My second race at Road Atlanta this year, this time with a substantially larger and more competitive group. Weather on Saturday was marginal, it rained on and off all day so we never had consistent traction. Spotty rain is often the worst – you end up with a dry racing line but offline is wet which makes passing even harder than usual. And that’s exactly what happened during the Saturday race, plus we only got about 15 min of racing since the last half was run entirely under standing yellow. My video camera ran out of memory so nothing was recorded but there wasn’t much to see anyway. Qualified 13th out of 20, finished 11th.
Sunday was cloudy and overcast but dry (meaning no rain, but the track was quite damp for our early qualifying session). I managed a respectable seventh out of about twenty cars which put me in a decent starting position for the afternoon race. Unfortunately I drove too conservatively, which simply won’t get the job done in such a competitive field, and lost a few positions as the race progressed. Things got even worse when it went full course yellow just after the race leader (in a different class) passed me so the pace car came out in front of him and trapped me, everyone that I was chasing ran off ahead and everyone that I had been pulling away from stacked up right behind me. But hey, that’s racing! Lost a couple more spots thanks to some nice driving by my competitors, but we all finished without any incidents and had fun. Finished 13th, giving me plenty of room for improvement next time.
Bit of a different crowd this weekend with BMWCCA at Road Atlanta. About a six hour drive to get there (not including the 40 minute traffic jam at the SC/GA state line), arrived in time to get set up in the paddock and meet a few people. Both days began with an early practice session, qualifying around lunchtime, then an afternoon race. Being my first time at this track I had hoped to get a ride-along with someone to learn the track but there wasn’t time, fortunately I had watched enough video to get a sense of things. Unfortunately it did not prepare me adequately – this is a scary track. Turn 1 is a fast disconcerting sweeper, turn 3 is blind until you’re right on top of it, turn 5 requires braking/turning/shifting all at once, turn 10 is at the end of a long straight ending in a downhill braking segment, and the infamous turn 12 is blind, narrow, fast, and has little room for error.
My first time out on Saturday I was just trying to learn the track and ran a 1:54, later in qualifying I lowered that to 1:50 which was good for third place out of five. Chuck Taylor and Eric Palacio were both much faster than me, qualifying in the 1:46 range. The race was uneventful, I trailed a E30 M3 for a few laps before he pulled away and I soloed the rest, finishing with a best lap of 1:49.2. That night Eric and I reviewed video and traqmate data, I clearly saw where I was falling behind and hoped to make up at least some of that the following day.
Sunday I experimented a bit during practice, found that leaving the car in fourth gear for turn 3 didn’t seem to hurt lap times much so that eliminated two shifts. I also wasn’t totally nailing turn 12 so my straightaway speed was down a bit enabling me to eliminate fifth gear on the front straight, I’d hit the limiter if i didn’t lift slightly but an upshift probably didn’t help enough to matter until I learn to carry more speed through 12. Still, turn 1 had me flummoxed and I never did get comfortable with it all weekend. In fact I went four off in turn 1 during qualifying, fortunately I kept it straight and drove back on without incident. Qualified third again with a 1:49.1, Eric’s dad Julio was driving today and he beat me buy a few tenths. The Sunday race was a bit more interesting, I followed Julio for a number of laps to see how he drove, put the pressure on a couple of times but he didn’t slip up or give me an easy pass. Eventually I combined a good run through 12 with a faster car passing us from behind and slipped by him in turn 1, from then on I drove clean and held on for second place with a best lap of 1:48.9, still far behind Chuck Taylor who finished first again by turning 1:46s. Hopefully I can find another 2-3 seconds so I’ll at least be in the hunt when NASA-SE runs here in three weeks.
While packing up I noticed that my front 888s showed significant groove of death wear, I highly doubt I’ll be able to run them much more before they become unsafe although moving them to the rear might help a little. Annoyed that I won’t get my money’s worth out of them, but at least I have a fresh set of RA1s sitting in the garage. Long drive home (fortunately no traffic problems) but judicious use of the load pedal and drafting semis yielded over 17 mpg, and I was able to fill up twice in SC where diesel is $0.30/gal cheaper. Plus my fantastically awesome wife Valerie had dinner waiting for me when I got home
Pics from Amber Eller Wooten (Shaun’s wife), thanks!
2010 Season, Race Results, Video | jtower | 
March 18, 2010 23:04 | 
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