jasonberkeley

Weird weekend due to weather!

I didn't do the Thursday test day, which apparently was nice out. Friday we woke-up to rain and a wet track. Not too many people went out. I tried, but my windshield fogged-up so bad I could see a thing and came in. Turns out my blower motor was hanging by the pig-tail, as the three mounting screws had stripped! Bummer.

Friday afternoon qualifying got cancelled due to fog that restricted the visibility between worker stations. A good call by the stewards. They changed the schedule so that we had a single qual session that counted for both races. Qual for all eight groups was Saturday am, and eight abbreviated (10 laps instead of 12 laps) in the afternoon. Or so we thougt...

Qualifying:

1) Jim Lynch, Viper 2:24.139

2) Jason Berkeley, C5 2:27.933

3) Dave McNeil, 430C 2:30.748

4) Mike Newlander, C5 2:34.434- Mike's gearbox broke after only three or four laps.

5) William Wade, 360C 2:37.493

6) Michael Waszak, C5 2:37.900

Lots of ST and STO and GT cars in between all of us due to big time spreads.

For the race, two laps in, a GT2 Porsche Cup car went off at turn 1, through the gravel, and backed-into and on-top-of the tire wall BEYOND the gravel trap! Looked like he had some ride! Driver was ok! After two laps of full-course caution, they blacked-flagged the session for 40 minutes. As a result, stewards shortened our race, and all subsequent races to only seven laps. First lap would be under caution, with three green flag laps. This meant we had only four (4!) green-flag race laps! A bummer, but the stewards did the best they could to make sure everyone got their two races on for the weekend!

Race 1 Results:

1) Jim Lynch 2:24.662

2) Dave McNeil 2:28.043

3) Jason Berkeley 2:29.343

4) Mike Newlander 2:34.661 (driving Joe Joenig's BMW M3 T1 car that he loaned to Mike! Very cool- he had never driven one before!)

5) William Wade 2:37.099

6) Michael Waszak 2:37.547

The Fall Line guys seem to have figured-out how to get the 430C to work with 360C brakes and uprights. Dave improved a bunch every session / race. The car is gorgeous, but, as we all know, has ridiculous straight-line speed. The restrictors spec'd for the car don't seem to do anything, and need to be adjusted. He blew by me on the straights like I was in an SSC car. I have a brand new motor, LG headers, and my car is down to 3200lbs with my fat-*** in it.

Joe Koenig happened to bring his BMW M3 T1 car as a spare, and was racing his STO M3 (a very cool car, btw). He was kind enough to loan it to Mike Newlander after his tranny broke in qualifying. Cool move. Mike did a great job considering that the very first time he had ever driven one of these things was in the race!

For race two, we gridded in the same positions as for race 1, and off we went. Twelve full laps, no double-yellows! I lost my brakes half-way into the race due to my own stupidity and not tightening my right rear bleeder screw enough. I know. I managed to hang onto fourth. Mike Waszak got me on the last lap. I was was coasting the last half of the starights, engine braking, than going fast through the corners, accelerating about half-way down the straights, trhan coasting and engine braking into the next corner. I left before they had time sheets. I think Mike Newlander had some kind of problem with Joe's M3. Not sure what happened- maybe he'll chime in.

Race 2:

1) Jim Lynch

2) Dave McNeil

3) Mike Waszak

4) Jason Berkeley

5) William Wade

6) Mike Newlander

The weekend was a mixed-bag due to weather and not as much tdack-time as we hoped for. The stewards should be commended for doing a great job adjusting on the fly as they were dealt with multiple situations that were beyond anybody's control. Great seeing Jim Lynch, Mike and Mike again. I met Dave McNeil on pitlane during the black-flag. Very nice guy.

Always great to be in Elkhart Lake!

AU N EGL

Great job Newlander.

Short-Throw

Jason,

Very nice summary. I wanted to post a report but was completely exhausted from the 4 day event.

Like you I went out Friday in the rain. Had an initial fog problem but the RainX on the windshield prevailed.


The 911 GT2 made a very daring move and tried to pass on the inside of Turn 1. He left himself no room to brake in time, just crazy.

I have video of the car where it came to rest and if I can figure out how to post it I will. (It's a camera system that records in an odd format so I don't know how to edit it.)

As Jason mentioned, my car had issues after 2 laps of qualifying. I believe it's actually a linkage issue and not the tranny itself, but we checked what we could without getting into a 7 hour project just for a peek.

A big thank you to Jason who offered any parts I needed but my crew made the call to load it up and save it for the shop.

I now had to re-register the BMW M3 my friend let me borrow. Thank you Joe! As a result I had to start at the very back of the grid because I was now running a car I didn't qualify in. It turned out to be a blast. I moved up nicely before the course went full black. After the second green I moved up more spots and found 4th place. I was pretty pleased with the effort as I had never even sat in the car before. My first lap was in a race.

I keep remembering how disgusted Lance Knupp was after last year's race after Tucker won it in the F430. The Fall-line Ferrari will be faster each race as they fine tune the set-up and Dave also gets more familiar with the car.

I still think it's absolutely insane to allow that car in the T1 Class.


I'd love to post more about the pro's and con's of the Vette vs the M3 as race cars but the home crowd here may not like it, and you all know I'm a vette fan/supporter 1st and foremost. Long story short I was going to stay back and just get a counted race but after green green green and turn 1 the car was already talking to me.


I always say there's something to be learned each day and I learned a potentially expensive lesson today. I want to share it with you all in hopes that it may prevent someone else getting caught by surprise.

Race day 2 -- I was all set to have some more fun and Joe (BMW Owner) said 'go for it' today. As Jason said, we gridded the same way again due to time constraints so to the back of the grid I went again. It's actually fun working your way up through traffic.

About midway through the first lap I accidental hit the windshield wiper switch to high. The wipers feverishly ran back and forth. I've driven plenty of BMWs while instructing but I was lost on how to turn them off in Joe's car. I radioed to the crew and they keep telling me to push the stalk all the way down. I was unable to accomplish this initially.

When I first sat in the car pre race I was comfortable on where all the 'racing ' switches were, but who cares about everyday switches right?

I ended up getting so distracted that I mis-shifted the car. No excuses, my error. I had to bring the car in as a result and my race was over DNF! I won't know the extent of the damage til next week when they open up the engine. The good news is it was still running and pulling hard when I came in with normal temps, so we'll see.

It happens too many times where a new student hits the wiper switch by accident and I tell them to ignore it, or I simply shut it off. I needed me sitting next to me today!

Two things I should have done:

1) Ignore the damn wipers after I couldn't resolve the issue immediately.

2) Going forward learn all control locations on the car. It was 85 and sunny today so the last switch on the car I was going to need was the wipers.





Given the conditions, it was nice to see the Stewards make a call on safety first even if it cost us all some track time.



Thanks for the cheers Tom!

You have no idea how many times I went back and forth deciding on whether I should hop in a different car last minute and race it with zero seat time. I'm glad I did despite the 2nd day mishap. I learned a lot and will pass it on in future passenger seat rides!



Mike

AU N EGL

Mike I can imagine your back and forth decision on the weather.

Put your video here http://www.vimeo.com/

jvp

Mike -

What camera is it? Is the format AVCHD?

jas

Short-Throw

Tom,

I have many accounts to upload video including vimeo. What I don't know is how to do is edit the video so it's watchable. It's too long right now as it contains 15 minutes sitting on grid and 20 minutes sitting in the hot pit when the course went full black. I'll get some help on editing somehow.

Short-Throw

It's a Smarty-Cam. The quality is the some of the best I've seen.


After I downloaded the video off of the card I noticed there was no extension on the file, just 2 letters and 7 numbers. I tried renaming it and adding extensions to no avail. How do I figure out the format? I'm sure somebody at Fall-line knows.

jvp

Looks like they cut to H.264 MPEG4 format.

How large are the files? Gigs or hundreds of megs? Any chance you can get me one of them? I can figure it out from there...

jas

jasonberkeley

FYI- After running the Wilwood slimlines with Gary Hoffman's AP floating rotors for two double Nationals at two of the hardest braking tracks in the country, I figured i'd give an update. Stopping power is the same as stock. No better. Big advantage is durability. I'm not changing pads and rotors after every session. Still running the same set of rotors after the doubles at Blackhawk and Road America- both very hard on brakes. Third set of pads on the front are on the car now after the two doubles, and they still have another session left in them. If I had been running stock brakes, I would have gone through at least four to six sets of front rotors, and four or five sets of front pads.

As to sound readings with the LG headers, I blew sound again in the first race, and had to short-shift to 4th coming out of turn three and lug-it all the way down to turn 5. I tried a host of new stuff, including some cool turn-downs that have a perforated cone in them. None of it worked. I reverted to my ghetto-rigged SuperTrapp set-up for the last race. It looks like some bullet mufflers are going to have to go on the car. I don't see any-way to get headers to work without mufflers. At least not the LG set-up that I have in my car.

Short-Throw

I had two cracked rotors on OEM set up at Blackhawk and only one this time at Road America. They are truly disposable.

SIK02SS

Sounds like it was a fun weekend, and a good re-fresher :o

Mike, what was the transmission issue? Up-shift/down-shifts? Not going in gear? This was my problem, and we played with the shifter location as it had a little free play to slide fwd/bckwd ~ 1/4", enough to keep it from going into gear on shifts and having a feeling of being 'locked out' of gear.

Jason-- At our last double nat, Ryan was killing me into a couple corners with his Wilwood setup with Wilwood rotors (I'm on C6 calipers, SS pistons, and OEM rotors), I was barely able to fend him off through a couple corners (until I let him by via dropping a couple wheels). I had previously tried braking as deep as he was in 1 spot and could NOT make the corner there 2 different times and had to straight line it off track. I think the Wilwoods are better than a complete stock setup. But I still refuse to run them..

jasonberkeley

I haven't run the stock vs the Wilwood back-to-back, so my comments are based on where I typically braked with the stock brakes vs where I was braking with the Wilwoods at the two tracks (Blackhawk and Road America) I have run at this year. So far, whenever I have tried to go deeper on the Wilwoods, it was at the expense of being able to get down to the apex. That being said, I had always run Hawk DTC70 pads with the stock brakes, and was running Carbotechs with the Wilwoods. I am going to switch to the Hawk pads next time out and see if it makes a difference.

My driving is also still a bit rusty, considering how little seat time I had last year, and how curtailed this past weekend was in terms of track time (and my screw-up with the bleeder screw causing me to lose brakes for half of the last race).

SIK02SS

I understand that completely. I was out of the car for 6 months and it felt like a year; can only imagine how you must've felt getting back in!