Gary chases me into Turn 1.
What a blast!
All photos on this page by Colour
Tech
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This is one awesome track! With the Cobra handling great, driving it is a fantastic experience! Mosport is mainly fast, sweeping curves, most with blind downhill entries that require you to commit to the corner before you can see the apex. There are also two slow sections that are really fun and very challenging. All in all, with a good car the track has a fantastic flow.
Mosport combines big risks with equally great rewards. Although there is runoff area almost everywhere, in the fast areas there's not enough runoff to avoid contact with the tire barriers if you go off. In some places (notably turn 2), a small mistake is going to mean a big crash.
This means that while are pushing yourself to get closer to the limit, you also have to push yourself to be willing to get closer to the edge of disaster. It's a mental game you have to play with yourself as you try to raise your personal limit.
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Gary also had another rider, Peter Walton, who built the very first customer FFR Cobra and is now building an FFR Daytona Coupe. Peter shared Gary's Spec Racer on the track and shared the driving on the road, which allowed me the maximum rest time.
John Spain came down from Kinnebunkport and helped me get the car ready for the event. John swapped the street tires on for me after Loudon, did the nut and bolt check, and swapped the race tires back on before Gary and I loaded the car onto the trailer.
One last bit of preparation I did was to run some laps at Mosport in a '67 Formula 1 Brabham in the racing sim, Grand Prix Legends. This helped me review the track mentally, While driving the simulated Brabham I remembered that Nate had found a better line through Turn 2 last year, and I resolved to use this line this year at the real track (see sidebar).
We were lucky to have fantastic weather for the entire trip, with clear skies, bight sun, and highs in the 70's and low 80's. Given all the rain we had this year (including rain before we left and only hours after we got back) we were very fortunate. The weather gods smiled on us for this one!
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My student, Mike Fridmann, had a Lotus Esprit Turbo which he generously allowed me to drive. This is a really nice car, although some problems with the turbo boost control meant that I had to keep one eye on the boost gauge all the time, and modulate the boost with my right foot.
Of course, the Lotus handled extremely well. With 300 hp in a 3000 lb car, it has about the same power to weight ratio as the Cobra, as well as similar tires (Kumho Ecstas vs my Kumho Victoracers), and a Quaife limited slip differential. It gave me a really good reference point against which to compare the Cobra.
I was gratified to find that the Cobra was not dramatically different from the Lotus in terms of handling. They both accelerated at about the same rate, although the Lotus, with its lower drag and higher horsepower, reached a higher terminal velocity on the long Andretti straight. Both seemed fairly neutral, although it was possible to induce understeer in the Cobra in slow corners by turning in too aggressively.
The Lotus, with its longer wheelbase, was a little more stable and forgiving, but the Cobra wasn't far behind. The Lotus was somewhat more stable over the bumps on the Andretti straight, but hopefully re-valving the Cobra's Bilsteins will address this.
On the other hand, the Cobra had much more user-friendly pedals (the Lotus' wheel well interferes with clutch operation) and its Kirkey seat gave much better support against lateral G's. The Lotus rolled more than the Cobra, and my feeling was that the Cobra generated more lateral grip, which I would expect given its wider tires and lighter weight. Both cars were forgiving when I got into a slide in the relatively slow turn 9.
Unfortunately Mike's lap timer wasn't working when I drove the Lotus, but I believe he later did 1:46's. Also I followed a Mazda which was doing 1:46's before I passed him and pulled away.
I also gave a ride to John Shost, who had been my student at Mosport the previous year in his Audi TT. Since then he'd run his Audi at Sebring, Road Atlanta, and Elkhart Lake (aka Road America). Lucky guy! His wife bought him a Nomex driver's suit just so he could ride with me. Even luckier guy! I hope the ride was worth it!
Another interesting thing happened: Michael Polan, who I'd previously met through racing online in Grand Prix Legends, came from Toronto to watch the event. Michael is building a Locost 7. Perhaps next year we'll see him on the track in his Locost!
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Gary hadn't run at Mosport before and had seemed a bit discouraged after the morning sessions. The track is very intimidating, and his times were quite a bit off my times. With identical engines, almost identical tires, and comparable (though different) suspensions, we expected our lap times to be fairly similar. I figured Gary's lower drag (the Spec Racer uses a tiny racing windshield) would roughly offset my bigger front brakes and tweaked suspension.
As it turned out, Gary ultimately went faster than me. My best time the previous year had been a 1:43.05, while Nate did a 1:41.86. In that session before I caught him, Gary did a 1:40.06, and we ran a bunch of 41's while running together.
The best part, though, was just running nose to tail with Gary for so many laps. That was such a blast! As I expected, Gary's car was a little faster on the straight. In the first few laps, I was leaving a small gap as we braked for Turn 5A (Moss Corner) to make sure I didn't run into him under braking. He'd come out of 5B a few car lengths ahead, and pull away down the Andretti straight. I'd have to work really hard for the next few corners to catch him.
In the last few laps, however, I was more aggressive in Moss Corner, and stayed right on Gary's tail at the exit. I could feel the draft kick in as we went up the straight, and (just like in Grand Prix Legends) I'd have to back out of the throttle near the end of the straight to avoid running into him. I was gaining several miles per hour in the draft!
 In the photo above, I'm making a mistake. For the Miata line, my left wheels should be in the gutter. For the Cobra line, I should be two car widths to the right.
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I thought about the last session, and realized that I was losing a lot of time in Turn 2. Every lap, Gary had pulled away by several car lengths in that corner, and I'd had to work hard in Turns 3 and 4 to close up by the time we got to Turn 5.
I realized that I was intimidated by Turn 2 because I knew how serious a mistake here would be. I've crashed there many times in the racing sim, GPL, and from this I knew that if I went off, I would wind up in the tire wall at very high speed. This would not only wreck my car, but without a roll cage, an impact on the driver's side would be very serious.
Since I was at least as quick as Gary in the other corners, it was clear that my limit was mental. This was the same problem I'd encountered last year at all of the fast tracks, after two spins at Summit Point had dented my confidence. While my confidence was higher now, I realized I had to work on it some more.
In the remaining practice sessions and in the time trial, I concentrated on relaxing as much as I could. The Kirkey seat allowed me to grip the wheel more lightly than I used to, because I didn't need to clench the wheel to keep myself upright in the seat. However, I found that I was still clenching the wheel in a couple of corners (notably Turn 8), so I tried to get myself to relax and grip it only as tightly as necessary everywhere.
Also, instead of trying to force myself to go quicker, I tried to focus on everything I could see and feel going into Turn 2. I realized I'd been driving that turn the way I did in GPL, but GPL models it the way it was in 1967, and it's not quite the same now. The radius of the dropoff in the first part of the corner is a little more gentle, so there's more grip as you go down the hill. I tried to tune my senses to that, and pay attention to what the car's behavior was telling me.
I also focused on doing the line the same way every time. In my sessions with Mike Fridmann, I'd stressed the importance of choosing marks to hit in every corner, for braking point, turn-in, apex, and track out - and then hitting those marks every time. Now I concentrated extra hard on doing this myself in Turn 2. I used a longitudinal seam in the asphalt as a reference for lateral placement on corner entry, and I used Nate's first apex from last year (a couple car lengths to the right of the inner curb), which allows you to get into the throttle earlier.
Soon I was braking later and getting into the power sooner. The entry phase of this corner is nerve-wracking because it's blind and you must brake and turn in as the track is falling away. The second half of the corner is nerve-wracking in a different way: you can seen the track very clearly and the line is obvious, but the car is undergoing tremendous vertical load as the track flattens out at the bottom of the hill, so it can generate tremendous lateral G's as well. This means you are hurtling through the exit of the corner at a much higher speed than you would if it were level, and the loads on the car are enormous. If anything breaks here ...
Anyway, my mental strategy worked great, and I took another three quarters of a second off my time, finishing with a 1:40.64 in the time trial.
Unfortunately this turned out to be not quite quick enough to beat the only other car in my class, Gregg Metzger's Mustang. Gregg did a superb 1:40.49 to take home the trophy and maximum points. Since I won at Loudon and Gregg was second, and neither of us did Summit Point, I believe we're tied for the points lead.
Gary wasn't able to match his times from the day before; he managed a 1:41.41, so I beat him in the time trial, but we both knew he'd been faster in practice.
Wait till next year!
Nate and John Spain had a lot of fun in their Miata. Nate had to miss the first day to attend his son Cale's graduation, but he took the sleeper train from Montreal and arrived the morning of the time trial.
John had been running 1:45's, which made him one of the fastest, possibly the fastest of all the Miatas on the first day, but Nate flat-spotted a tire avoiding a spinning car in Turn 1 during Tuesday morning's practice. They swapped the flat-spotted tire to the rear, but that changed the balance from really nicely neutral to pronounced oversteer, and in the time trial John was not able to get close to his practice times.
Nate was in the last run group, and two crashes in earlier groups delayed proceedings so that he wasn't able to run. I was very disappointed at this, and I'm sure Nate was even more so.
One of cars which crashed, sadly, was John Shost's Audi TT. John is ok, and the Audi is heavily damaged but repairable. The crash was due to a problem with the brakes. John says the pedal locked solid when he put his foot on it, and he got no braking at all.
Despite the crashes and Nate's missing out on his timed run, we had a great time. Having driven all the tracks in the Northeast in real life, and virtually every major track in the world (and many club tracks) in Grand Prix Legends and other sims, I know that there are few tracks in the world that are the equal of Mosport. We are fortunate indeed to be only a day's drive away!
