself and had wasted the only cool track session on the A6's we would have that day. You see I had turned the transponder off overnight, while the car was parked in the trailer, to save the car battery. So none of my 39 second runs were timed by the GTA folks and I only had my in-car AIM Solo to go by. Well crap.
Then the transponder switch, which is backlit when "On", started flickering. Then it went off right before my eyes. I tapped it and it came back on. Tapped it again and it went off. The switch was dying?! So Ed quickly hot-wired the transponder literally seconds before the second session started. I got at the front of the line and waited. And waited. After 10 minutes they told us that a car had gone off and hit a tire barrier, and the flat bed was bringing it in.
Yeeesh, that looked ugly. The driver was fine, but the car was toast. The clean-up took the entire 20 minutes and the second session was cancelled. Meanwhile the temperatures climbed from the high 70's into the high 90's and we had our 1.5 hour lunch break. The whole crew piled into the MegaCab and we got some food a few exits down the highway. I was fit to be tied as I watched the temperatures climb. Matching that 39 second time seemed impossible as the track temps crept up past 120°F, but I was bound and determined to get a sub 40 second lap. We got back from eating and I went out in session three and started using every inch of the track. Here's some of the last laps in that session, where I finally cracked off two 39 second laps! This was after three previous sets of three laps that resulted in a best of only 40.12 seconds.
Whew!
That took everything I had and as you can see in the video, I was using the "Green Line" - with the inside two tires over the lipstick stripe and maybe even a tiny bit on the grass. Hey, we asked in the driver's meeting and they said "only one wheel has to be inside the lipstick", so I keep eeking wider and making my line at the start/finish offset straighter, and wasn't using as much "green" as one particular driver who shall remain nameless (
cough... Ken... cough). I never got all four off (which would result in a DSQ for the entire session) and managed to squeak a couple of high 39 second laps in, with the results showing a best lap of 39.975 seconds. It wasn't as quick as I ran in the morning, even when I was taking no chances and barely touching the lipstick, but it was sub-40 and I was happy with that. The ambient temperatures were 100°F and I knew I wasn't going to find more than a tenth better lap than that, with as overheated as I and the tires were both getting.
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