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Recon
Headed up to Mid-O last week for the NASA-GL event. After the Rd Atl broil, I was looking forward to cooler temps and less humidity. And northern Ohio did not disappoint.
With only 4 days between events, I knew I had to keep to a tight schedule, and spent Mon-Wed in the garage until midnight trying to get the fender damage repaired a little, check pads and rotors (4 trackdays on same rotors and still going!), and BOLTCHECK the entire car. By Thursday, I was ahead of the game and was looking forward to more than 5hrs sleep. Guess I'll learn not to get cocky. Loaded the car into the trailer, finished hooking up the truck and started to move everything into position to pull out on Friday, when suddenly there was smoke pouring out from under the hood. Grabbed my fire extinguisher (everyone carries one in their tow-rig, right?) popped the hood and could see red hot wires burning. Sprayed them down (note for future, fire ext powder kills grass. Good to know.) After a quick inspection it appeared all the burned wires belonged to the brake controller system. So I unhooked from the trailer and pulled the truck back in the garage. Started replacing wires as best I could, found the place that Uhaul ran wires through the firewall without a grommit, which I'm guessing caused the short, but by 3am, I still didn't have trailer brakes, and I said to hell with it, Ohio is flat, right? Pulled out Friday afternoon anyway, and made it to MO with only 1 Volvo taking his life in his own hands when he brake-checked a sleep deprived race driver with no trailer brakes.
At the track, Ken and Shaun quickly tracked me down and started forcing beers upon me, while dragging me around to various campsites and making me eat grilled pork and chicken. Life in the paddock is tough. I was lucky enough to escape before the tequila came out.
Saturday morning I was by far the least hungover, and was able to get a quick sketch of the track from Danny Popp before heading out. I'd only ever watched races here, in person and on TV, so I really didn't know what to expect. TIGHT and SLICK was my first two thoughts. There is traction on the new pavement patches, like CMP, but get off the patches and forget it. A lot of compromise corners. Generally I was fast in places I needed to be slow, and slow in the places I needed to be fast. Running every minute of every session, my times were improving, but not fast enough for this model of patience. Finished 3rd of 6 Saturday, and never was really competitive. Saw a Z06 on its roof for the first time after a freak accident in the carousel. Somehow it climbed the tire wall and just slowly tipped over. Driver ok but definitely a bad day.
Saturday night the beer drinking began in earnest. I didn't escape early. The stiffest competition of the weekend was for who had the worst headache Sunday morning. Continued to get faster as the day progressed, even as the track got slicker. Managed to nip 2nd place by .1sec, but first was over 1.5sec away and not even in sight. Hung around for 3 hours to run the final session of the day. Dipped into the 1:36's on the first lap, and spun on the second. With the car in one piece, and progress made throughout the weekend, I decided it was a good time to put it on the trailer and head back to where people talk normal.
Big thanks to Ken, Danny, Greg, Matt, Shaun, Jerry, and the 20-30 other people I met, for the warm welcome. Hope to see yall at RA in December, and I'll definitely be back up next year.
_________________
'02 Z06 - TTA
www.nobuckscoffeehouse.com
Last edited by jason on Wed Aug 19, 2009 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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