Driver's School Report

[steve b]

Finished my second school at SP this past weekend and I am pleased to announce that I will be joining you guys in wheel to wheel next season.

In case any of you SP guys haven't heard, the track has been repaved. It is super smooth and very grippy. The word out is that lap times have improved 1.5 to 2 seconds. My best race lap was 3.5 better than at my spring school, so hopefully that means the improvement was in me as well as in the asphalt.

After several great practice sessions dicing it out with 3-5 cars at a time, my race turned out to be extremely uneventfull with mosting open track out in front of me. I did manage a best lap of 1:34.374 (I know slow by ITA standards).

I was running on 2 year old front tires and 3 year old rears. They seemed fine to me; but I often hear experienced racers complain about "year old tires". So consider this my first excuse.

[JamesB]

Congradulations Steve. I knew a few in this past school but a stomach bug kept me at home where I was better off.

So you going to run MARRS?

[JeffYoung]

Excellent news, and glad to see you got your license! Had fun hanging out with you back in the spring.

You now have to come down to VIR in March and try a new flavor of track. I think you will like it.

Year old tires???? Wait to you do this for a few years and you start complaining about tires that are old -- the ones you bought the last race weekend and put 4-5 heat cycles on.......

[steve b]

Year old tires???? Wait to you do this for a few years and you start complaining about tires that are old -- the ones you bought the last race weekend and put 4-5 heat cycles on.......
[/b]

Well I always ran Kuhmos and Toyos on my second gen track car and when I bought the first gen ITA car it came with "a 1 year old set and a 2 year old set of Hoosiers" I don't know if it was the lighter car or that old Hoosiers are better than new Toyos but I wa always pretty happy with the grip. The funny thing is I've been calling them the 1 year old set and the 2 year old set for a year now... so duh, they are the 2 year old set and the 3 year old set.

I walked the track last Saturday evening with an experience MR2 racer and he kept telling me "you should be flat out all through here... from here to there..." I'm thinking "no #@$#@#@ way". So hopefully, a new set of tires next spring and I will understand that YES I can flat foot it through there.


JamesB, yes, I plan on making at least all of the SP MARRS races.

[JamesB]

my goal is to continue to run a season on 1-2 sets of tires. heck my first season I ran a whole season on 1 set of hoosiers and finally corded them the following spring while instructing.