Cheap Date

[Greg Amy]

Awful quiet around here...STL car is ready so I'm giving thought to showing up this weekend. I hear rumors of a special guest appearance in IT7...

[Eric Parham]

I'd love to go, but don't have a working racecar at the moment. Anyone have or know of a rental? Although I ran ITC and STU at NH back in May, any class would do.

[preparedcivic]

The car will be there in ITB with my kid driving. NER went way out of their way to get Robby signed off, so we're trying to do some payback with an entry or two.

I'm on sabbatical this weekend just playing crew chief, since a double driver dip in STL would require one of us to run STL, in a group with Miatae and now apparently tGA . This is also late in the day Group 6 as well and with a 6+ hour ride home on what will be the new RV maiden voyage weekend, I think I'll have enough to deal with without being pooped getting home close to midnight Sunday.

[tom91ita]

The car will be there in ITB with my kid driving. ............

enjoy! should be fun.

[rthiele]

Does anyone know if dogs are allowed in the paddock of NHMS?

[Greg Amy]

Does anyone know if dogs are allowed in the paddock of NHMS?

They are, on leash, you clean up after them. We're bringing our GSD.

Group 6 (STU, STL, SSM, SM2) is the largest with 41 entries; Group 2 (ITR, ITS, IT next at 28 entries; Group 4 (ITS, IT7, ITC, SSB, EP, FP, GTL) has 27 entries...there's even 22 FVs comin'...

[nlevine]

Was hoping to make it, but in getting the car running after it had been sitting for three years, I uncovered more issues than I have time to fix.

[Raceman77]

And who is the guest apperiance??

[rthiele]

The STIG??!

[RSTPerformance]

I am hoping to drive one of the Audi's if we can get one together, would love to challenge for the win in ITB but its been about 5 years since we ran the Audi's at NHMS in a sprint race... It is not their favorite track. None the less it would be nice to be back out on the track. I can't believe it has been about a year!!!

Stephen is bringing the RX-8 and we are hoping it is sorted out!!! We will be running that car in the test day to try and get it dialed in. It should be exciting getting lapped by my brother in something other than his Audi

Tim Dugan is bringing back the Golf to challenge the ITB field... He couldn't resist trying to catch those old Volvo's!!!

Raymond

[Greg Amy]

Can't give you the details on all the races, but it seemed there was a higher number of flatbeds and crashes this weekend.

Tom Kelly comprehensively compressed the front end of his ITB Golf via the T2 wall; got his bell rung but he's fine (not so the car). An SSM (or SM2?) car did a similar maneuver near a bit upstream - this time the driver's side smacked flat against the wall after a tank slapper - and he was taken away in the ambulance for more checks. Again, last I heard, bell rung/driver fine/not so car. I saw Rob Thiele on the hook/flatbed at least twice, and I got flat-towed home once due to an ignition problem*.

Overall, another great event. Weather was absolutely fantastic, comraderie unsurpassed, and they even had a killer BBQ in a large tent in the campsite area. If you weren't there, you missed a good one!

Oh, as an epilogue, 9/11/11 was spent racing at New Hampshire with ~200 of our "closest friends"; a well-attended autocross was happening in one of the track's parking lots; a loud and obnoxious drifting session was going on in another parking lot, with crap cans tire screeching, smoking, popping/banging, and hammering off the rev limiters; and down the road in yet another NHMS outer parking lot they were having a soapbox derby. Were you at NHMS, you'd not find the automotive/motorsports community sulking around and feeling nostalgic and generally all bad for itself.

As Dick Patullo put it: "America, f**k yeah! I LOVE this country!"

GA

* Car died going through T3 during Saturday AM qually. With Dan's Sheppard's help we nailed it down to "no spark" (even though, somehow Dan managed to shock himself in the process...) Two car parts store trips later - and a new cap, rotor, ignition control module, and coil; probably was the ICM - we had it fired up for Saturday's PM race. Problem was, I didn't know that when you put the ECU into "timing mode" (via the computer), if you do not manually take it out of timing mode before you shut the car off it stays, even when you cycle the key. I ran Saturday's race with only 16 degrees total timing and was getting passed my Miatae at the start....again with Dan's expert help we diagnosed it, fixed it, and I started Sunday's AM race in 21st of ~40...and was P5 by T1...

[rthiele]

I got two results lists in front of me, both Saturday:

Saturday Race Grp 2 ITB,ITR,ITS 1:59pm
Only 2 timed laps due to Rabbit crash in T2 and subsequent black flag and checkered. Lap times not worth a lot since the field was still bunched up and potentially warming up tires. bit of chaos during all course caution: cars going too fast under yellow, saftey car pulling out too late and missing leading cars.

ITB:
1. Nat Wentworth 1:20.838
2. Tim Mullen 1:20.901
3. Derek Lugar 1:20.853

ITS:
1. Robert Blake 1:16.353
2. Glenn Lawton 1:16.913
3. Joe Stadelmann 1:18.821

ITR:
1. Rob Thiele 1:15.467
2. Tyler Munroe (sen) 1:15.317
3. Ann Lamport-Hammitte 1:18.545


Saturday Race Grp 6 SSM,SM2,STU,STL 4:13pm

STU:
1. Tyler P. Munroe 15:570 - great job of Tyler's son winning the race
2. Jay Baier 16:808
3. Rob Thiele (me) 14:815, was in the lead when rear left tire lost air, crawled around 2 laps and was luckily saved due to early checkered (14 laps instead of 15, incident in T2). Hot tire wrapped around fender - Flat bed service no 1 that weekend.

STL
1. Brenton Piekarski 1:17.748
2. Clinton Chichester 1:19.113
3. Greg Amy 1:19.865

SM2:
1. Jimmy Locke 1:18.160
2. Phil Kogan 1:18.780
3. Jeff Collins 1:18.763

SSM
1. Peter Faill 1:18.827
2. Shelby Churchill 1:19.397
3. Quinn Kizis1:19.083

[preparedcivic]

This was the worst fire drill of a weekend ever. But we made it through…..

Thursday afternoon picked up the new RV. 220 miles southwest of home. Rolled in at around 8:30pm. Dealt with work stuff late into the evening and a good part of Friday morning.  Finally got outside to start packing and setting this up around 9am. Get to redoing the weight distributing hitch drawbar and ball mount, and yep, the one I have is too long and is going to drag everywhere. Off to the local trailer dealer, fortunately only 20 minutes away. $155 later I have the hunk of cast iron I need.

More real work interrupts. 

After several other calamities, we get all packed up and hit the road at 3:30pm, an hour after I had wanted to. But we were rolling. To avoid the 100 miles long traffic jam on 287 over the Tappan Zee to 984 to 84 east of Hartford, we took the scenic route north up the Thruway to the Mass Pike. An extra 50 miles but I’m sure the quicker route at that time of day. Got to the track at 9:45pm, just in time to at least get in the gate. Registration and tech painless in the morning, qualifying for the kid goes OK, (1:20.5 or so, good enough for the middle of IT.

Well, then it was time for the Saturday Group 2 Qualifying race. A slow pace lap and early green made it interesting, and Preparedcivic Jr. said later he was never so glad as to be in 3rd when 2nd was really what was needed. The wrong gear meant he was a dog at the start, and lost 4 or 5 spots, enough to have a great view of Tom Kelly’s incident beginning, which was actually at about the T1-2 midpoint. Upstream in the race, there was also a loop and continue in T3, which may have delayed being able to relay just how bad the T2 situation was on the flag net. The FCY did not come out until almost lap 3, with the pace car rolling out way late, and then during that lap things went BFA. Soon after the race was called. Watching cars go through the incident at speed on lap 2, with just a waving yellow was not a pretty sight; Nat Wentworth managed to fit his Volvo though the gap between the wall and wrecked VW, and Paul Curran looped his car a full 720 going inside.

The group was just hugely lucky there was no significant collateral damage. We just had a nicked RR valve stem from running through the debris that was still holding air but cut about 2/3 through. One of the VW’s from Nova Scotia caught something in the windshield; we were directly behind and this piece of space junk flew over the roof.

Sunday was a somewhat tamer day, at least for Group 2. A few cars came in on the hook in the morning, but nothing terminal. We had to do a quick hub/bearing change right before the real race in the afternoon, as after the morning session the RR developed big play. But no biggy. The kid did good, finishing 6th in B, almost getting himself 5th at the flag, with if I remember right, getting down to a 1:20.2 at some point of the weekend.

It was a great way to spend the 10th anniversary weekend of 9/11. After some traffic on 93 in Concord which we detoured around by going through downtown, the 5:45 ride home wasn’t too bad either.

[tom91ita]

Rob, glad to hear his race went well.

[coutzen]

I had a pretty good start. Then on lap 2 the car just went around on me in turn 2. I recovered from the spin and then had some car to car connect in turn 6. This took a chunk of my from my right front wheel. After 2 more laps the tire went flat and my race was over. I pretty sure the ITB Volvo just did not see me. Here is the video. Don't mind the sound it got out of sync for some reason. It was a fun 1st lap for me at least.

YouTube Video