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Terry riding along with Amy, trying to pass along some pointers
Somehow I still ran a 1:41.5 that day, about a tenth slower than Saturday. And after seeing the damaged front Lower Control Arm I'm shocked we were that close with the extreme lack of camber on the RF corner. Of course if we would have
seen the bent LCA we would have NEVER run the car like that on track. That was simply a stupid oversight. Oh well, gotta credit Ford for making a tank of a control arm that took a curb impact like that and still raced all day Sunday! Craziness...
photo by John Roberts
After the 3rd TT session we let the car cool down, packed up the trailer and headed on our 5 hour journey home. We missed the crazy 4th TT session where a lot of records were broken, and one driver made a mysterious 4 second improvement. There was all sorts of controversy that led to an official investigation and new rules regarding track for future events. Didn't affect TT3 so I mostly stayed out of it, but I was getting calls and texts for a week about this. And looking at the pictures and some videos of TT cars after the event, many were clearly exploiting track limits to gain time. Like I said, this is something that will be addressed at the opening meeting next time so there are no magic laps at the very end of the weekend (without any scales checks).
One thing we didn't have problems with (for the most part) were CELs and traction control faults, yay! I think I had one fuel starve moment but no Check Engine Lights, and the engine ran STRONG all weekend. This is the first time in many months where we weren't chasing CELs, so the busted cats were likely the cause of some of our recent troubles. The motor pulled solid from 4000-7000, but on Sunday without any visibility to the gauges it was hard to tell when to shift. I watched some of our Sunday in-car videos and I was short shifting at like 6200-6500 a lot, and Amy was shifting at around 5000-5500. There was simply no way to see the tach with the steering wheel cocked 90 degrees out and it was hard to discern the RPMs from the much changed exhaust note.
We ran a good old chunk of ballast in the trunk (and were scaled twice at 40+ pounds over each time) to make sure Amy wasn't going to end up light when she ran. We really need to look at a "quick change" ballast system so we can switch the weights between the 2 drivers quickly, as it is easy to forget that on grid. The lighted and switched transponder circuit was much appreciated and we never once made a lap with it turned off or unplugged. Should have done this switch panel years ago (see above left).
I'm glad we made it out of there with as little damage as we did, and was thankful that we could score two class wins and a track record on such worn out old tires (especially the mis-matched set on Sunday). Looks like our 1:41.4 lap time fell right in between the old TT2 and TTA records, but it is clear that we left a lot on the table - since I was able to nearly match my Saturday times on Sunday
with a bent control arm and three degrees of missing camber on the right front, so that new lap record is fairly soft. I suspect with better familiarity with the track, better driving and fresh tires this car could have run a 1:39 or so, but who knows? NASA Texas won't run this track configuration again until 2016, and I have no idea what car or class we'll be racing by then, but at least the new TT3 record is safe for two more years. Still can't believe this heavy stick axle Mustang has 9 standing TT3 track records now.
With only 3 cars in class we didn't have enough in TT3 to get Hoosier contingency (you need 5 cars to pay to 1st place and 7 to pay to 2nd) but that's not unusual for this first event of the year, with potential sketchy weather in January. The race weekend went smoothly and the weather cooperated, so we got lucky there. Amy and I both had a blast and talked to probably 75+ people who came by and wanted to see the Mustang closer. The car sounded GOOD and the times were OK. Our yardstick class American Iron (with Spec Iron) was
about 3 seconds back, with the top car posting a fastest race lap in the 1:44.2 range.
The wide variety in the TT field was fun to watch, with Costas GT-1 Camaro just accelerating like nothing else. I didn't see him much on track with the 5 second lap time gap between us, heh. Track records were broken in
seven classes (TTU, TT1, TT2, TT3, TTB, TTD & TTE), so people were driving fast down the entire roster.
Overall I don't feel like I drove all that well at this event and should have been a bit quicker. The layout in this direction was trickier than I expected, as you
really had to respect the pit wall near the edge of the track at the exit of turn 17, and we saw several cars back into that wall in W2W races (mostly Spec Miatas, and always with "help"). Being 5 hours away from us it is hard to get a lot of seat time at this course. compared to the other tracks within 1-3 hours of us (ECR, MSR-C and TWS). I really wish we would have done the Test and Tune event here on the Friday before, which would have let us both get more seat time on this unfamiliar layout. Oh well, don't always get to take that extra day away - especially on the busy month we were having at the shop.
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