Runoffs at RA

[BruceG]

Anyone know how Greg Amy finished in STL? He was running 5th close to the end......but SPEEDCASTTV only showed the top 3 finishers.

[JeffYoung]

Mylaps is up.

[BruceG]

Thanks,Jeff...

[BruceG]

Mylaps is up.

Didn't see it on mylaps...but SCCA had it.

GREAT RACE,GREG!!.....FINISHED 5TH AGAINST SOME VERY TOUGH COMPETITION. iNCREDIBLE BATTLE FOR 1ST PLACE BETWEEN DRAGO AND HUFFMASTER.

[Greg Amy]

Hi, Bruce, thanks for asking. Here's a synopsis I wrote elsewhere.

I deserved the P5. I brought a decent car but my unfamiliarity with the track showed. As "simplistic" as this place looks, Road America is not a track to f**k with. You either need to think you're immortal or you need a lot of time to work up to the speed you have to maintain to go fast here. I'd suggest from that perspective I had a lot easier time with Road Atlanta and Watkins Glen (tracks where I've held lap records after only a few visits) than I have with Road America (a track I'm still WAY off of). Come drive this place sometime, you'll see.

My aero probs were self-induced. I had three issues: one, the front airdam was below the ride height limit of 3". This was a setup error. The airdam is a Tom Kelly part made for Improved Touring and should be at the wheel rim, but I guess the ride height that the car was setup to was too low.

The second issue I knew about but hoped to get away with: the extreme front corners of the airdam stuck slightly outside the body outline. I think this is due to the cheap Chinese eBay nose piece I put on instead of a good quality nose, as Peter Keane is running the same piece and he checked out fine. I'll look into fixing that for 2013.

The third issue was that the Gurney flap on the rear wing was not completely seated on the trailing edge of the wing before it was riveted on, and my wing chord was 15 thousands too large on one end. That was easily fixed by removing the flap, but since I decided to remove the front airdam instead of modifying it and re-setting up the car I decided to leave the rear wing off.

I do believe the removal of these pieces had an effect on the car, but probably not as much as one would suggest. During the race I did notice that my turn-in push was worse than before (I never could dial it out before, even with the airdam/undertray) which caused me to lift sooner/brake harder to get the nose planted and turned in. I also noticed slightly more tail-wagginess mid-corner, which I actually kinda liked, but since it was new it sapped a bit of my confidence in high-speed stuff like Turn One, the Carousel, The Kink, and Billy Mitchell Straight, all really fast time-catching-up stuff. In casually looking at my data of the race versus the 2nd qually with the aero stuff I notice time lost pretty much from T6 all the way around the track through Billy Mitchell. Finally, I noticed a pronounced lift of the center of the Fiberglas hood, something I'd never noticed before this year (I've been running the airdam all year.

Had I more track time I think I could have driven around all this.

Plus, the car didn't look nearly as hot.

As for the race, I lost touch with P3/4 early and could not crawl my way back. I got a good start and bumped Bob Beede forward and we were edging in front going into braking, but Drago moved over on Bob and we both checked up. Rich Walke in the RX-7 got outside of me in T1 and as I turned in I lost the back end on cold tires and had to correct, lost momentum and Rich surged forward on Bob's ass. My being a bit tenuous on cold tires for the next few corners let them get away, and from that point onward I just couldn't get them back. They both showed incredible discipline and avoided tete-a-tete fights that would give me the advantage; Bob's a very talented and experience drive of many vehicles and Rich has been racing since the mid-70s and was at his home track. From Bob's account he was leading in the Wheeler-prepped B18C1/GSR-engined Civic (fully prepped with compression, cams, and all) coming out of T14 and Rich drafted out and passed him at the line for the win.

Regardless, it was a good fight and all three positions were very deserved. I'm disappointed in the result - I'd have been much happier with a P5 had I been in the scrum instead of playing HPDE - but harbor no embarrassment for getting fairly beaten by well-prepped and well-driven cars.

My final point is on Honda axles. You may have noted above that I had an inner boot rip on the original left Raxle on the car. Marty shipped out a replacement and I got it as promised on Thursday. Unfortunately that same inner boot popped off during the first qually and the inner joint was bone dry, with one of the roller bearings seized. Tom Lamb, Dick Patullo, Robin Langlotz and I managed to reboot the original axle and install it on the car, but we were spewing grease out of it all weekend. We felt what we thought was a significant amount of play inside the inner joint itself and between the inner joint and the intermediate shaft, but we kept going with it. I felt a significant amount of hard vibration first lap of the race and every time I went through the Carousel and any hard right turn, but it held on without failure. I'm going to have to do some analysis to figure out what's going on - is this the infamous "you're driving it too low syndrome" - and resolve it. This whole axle thing was a bane in my side in an otherwise reasonably quiet week.

That's 2012. Looking forward to the VIR 13 and for just as much fun in 2013.

GA

10 minutes of Q2, my fastest laps of the weekend (and an "oops"):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl2NOcp01Ns
Race. Didn't drive as well as I'd like (and it's a yawner):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37RHVaatn7M

[JeffYoung]

Excellent vid. Looks like you got the powah..but handling needs some work.

[mossaidis]

Thanks for sharing G! good job

http://www.gatorracingaxles.com/

[BruceG]

You da man, Mickey M!!:)

[Greg Amy]

..but handling needs some work.
Welcome to front-wheel-drive, dood! That right there is pretty much an IT-suspension car, all components compliant, and about 150# less weight. Only thing missing from the race vid versus an IT car is the front airdam; the qually vid has airdam and rear wing (notice a lot less lift and braking).

You should try a nose-dragger some time...hey, once you go front, you may never go back... ;)

Edit: and actually, given recent reports of down-South engines, not much more powah than ITS cars. Only difference between this build and an IT-compliant build is 1/2 pt of compression and some valve springs and retainers...

[BruceG]

Greg....even my feeble attempts to drive Road America in IRACING in different cars was difficult!! Seemed like coming off any of the very high speed straights into curves was very hard to get right.

Nice job under difficult issues!!

[benspeed]

Nice work, Greg. I wish the announcers had mentioned some of your efforts championing the class. I sincerely hope STL goes full national - go get 'em bro!

[Z3_GoCar]

Greg,

What's the tolerance on the wing dimensions? You know you could have taken that much off the back of the Gurney flap with a file. Glad you solved your mounting issue.

[Greg Amy]

Thanks, Ben. But this is an effort of a large group of people; I'm just the vocal/visible one. And I am very confident that STL will be a full-boat National class with a Runoffs Championship in 2013.

Tolerance on the wing measurement was debated (though purely as a technical exercise). One group of inspectors said that the wing dimension is a max as described in the regs, another group said that I should get the tolerance as described in GCR Appendix G.2, "Measurements Standards". That states that a measuring tolerance shall be equivalent to ½ of the final digit of the specification; since wings are 8.50" max, I would get .005". As I said, it was just a technical exercise/discussion (an amicable one), as my wing measured .015" out.

Personally, I think there's no tolerance; the regs clearly state "...maximum chord length of 8.50 inches, including any wicker."

GA

[JeffYoung]

Is the cam open in STL? What else can you do?

Zsolt incar, he and Trever don't slide the nose around as much as you (seem) to do. I'm admittedly a novice on FWD so I may be misviewing (is that a word) but Zsolt's car seems more neutral and less pushy.

Car looks bad ass, and looks to me like it could be a contender. But I agree that the off the cuff perception that this is a FWD class only was wrong.

Again, great vids.

[Z3_GoCar]

Is the cam open in STL? What else can you do?

Zsolt incar, he and Trever don't slide the nose around as much as you (seem) to do. I'm admittedly a novice on FWD so I may be misviewing (is that a word) but Zsolt's car seems more neutral and less pushy.

Car looks bad ass, and looks to me like it could be a contender. But I agree that the off the cuff perception that this is a FWD class only was wrong.

Again, great vids.

Cams are allowed, but the spec's aren't as generous as they are in STU.

Agreed, if the turbo's aren't worked out in STU, then I'd be a fool to not consider swapping to a M42 1.8 liter buzz bomb.

[Bill Miller]

Nice job Greg, and thanks for the vids. I'm sure w/ another year of development, and some more seat time at RA, things will improve. Are you already planning your June Sprints trip?