School's Out Regional - LRP

[raffaelli]

I had a great time this week. I had 2 hours of seat time in the pouring rain, sorted out the issues with the car, qualified in the dry setting my best lap time yet, experienced rain on slicks.

I felt great in the race. I was near the back so I thought I would let the first turn sort itself out. I was able to make some passes, until the rain got heavy and my slicks gave up on me and lost all the spots I gained. So I put it in cruise control and kept the car from twisting.

Saw a black miata slap the tire wall at the end of no name a few times. Was in the final lap or two. I was behind him as he was trying to get back to the pit...car was bent.

Nice meeting you Ray, hopeful to see you at the Glen.

In the end, I gained a ton of experience, and was signed off.

[lateapex911]

Wow. That was spoooky. Congrats to those who romped in the rain, and Lou I, especially. I slipped to 4th from 9th in a rather ugly manor. When the rain picked up, it was too late, I can't change tires that quickly because of stupid lug centric to hub centric mismatches, and slicks were NOT the way to go. If the raiuns had come 15 minutes earlier or later, I wouldn't have been a moving chicane. Thanks to all who passed me for giving me room...if I came over on you, I'm, sorry, the car would lose traction without warning and drift sideways 3 feet in an instant. After 3 laps, I just wanted it to be over.

I was thankful for the heads up driving by those around me, that I have no bodywork to do, and that the car has no mud to clean off of it. That in itself is a miracle.

Nice job to Andy B and Lou I. And props to Brian B too.

[Dave Zaslow]

The ITB race was quite thrilling and quite a lot of fun.

Let me correct that, there were actually two ITB races, the Wentworth and Curran Volvo's along with the Hubbard 2002. Nat outqualified Paul by a 1:03.807 to a .856. Then there was Richard Gleason's Rabbit GTI, my Golf 3 and Charlie Gerundo's Golf 2. Both groups formed tight packs and spent the entire race hammering on each other. Nat lost his leadwith an oops and fell behind Ken. Somehow he managed to get Paul right at the line. While i heard all of this from the three of them, it really shows how good these drivers are.

My group traded places for a few laps and I managed to get a tiny amount of space only to come all the way out of Big Bend to see an ITS Mazda off to the left and driving back on. No problem, he's coming back on the edge; now he's coming one lane in; now he's driving across the track to the left. Major brakes to just avoid the accident in front of me, but the two VW's on my ass also managed to avoid getting involved in this not-so-slo-mo clusterf**k. Of course the RX7 went off into the distance and the three of us just started doing anything we could to keep life interesting. At some point Richard ran outside me through Bg Bend and passed me out of the lefthander. Unfortunatly I missed spotting Charlies ORANGE car following him through and so I pulled over to set up for the right onto No-Name. Charlie tried to avoid but I did put him off onto the grass. Sorry Charlie, please let me ransom the incriminating video from you. At the end I settled down to make the last lap pass out of the downhill only to come up about a foot short. Lots of grins and slapping ourselves silly after this one.

Thanks also to Bill Umstead who qualified in the middle of the B field with his S car. He let us all play together with a gentelmanly start.

Congrats to all.

DZ

[gran racing]

Congrats Andy - that was a hell of a drive. Nice job! See, racing in the rain can be fun too. lol

save for one Prod car that lost a hood and caused a melee in T1.

Ummm, yeah. I thought about setting my video up for that session, wish I had. I was behing the prod car, before I knew it the hood flapped up and it watched the driver put one arm up. It almost looked like he was trying to catch the hood but probably trying to protect his head. I wasn't sure whether to brake or accelerate - glad I choose the later as the hood went flying over my car.

With the 8-car FV run-group in front of us and a fairly constant drizzle at the 7-laps to go mark

Jeff went to false grid too early; Jake's rain tire change waaaay too difficult (requires different studs or something else which prevented us to change the car to rains when wanted to). The FV cars had no spray coming off their slicks so rains were the way to go. At the same point, the rain could have let up and Jake was on a softer dry tire. Good job keeping it off the tire wall guys. After this event I did end up getting a much better radar program - the stuff we were using just didn't give us the info. to make a better decision. Now I just need Greg to explain what some of this reflectivity tilt and other stuff means.