this beast is a pig on fuel but capable of over 17 laps on tires my best time with the car is 1:42.182 peak times are posted around lap 5 of the tire cycle 14 lap schedule is recommended times drop significantly after that 46's. care must be given when accelerating off the hairpins not to spin.
God, I hope that time is with the draft. After reading some of the early practice reports and seeing lots of times in the 44s and a best of 43.5, I was pretty happy running 43.5 on my bad tune, changing the front camber and seeing 43.1s in my lounge.
I realized as soon as I got into the race lounge that it would be a cold day in hell before I'd see those times again. The track felt icier and my top speed was lower due to lifting more than usual exiting the bus stop.
Unfortunately I was reasonably nervous when the race started because I haven’t race with actual humans in a couple months and I didn’t want to kill anyone. My first half dozen laps were tight and I lost time on each lap, running mid- to high-44s--not what you want to see when low-43s were what I was used to.
I’d say by about ten laps, the two cars in front of me were gone and the cars behind me were gone so I was able to run a lot of the race by myself. With no cars next to me, I was able to settle down into the low-44 range, but I could tell that wasn’t going to win it.
About half way through the race, I did notice I was catching up to the cars in front at a pretty good clip. I cut the lead from 30 seconds to 19 seconds, then made my only mistake of the race, lost focus, entered the bus stop too deep and took a shitty angle through it and played in the grass. No crash, but I left the bus stop 31 seconds behind and knew winning was now out of the question.
Running different cars was kind of neat because there was so much strategy involved. I had my race planned down to how many liters of fuel I was going to take on each stop so I ran out crossing the start/finish on the final lap, but even with all the preparation, there were several times during the race where I thought to myself, WTF?
I was one of the first cars to pit and I think I might have been in third when I pitted after lap 14. I left the pits in tenth and found myself in fifth after all cars made their first pit. I spent several laps trying to figure out how I lost two spots during a pit when it takes everyone the same amount of time to change four tires. Finally, after a lot of bitching and moaning to myself, I realized that I took 36 liters of fuel on the pit stop and probably not everyone did.
Some 55 laps in, my car started to lose power, right at the 200 mile mark I’m guessing. I was coming up on some slower cars and it took me 3 or 4 laps to finally get by because I simply didn’t have the ponies. That’s about when I started to realize Metal was behind me and had been for some time, I knew I had to make one more stop for tires and a splash of gas and I guessed he was either going to pit once more or go some 20 laps on a set of tires. I thought either way was a win-win for me.
After my final pit, I was in third behind Grill and Metal and I thought I could catch Metal, and thought with some help from above maybe I could steal it from Grill. I think despite the lower horsepower, I ran the final ten laps faster than the first ten. I had plenty of distance on the fourth place car and took out after Metal. I started seeing 43.7 after 43.7 after 43.7. With a couple laps to go, I finally caught up and saw Metal. I smiled because I knew he was toast (sorry Metal). I don’t know how many laps he’d been out on those tires, but they finally gave entering the speedway and I didn’t have to work for the pass.
Still, I had nothing for Grill, and if he was running 42.1, I can see why. When I get on the PS3 later today, I’ll post my Corvette tune. In my lounge it was good for 43.151 and on a perfect lap, I think it would do just under 43, but nothing like Grill. You could get 15 laps on a set of tires, but the last couple would need to be under a judicious right foot. I could push hard for 8 laps, push slightly for the next 3, be gentle for another 2, and then baby it from there.
As I mentioned before, I enjoyed the race and preparing for it. I think most of that was because I enjoy the track so much. Not sure I’d be interested in running two hours at the Cape Ring tracks, but I really look forward to anything at DRC. The two hours is a bit much for me. My request, if we’re taking a vote, is to max it at 60-90 minutes. Also, I’d love to see one of these every month. There are plenty of cars to choose from and with a good track like DRC, you can run shitty cars and it’s still fun.
Thanks to everyone who showed up.
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Topic: American LM Race TBD at 9pm (updated 12/11) (Read 31877 times)