Mid Ohio SCCA Freedom Regional Race
Ran the Freedom Regional at Mid Ohio last weekend. I loaded the car on Sunday afternoon in the basic same condition as it was Saturday morning, so I would consider that a success! No cut tires, no beating or banging.
Drank way to much beer on Friday night at a friends house in Columbus, got 6 hours sleep, chugged a couple quarts of Gatorade on the way to the track. Unloaded all ready to go. Group 4 was ITA, ITS, ITE, T2 and GTL cars.
Track is now very smooth after the full repaving and the absence of concrete patches in the corners hand me a bit messed up looking for braking and turn-in points. Two easy laps to get everything warmed and I started my first flier on lap 3 - and I promptly stuck it in the gravel trap up to the axles at the end of the back stretch at T7. I had just passed two cars on the inside and was still center track as I was braking into the turn. Off the brakes, turned in and it just snapped on me. With the two cars behind me, I made the split decision not to stand on the gas and try to pull out of it as I had a better chance of probably spinning it on track in front of them. So I went both feet in and tried to miss the corner of the gravel trap but failed in that venture by about 10 feet. Straight sideways in. So I hauled ass out of the car over to the worker station and then had to watch the rest of the session hoping that no one screwed up and did the same thing and whacked my car as it sat there helplessly. A particular ITE 944 was very loose a couple times thru and I was quite nervous. But we made it to the end of the session and I got back over to the car to start digging out the front end before the flat tow showed up. The left front of the air dam was pushed in but otherwise everything was OK. Well, except for the fact that both left side tires now had gravel imbedded between the rims and beads. They yanked me out (I had to put the car in gear and help as the puny pickup they sent was spinning it's tires) and limped it back. Blew out all the dust and gravel, bent the air dam back (see, using home improvement products can be advantageous) and had the Hoosier guys dismount and flip the tires (for $36 of course). Good as new. Except for the fact that I had only got a single timed lap at a oh-so blistering 2:08. That meant I was starting DFL on the field. Great.
Start of the race, I am still deep in the Carousel when the wife comes on the radio with a "green-green-green". I was stuck behind a smoking piece of crap GTL Toyota and had a horrible start. Got thru the back markers and caught and passed several of the other ITA cars. Had a brief battle getting past an ITA RX7 and Escort mid-race but then ended up lapping the last few laps with no one around. Oh, unless you want to count the freakin Speed World Challenge Pontiac GTO that had showed up to use the weekend as a test session. The thing passed me like I was standing still on the front stretch and nearly vibrated my fillings out when it went by. Talk about loud and fast, wow. Ended up somewhere mid-pack, I never even went to check the results. I believe my fastest race lap was around a 1:55 - not particularly fast.
Drank way too much again on Saturday (huh, a trend?) and then had high winds, rain and thunderstorms beating me half the night in my little pup-tent (the wife went back to Columbus for the night). Didn't sleep real well...
We fought cool and damp conditions early Sunday but it never really stayed wet. No issue with morning quals (the car never snapped again after the Saturday morning incident) and had just put down a couple decent laps when a pair of ITS cars came together at the same point I had my issue at T7. It also starter drizzling, so I decided I had had enough and pulled in.
Ended up I believe 8th out of 13 in class and in the twenties out of 34 in the group.
Had another crappy start and lost a couple spots, but ran them back down. After a few laps I hear the wife calling to me about trouble on the backstretch (she's getting pretty good at this spotter stuff). As I came thru the Keyhole, all I could see half way down the backstretch just past the kink (where the Grand Am BMW went flipping - the MO "fix" was to put a row of tires just before the new drainage culvert a few car widths off the race surface - apparently they would rather you test your frontal impact skills rather than your flipping skills - they gotta fix that better) was a giant dust cloud that you could not see thru. I had a car about 15 car lengths ahead of me and he went into it on the right, so I followed him hoping that the track was clear (kinda Days of Thunder'ish) or at least he would clear it for me! An ITS 280z and an ITA CRX had gotten together just past the kink and the 280 turned the CRX straight into the outside wall drivers left. Totaled the CRX, probably totaled the 280. The CRX driver is a friend and he sent me his in-car video - it was a brutal hit. He had to take the ambulance trip to the infield medical but they released him. He was very stiff and sore on Monday. Took about 4 laps to clean that up and we went back green. With about 5 to go I was circulating by myself (the GTO had packed up early and gone home so I didn't have to watch for him). So since I was on last years tires I decided to just work on lap times and try so new lines and such. Apparently I was successful as I had a fast race lap of 1:50, much more respectable. I was kinda hoping I would wear the old Kumhos out, but they actually wore very well so I'll probably get a few more sessions out of them. Finished 7th in class - a decent run for me considering I just can't get my pig of a car to handle very well there. I still have a lot to learn about that track.
Oh, and got a whopping 14 mpg in the tow vehicle. About $200 for gas for the weekend.....
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