On Monday, August 29, 2022 at 5:34:53 PM UTC-6, Alan wrote:
Well, there were definitely lows and highs this past weekend.
I started off on a low, when I got all the way out to Abbotsford to hook
up to my tow vehicle... ...and realized that I'd forgotten to transfer
my garage and trailer keys to my tow vehicle when I moved over my racing gear.
Then I went to the track and I was buoyed back up by the fact that my friend, Keith (from whom I rent the garage for the car) had his keys to
the garage and the spare key for my trailer hitch lock was hanging up inside.
So back to Abbotsford with very little time to spare to hook up the
trailer and make registration... ...which became an impossibility when I accidentally dropped the nose of the trailer off the ball. The time it
would take to get it back onto the ball would have meant arriving after registration had close for Saturday.
But there was still Sunday, and since I'd registered in two classes in
two separate groups (as a Formula F in Open Wheel 2 and as a Formula
Libre running without the restrictor in Open Wheel 1), I was still going
to get a decent amount of track time.
From there, the weekend unfolded... ...decently.
I went out for qualifying for Formula F and after helping a friend learn
the lines, I set out to do my own best lap... ...only to discover that
the gasoline that seemed to be on my dipstick was just from the foam in
the fuel cell being moist. So I didn't turn any truly representative
times, but somewhat fortunately, no one else turned much of a lap and I ended up second on the grid.
In Formula Libre, after pulling the restrictor, my best time was
1:14.722; good enough that I was in front of two FCs that still had a 15-20hp advantage on me and wings as well. But after looking at my
tires, I realized I had over-compensated for the ambient temperature and once up to race pace, the tires were too crowned.
For the first Formula F race of the day, I drop the tire pressures by
2psi (to 11psi front and 13psi rear), and my best race lap was 1:13.958; better than I'd run despite once again having a restrictor to limit the power to the level of the Kent. I won the race by more than 49 seconds, although if the new guy, Rob (running the stickier Hoosier Club Ford
tire to my American Racers), hadn't had to brake problems, I think he
and I would have had a terrific battle for the win.
In the first Open Wheel 1 race on Sunday, I knew I was just out there to have a good time. In all honesty, 130hp and no wings for added downforce
was simply not going to match up to the 145-150hp and wings of the FCs;
to say nothing of the guy in his F1000 motorcycle-engined car (a car of
that class holds our outright lap record) turning laps in about 1:05.
But I still think I gave a good account of myself. At the end of the
race, there were still to FCs behind me, neither of whom managed to turn
a faster lap than my best.
Then it all came apart again.
While putting the restrictor back into the car for the second Open Wheel
2, Formula F race, I managed to drop a bolt down the front of the engine into the same area as the belt for the oil scavenge pump and alternator
and the search for it took me past the time I had to get the car to
pre-grid in time for the race. And with the race that really mattered to
me no longer a possibility, I simply decided that running the car with a bolt loose in the engine bay near exposed, vital components wasn't worth
the risk of going out for the final Formula Libre race in Open Wheel 1.
Rob, who'd had braking problems that put him out of contention in the
first race of the day, did make the second race after finding some
o-rings that would cure his brake caliper leak, and his best lap of that race was just a whisker faster than my best lap of the first race of the day; just 15 thousandths of a second faster. But he was on the Hoosier
Club Ford tire and the consensus seems to be that they are about a 1.5-2 second advantage around our track.
So a foreshortened weekend...
...purely my own fault...
...but still a lot of fun.
Others were far less lucky.
Erle's weekend ended during qualifying for race 1 on Saturday, when—out
of the blue, his car snapped viciously to the left while braking for
turn 1, and he hit the wall hard. No damage to him, but his Tiga is
going to need a LOT of repair; both front suspensions, the front mounted radiator, parts of the rear end, bodywork. It was a bit of a mess. But
the construction of the car did its job and he walked away with nothing
but sore thumbs from being unable to get his hands away from the
steering wheel quickly enough.
One of our newly graduated novices, Courtenay, never got to race a
single session on Sunday, as the car she is sharing with its owner
suffered an engine problem while he, Don, was running the car on
Saturday to complete his novice program.
My good friend Pierre, whom I beat in qualifying despite him being in FC
to my FF (unrestricted) but still...
...he lost the car coming out of turn 9 and ended up going backwards
into the inside wall at about 85mph. Once again, the damage to the car wasn't good, but the driver was completely fine.
The new drivers in FF bode well for the coming year, and once we all
come to a consensus about what tires to run, I think we're going to get
some good racing for everyone.
yawn
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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