After a long day in the sun and wind, talking to lots and lot of folks, and helping Costas with his many repairs, we were all dead tired. But with some volunteer help (thanks Toth and Robert!) and a borrowed LED drop light (thanks Marc!) we pulled the RF wheel again, swapped it to the left front (the spare set of scrub tires were
really bad) so we'd have the freshest A6 on the Right Front once again (most turns were left hand). On jack stands it was hard to get under the car and see much but it looked surprisingly OK, so I spent the next half hour fixing the front toe problem - it had almost 2" of toe out. Again, it was pitch dark by now and I was there without our normal crew of Ryan and Brandon, so I didn't see the very obviously
badly bent RF Lower Control Arm. I really should have asked for another set of eyes, as this was a major piece of damage that was missed, which was on me. I would have put the car in the trailer at that point and just called it a day.
The broken wheel was obvious, and it failed exactly as it should have considering the massive curb hit the car took. The wheel absorbed a lot of energy as it deformed. Once we had the toe more or less back to zero, it still ended up with the steering wheel at a 90 degree angle to its normal setting (covering up the tach and gauges while driving), but it was getting too late and COLD that I punted and figured "we'd just drive it and shift by ear". We wrapped up our paddock for the night and walked over to the Saturday night NASA dinner and annual awards banquet. We had a great time there eating and drinking and catching up with friends, listening to this "School of Rock" band made up of a bunch of kids. They rocked the house, no lie.
They handed out NASA Texas regional awards for all of the W2W and TT classes, with Amy getting a 3rd place trophy for TT3 while I got 1st for 2013. We wrapped up at about 9 pm and then hit the hotel, exhausted. By the
end of Saturday several folks in TT had picked up some speed and we fell from 3rd to 7th fastest, but stayed about 6 seconds ahead of the other two TT3 competitors and had another new track record set (this car's 9th) for the weekend. Here's the
end of day Saturday TT results in PDF form.
We rolled out Sunday morning and the entire area was blanketed in
heavy fog. You couldn't see 100 feet and traffic on the highway was doing about 40 mph. The fog delayed the first session by half an hour, until the corner stations had enough visibility to see each other. That morning Costas was bugging me to take a closer look at the car and slap on some caliper heat indicator decals at the same time (more on this later), but I was too damned tired to do it.
What's wrong in this picture? The RF wheel should have -3.5° camber but it was more like at -0.5°. This wasn't super obvious to the naked eye
I went out cautiously in TT session 1 on Sunday more as a shake down test than anything else. I was pretty slow but I just wanted to see how the car felt, as I had a feeling something else might be broken. The car had a wicked push in left hand turns, but it was manageable. I came in early and was not all that fast, but the car was in one piece. Obviously the RF lower control arm was badly bent, and we were "missing" about 3 degrees of negative camber. This made the RF wheel go into a
slight positive camber setting (see picture above) under load - not good for grip!
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The brake temp indicator strips on Costas' calipers showed how much one caliper got hot in a session after a brake duct hose came loose
I went out again in TT session 2 and was pushing hard for another 1:41 lap, or quicker. I had watched some other drivers doing some CRAZY lines (some of them well outside the marked boundaries of the track) and noted a few places where I could save some time, while still staying on what I considered the track limits. I knew that there would likely be some pushback once people started sharing some of their videos and pictures of cars going waaaaay off course (that did happen later, as predicted). I will always show all of my best competition laps so I stuck with the "conservative line" that did not go
around the outside of any curbs, over the line of the marked pit out lane, or using the paved runoff "beyond the paint". This statement will ruffle some feathers, but so be it - I think that we should all stay on the course as marked and not go 4 wheels off to gain an advantage. The TT director and Regional Director met about this and then issued a letter after the event. They noted that all future NASA Texas TT events will have supplemental regulations to
clearly define the course limits for the TT group.
So back to the race weekend. I was mired in traffic in TT session 2 on Sunday but I finally got around a TT1 Corvette that held me up for two laps and was good to go. I finally had some clear track and was pushing on hot lap three, hoping to finish the lap without catching the back of the field. About halfway through this lap I noticed two cars slowing rapidly ahead of me - a TT1 Corvette and a TT2 EVO, who were now on their cool down lap. I caught them fast heading into turns 8-9-10. The Corvette saw me at the last second and jumped out of the way to let me by, which opened up the mirrors for the EVO. He tried to get offline in the middle of Turn 10 but it was too late and I was pushing too hard. I had a quick 4 wheels off and on trying to get by him while saving the lap and leaving enough room to pass. Stupid mistake, and nobody got close to anyone, but I shouldn't have tried to go two wide in that corner, even with the point by. Trouble was I could see we were catching the back of the field and knew this was my only shot at a fast lap, due to the early traffic I ran into.
Well crap, 4 wheels off DSQs the whole session for me, and the grass packed up the lower grill so it would have run hot, so I quickly came into the pits. I was on a low 1:41 lap on the predictive timer, too. I negotiated with Amy to let me take another shot and I eventually took two laps in TT session 3, then we performed a hot pits driver change and she took another 2 laps in the same session. Why would we do that driver change? Well honestly we were trying to get out of town early (and skipped session 4). She wanted to get some laps in, but I wanted to try to set another fast lap to secure the win for the day, too. Because in TT sessions 1 and 2 we had nothing but junk lap times. Turns out you are not allowed to swap drivers in a single TT session - we had asked the TT director beforehand and he said it was OK, but he since learned that isn't allowed. Oh well, live and learn.
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