Nate gets his first winner's
trophy and plaque!
Photo by
UniqueAngle Photography
|
|
This event put a fitting bookend on Strawberry Hill Racing Team's campaign:
We won!
Bad weather prevailed for two days before the event, and on the first morning there was still snow on the track, which had to be cleared before we could run.
As a result of the weather and the distance from our "home" track of Loudon, there was a relatively small turnout, and ours was the only car in our class (SPA, for Street Prepared A), so there was no way our team could lose. The only question was which of us would win.
Nate took first with a 1:03.69 and I was second with a 1:05.11. I locked up my right front brake going into Big Bend on my third timed lap; otherwise I might have gotten into the 1:04's, but there was no way I was going to beat Nate this day.
Dan Baldwin, in an SPB Datsun 240Z, took home the The Fastest Time of Day trophy with a time in the 1:02's. Dan's Z is in the street prepared category, like our Cobra, but runs in a different class due to its six cylinder engine. Because it's been modified, the Z has considerably more horsepower than our Cobra.
Nate's time was second fastest
of the day.
  |
Still, it was a great event. Not only did we close out our partnership with a win - just as we'd opened it two and a half years ago with a win in the NERC 2000 autocross - but we did so in style. Nate's lap time drew a murmer of appreciation at the awards ceremony; clearly no one expected our underpowered car to go that fast! We beat a lot of much more powerful cars, including Corvettes, Mustangs, and even a Viper.
We also enjoyed the company of many of our friends at COMSCC, and made some new friends too. Nate and I each had two students. My students were a husband and wife, Nina Ji and Joey Manansala, who built their superb ST2 Honda Civic themselves, from a $100 shell. With a bigger motor, sturdy roll cage, and spring and shock upgrades, it's a fine race car.
Nina is a native New Yorker and has only been driving for three years! Given her experience, she drove extremely well, showing a dramatic improvement throughout the day. Joey impressed me with his smoothness and confidence - and his terrific save of a big slide and curb-hop in the downhill after he got sideways avoiding another car.
Joey and Nina are two more wonderful
people we have met through participating with COMSCC, and it's
people like this who make time trialing such a great experience.
|
|
|
It was wicked cold (low 40's) and still wet from the previous night's snow, and the car was very loose. Nate said he just touched the throttle and the car went around. I saw him spin coming out of the downhill, and that was scary!
In addition to the lack of grip caused by the cold, wet track and cold tires, I think the new front wheel bearings also gave the front tires a lot more grip by not allowing them to wobble, and controlling camber and toe better.
Disconnecting the rear bar brought the balance back to very mild understeer, with power oversteer available in the slow left-hander. The overall handling balance was excellent!
The car was also much more stable over the bumps than it had been last year. Getting rid of the play in all the rod ends and wheel bearings, as well as going to spherical bearings in the rear spindles, has really made a huge difference in the car's stability over bumps and surface irregularities. It used to dart and weave at every provocation; driving it on bumpy tracks like Lime Rock and Mosport was like herding cats. Now it just goes where you point it.
The only complaint I could make was that the car tended to toss my feet in the air over a couple of large bumps in the vicinity of the braking zone for the uphill. This was really underlined by how much better Joey and Nina's Honda Civic - which also has fairly stiff suspension - just soaked up the bumps.
I suspect that the low motion ratio of the suspension geometry means that the shocks' shaft velocity over these large-amplitude bumps isn't quite high enough to blow off the shim stacks and get into the lower damping rate that takes over at higher shaft speeds in the Bilstein shocks. There's no way I know of to fix this short of building new control arms, which isn't feasible at this point.
It will be interesting to see how the car handles at Loudon now, although tire temperatures suggest that the car is still not using the tires as efficiently as it might, since both left-side tires had higher temperatures on their middle and outer edges than on the inner edges.
Over the winter I'm planning
to make some modifications that will allow me to get more camber
on both the front and rear wheels, in hopes of getting still more
grip by using the tires more efficiently. I also hope to upgrade
the rear brakes (right now the fronts are doing way more than
their share) and get a better racing seat as soon as I can afford
them.
  |
Still, the racing sim didn't help me deal with one thing: the intimidation factor of the fast turns. Lime Rock isn't really a technical track; it's mostly about courage, and having the will to keep your foot down when your self-preservations instincts are telling you to lift. The three turns around the back - the uphill, or Climbing Turn; West Bend; and the downhill, or Diving Turn, are all crucial to good lap times. They are all taken at around 90 mph in the Cobra - and they all have very little runoff room.
During the event, the uphill and the downhill each claimed a car. Nate was following a which Viper turned in a bit early in the downhill and spun to the outside, where it kissed the guardrail. The driver was fortunate to get away with some minor body damage and a broken steering arm.
At the end of the day, a BMW got light over the top of the uphill, spun to the inside and rolled. The driver was fine, but the car was totalled. I don't think there was a straight panel left on the car.
Having been racing at Lime Rock since the 70's - and having had some of my own incidents there - I knew what could happen. It took the two days at the track for me to get reasonably comfortable with the Cobra and confident in myself in these fast turns. By Tuesday afternoon, I was finally taking the downhill without braking, and was starting to get some tire chirping in West Bend. Still, I knew there was a lot left in the car, and Nate proved it by outrunning me by over a second and a half.
When I got home, I booted up the computer and went to the virtual Lime Rock again. For a few moments the experience was almost eery. As I exited Big Bend and headed into the esses, steering wheel kicking in my hands, it was so reminiscent of the real thing, for a moment I was puzzled about what was wrong with the engine, because the exhaust note didn't sound exactly like the real-world Cobra. Then I remembered!
The virtual Lime Rock isn't
quite as bumpy as the real track, and the angle of banking isn't
quite right in a few places, but it's close enough to provide
a pretty convincing experience - and I can keep on racing there
all winter!
|
Nate wants to do wheel-to-wheel racing, which we can't do with the Cobra. Also he feels the Cobra is too expensive for us to be fully competitive in anyway. Next year he's planning to get another kart and run along with his son, and also do Skip Barber school and try to get rides in other types of cars to get more experience. Then the following year he plans to get an IT (Improved Touring) car or a Spec Miata and race that.
Runnning on my own and paying off the loan, I won't be able to run a full schedule or do much development, but I hope to be able to run at least a partial schedule.
I felt sad and disappointed about the breakup of our team but realized it's for the best. Nate's been going along with me on the Cobra effort, but it wasn't really his first preference, and this year, although his driving has improved tremendously, his focus has been elsewhere.
The timing is fortuitous. If Nate had left a year ago, I'd have been out of luck; there's no way I could have handled all the physical tasks of campaigning the car for a season. In the first half of this season, halfway through each event I was really wiped out.
Fortunately, my health has improved enough in the past few months that - assuming it stays the same or continues to improve - I can probably actually run the car myself next year, for at least a few events. This year I did almost all the preparation at my house, but at the track Nate helped with loading/unloading, fueling, changing tires, swapping anti-roll bars and brake pads, etc. Hopefully next year I'll be able to do all that stuff too.
You can read more about the end of our Cobra partnership in The End of an Exciting Adventure.
