Lime Rock National and Pro-IT

[Greg Amy]

All of you should stop by!

I'll be there tomorrow morning. Arm/shoulder is still not fully healed but I need the finish, so I'm starting from the back of the 40-car Group 1 (thanks for the motivation, Miskoe)...should be..."interesting"...

Here's a fun note: was at Kessler's yesterday to borrow Dave Gran's open trailer. As I watching backing I heard a "pop" and the brake pedal went to the floor. Truck was rolling in drive but pumping didn't do much. Slammed it into P and got out...to brake fluid pouring out onto the ground mid-chassis. I shudder at the thought of what would have happened had this been a day or so later with the race car on the trailer...check your steel brake lines for rust, Nor'Easters!

Fortunately, Jeff Lawton to the rescue: he's letting me borrow his brandy-new 2000-mile truck. I'll be standing next to it in the paddock with a baseball bat for anyone that comes close...

See you tomorrow.

GA

[CRallo]

Good luck Greg!

wowsers, that coulda been an issue... the Excursion I ASSume? I've seen that on a number of Fords especially :/ was it next to the gas tank?


good luck to everyone else too!!!

[MMiskoe]

If you do well, I'll take credit for providing you the motivation to get there.

If you do badly and re-injure your arm or prang the car, well, it was free advice and only worth what you paid for it, you should have looked at the source. And you can complain about it publicly. But I'm not worried, you'll do fine. I suspect the 5 minute warning will be a decent pain blocker.


Give 'em hell out there!

[JLawton]

If you do badly and re-injure your arm or prang the car or truck, well, it was free advice and only worth what you paid for it, you should have looked at the source. And you can complain about it publicly. But I'm not worried, you'll do fine. I suspect the 5 minute warning will be a decent pain blocker.

fixed



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[Greg Amy]

fixed

It's raining pretty hard here in downtown Hartford....wondering if that stuff went through the hills of Litchfield County earlier in the afternoon...?

On edit: Uh, yeah. See that ugly spot? It means "LRP right here".

[Tkczecheredflag]

Wanted to come watch tomorrow -I does anyone have any crew spots? Need two for ken schielke and me.

[Greg Amy]

Wanted to come watch tomorrow -I does anyone have any crew spots? Need two for ken schielke and me.

Yup. I'll add you in, #33 STL. If I forget call/text me.

[BruceG]

It's raining pretty hard here in downtown Hartford....wondering if that stuff went through the hills of Litchfield County earlier in the afternoon...?

On edit: Uh, yeah. See that ugly spot? It means "LRP right here".

Greg...around 3 pm they shut LRP down and brought all the corner workers, etc in. Wall to wall lightning from horizon to horizon!! Shut down for at least an hour.see you tomorrow.

[Drew M]

Wanted to come watch tomorrow -I does anyone have any crew spots? Need two for ken schielke and me.

Ask him to bring chris!

[Tkczecheredflag]

only two seat drew - i'm bringin' the me otter

[Tkczecheredflag]

thanks tGa

[Greg Amy]

If you do well, I'll take credit for providing you the motivation to get there.

Miskoe wins.

I got the finish I needed in STL. In fact, I actually made it up to P2; half from passes, half from attrition. STL winner was Ryan Pilla in a Spec Miata, doing consistent low 102s; Yiannis Tsionis ran a 101.8 before he tossed himself off the island.

Eric Heinrich held off a chasing Lotus Elise(?) for the STU win.

We had a nice incident in Group 1 where an STL Miata tangled with a Prod Lotus in the downhill and the Miata ended up over the wall at the bottom of the hill. No injuries, but car is "adjusted". Took a while to get that out.

Group 2 had a GT-1 car end up against the wall at the top of the Uphill, on driver's side. Took a while to get that one down, too. then G2 had another GT1 incident on the front straight...the morning's schedule was a bit of a mess.

The "SM and Friends" race was fun to watch, with Ken Quartuccio having a very smooth run from the pole. He put his head down, did his laps, and led flag-to-flag. IT7 was interesting with Grant getting wheel hop in T1 and spinning off. Lou worked hard to get some laps in but Grant managed to catch him. It was nice to see Christian Chandler back on the horse, the car looks great!

Unfortunately, I didn't catch the Pro-IT race at the end of the day, need some updates from someone else on that one.

Greg

[Drew M]

Unfortunately, I didn't catch the Pro-IT race at the end of the day, need some updates from someone else on that one.

A usual, it was an exciting race. We made it the full 45 without a single caution. I had an awful qual session so I can't really comment on what was happening up front, but I had a few good battles with the folks around me.

[mossaidis]

Unfortunately, I didn't catch the Pro-IT race at the end of the day, need some updates from someone else on that one.

Greg

It was fun, exciting, frustrating, lots of grip then no grip, tooth grinding 3 wheeling, bumper-to-bumper, had to lift in traffic, "kissed Chandler" action, almost won but lost it at the last corner and got beat by Chandler by 1 car length hell of a good time. Video forthcoming. I just signed up for the ProIT at NJMP-L next weekend.

Mickey

[JS154]

I was not a fan of the split start At. All.

It only made for more traffic to deal with for everyone and there was not one compelling reason i heard justifying it.

Many of the slower Prod cars were not just frighteningly slow, but alos oblivious and/or indifferent to significantly faster traffic coming up on them *said faster traffic being a battle for the overall lead in ST*.

I may not be the most experienced guy out there, but let me offer a simple piece of advice...
e
if you are at the back of your field, and running alone, and Four seconds off the pace (at Lime Rock no less!)...you need to be paying attention to your mirrors, and not shutting the door on the leaders, (or any faster car for that matter, that is not in your class) coming through.

Also it's harder for spectators to watch and keep track of who is where.

[Greg Amy]

I was not a fan of the split start At. All.

Prod guys seem to have a burr under their saddles with racing with DOT-tired cars. Something about warm-up times on bias play tires or whatever. They requested a split start at the Summit Point National as well...with only five total DOT-tired cars. And yet, they subsequently bitch about how quickly they come up on the rear of the pack of DOT-tired cars.

Well, duh.

Funny part is, aren't pretty much all of them going to radial tires anyway? That means, pretty much, they're running on the same tires we are, 'cept they don't have those two grooves running down the middle.

Whatever. If it makes them not bitch....

GA

[JS154]

Prod guys seem to have a burr under their saddles with racing with DOT-tired cars. Something about warm-up times on bias play tires or whatever. They requested a split start at the Summit Point National as well...with only five total DOT-tired cars. And yet, they subsequently bitch about how quickly they come up on the rear of the pack of DOT-tired cars.

Well, duh.

Funny part is, aren't pretty much all of them going to radial tires anyway? That means, pretty much, they're running on the same tires we are, 'cept they don't have those two grooves running down the middle.

Whatever. If it makes them not bitch....

GA

That happened at NJMP-T last year. After Q1 during the drivers meeting a bunch of the Prod guys starting complaining about the "BMW's with a lot of motor, but are really holding you up in the corners". So it was agreed that split start would be done, first group based on the fasest qualifier.

And then some punk rookie in a 4 cylinder BMW, at that track for the first time, promptly went out and outqulaifed the etire field by almost a full second in Q2. I heard there were a few chuckles following that one. Just for good meaure, that rookie went on to lap the entire field except for I think three cars, including the Prod cars.

notice this time the "split filed" isssue was raised after Q2...

[BruceG]

Prod guys seem to have a burr under their saddles with racing with DOT-tired cars. Something about warm-up times on bias play tires or whatever. They requested a split start at the Summit Point National as well...with only five total DOT-tired cars. And yet, they subsequently bitch about how quickly they come up on the rear of the pack of DOT-tired cars.

Well, duh.

Funny part is, aren't pretty much all of them going to radial tires anyway? That means, pretty much, they're running on the same tires we are, 'cept they don't have those two grooves running down the middle.

Whatever. If it makes them not bitch....

GA

Greg...I saw 2 HP cars on the registration sheet at LRP friday.....a sirocco(sp) and a spitfire...good luck to them passing a well prepped Bimma.....LOL

[BruceG]

Greg...I saw 2 HP cars on the registration sheet at LRP friday.....a sirocco(sp) and a spitfire...good luck to them passing a well prepped Bimma.....LOL

I rechecked...there were 3 HP cars last weekend. The 3rd was an MG midget.

[Greg Amy]

It's mostly the GTL and FP cars that whine...they're small-motored (I'm sure there's no double-entendre intended...hi, Kyle! ) and even I in STL can nearly pull them on the straight. But they can be wicked fast in the corners. So they're just concerned about conflicts first few laps until they get up to speed.

HP cars? Noooo problem.