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Watkins Glen

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Watkins Glen Empty Watkins Glen

Post  Wallhugger60 Sat Sep 29, 2012 5:41 am

Mornin fellas, gettin ready to head over to the track inna few. Hopefully iracing is accurate lol cuz I ran quite a few laps in preperation. My brother in law has a really nice camera in the SM so I should be able to put up a video if everything goes right. I'll let ya know later how it went Very Happy .

Wall
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Watkins Glen Empty Re: Watkins Glen

Post  Forgetful Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:23 pm

Good luck, have fun and keep the rubber underneath you.


Last edited by Forgetful on Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:24 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Post  group44 Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:24 pm

Nice Very Happy Hope your days going great and can't wait to see you tearing up the track.
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Post  vkaifh Mon Oct 01, 2012 8:15 am

How did the trip go? I hope you had a great time; can't wait for some pictures and/or videos.
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Post  Wallhugger60 Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:04 pm

Well first of all no videos Sad . The Gremlins were out in full force Saturday lol Twisted Evil . Nagging electrical to start with ending with changing a rear control arm in under an hour to get my last session in. I got some pics and my sister in law got some more so when they're all set I'll put them up.

Here's a quick replay of the day:

Session one...cars running for 20+ minutes to warmup/checkout and dies 15 minutes before I'm supposed to grid and won't restart. Determine a bad ground on the Crank Sensor wire. Repair and car starts and runs. Miss first half of session one, get over with my instructor who drives the first 2 laps to show me the line and such (standard procedure) and the checker comes out to end the session Neutral . Good thing is iracing is very close and no surprises. Car seems fine.

Session two...Instructor and I get set and go out, me driving this time. Do 4 laps and car coughs and shuts off Mad. Happen to be very close to pit entrance but can't quite get around the cornar and out of the way. Instructor flippin out lol "WE CAN"T SIT HERE, WE'RE GONNA GET CREAMED"!!! So driver (me) calmly reaches in and turns the key and starts the car lol, and we putt back to the paddock Smile .

Lunch...sorta as we're trying to find the problem. Finally determine the #1-2 coil has a bad connection. Older Miata wiring harnesses are suspect at best I guess. Little old Japanese lady had a bad day I guess on the assembly line. Car starts and stays running Very Happy .

Session three...Get the whole session in except for last lap because Group 1 HPDE session ends as Tony's race needs to grid, so I pull in the pits and hop out sorta, and he hops in (better than I hop out). Instuctor happy to have whole session without any life threatening incidents.

Race for Tony (bro-in-law)...Starts well and is moving up through the pack. I'm by the start finish line and watch him go by and take trun 1 REALLY wide which he told me I prolly should never do so I'm thinkin uhoh. Does the lap and as he's comin around turn 11, pull in the pits and stops. Pit guys come over, everyone jiggling back of car, he pulls in the paddock. I'm thinkin I did something to the car. Make my way back to the paddock which is a very long walk I might add and he sees me and starts laughin. He was catching the guys a few spots up and was really pushing hard. Gets to turn 11and goes way too deep and realizes he has a choice...lift and spin with lotsa traffic comin fast, or hang on and hope he doesn't schmuck the wall too hard. Well he didn't hit the wall too hard, but hard enough to bend the "crash bolt" for the lower control arm left rear. Ends up with 1.75 inches of toe which is why the very wide turn 1 Shocked . Race over Sad. So we get the bent bolt out. It's a 12 mm bolt about 12 inches long (sorry about mixing the SAE and Metric I guess that would be about 300mm or 30 cm?) and is actually designed to bend instead of the suspension. Well it took most but not all the damage and we figured the control arm must be tweeked. It's now 4:30 and my last session is for 5:30. So we figure no way. We decide to just get it changed cuz it's needs to done for him to race on Sunday and it's still light out. He actually has a complete set of them, both sides, front and rear lol. Take our time and change it out and would ya look at that...it's only 5:30. Well we gotta check it to make sure it's good right? So I only missed about five minutes of the last session bounce .

Session four...So here we go out to the pit lane and I hear and feel a little buddabuddabuddabudda as we're movin. The Pit Marshall is first very surprised to see the car rolling again, and then tells Tony "you got a little bent rim problem". Well Tony knows them all well and gets them to let us out "cuz we ain't gonna be goin fast anyway". He's a qualified instructor in case you were wondering so it was all good Very Happy . So the last 2 sessions of the day they combined HPDE groups 1 & 2 for some reason. Maybe they thought 53 cars with novice drivers would be way more fun to watch at once than 25 or so...not sure. So I'm goin pretty good, doin my point byes for the faster cars to pass and so on. So about lap 5 Tony sees that I keep breaking left too sharpley after the left turn in the boot instead of easing over, I get over more quickly than need be, which I didn't realize was in issue or that I was even doing it. So all of a sudden he yells "He's comin around you" which obviously scared the crap out of me, and there was the fact I could no longer see the 2010 Vette that was behind me a second ago was not now. Tony's reaching for the wheel, but hit the blinker arm and I caught this silver flash in the left mirror and tweeked the wheel right just as this guy goes by me like I'm parked, on the wrong side with no point by from me which is not supposed to happen. Then I see he's got 2 off in the grass (wet grass) and I'm thinkin to both of us "don't steer...don't steer". Well he doesn't and I don't and he holds the car somehow and we keep goin. Tony's like "think about it later, now just drive the damn car" which really helped cuz he knew I was shook. But it worked and I finished the session well and still had fun doin it. Like he said later, what I did was unexpected which is why I'm in group one and still need an instructor, but what he did was wrong and he knew better being in a higher level than me. So if nothing else I saw the importance of be more aware of what's happening around me.

So we get back in and after a bit this driver comes over (with Group 2 Leader behind) and offers his hand in apology which was pretty good imo. Tony said the group leader would have told him he screwed up and needed to come over, especially cuz he was in the next car behind us lol and saw the whole thing happen. But no damage, no injuries which weas the best part.

So sorry for the book, and I'll get those pics up as soon as I can. Thanks for listenin,

Wall
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Watkins Glen Empty Re: Watkins Glen

Post  Forgetful Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:34 pm

Thanks for sharing.

#envygreen
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Post  group44 Mon Oct 01, 2012 11:26 pm

Sounds like a typical day at the track Razz Man, what an experience. You had it all, from running a premier track, to thrashing in the pits, to a little bit of white knuckle just to spice it up. Nice that the Vette driver owned up to his mistake, even if he was coerced into the apology.
Hope this event only serves to fuel the fire, as these write ups are great to read, and I'd sure like to see some more Wink
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Post  HWKII Tue Oct 02, 2012 12:20 am

That. Sounds. AWESOME. What a Face Thanks so much for sharing!
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