Sixth Gear

We can’t go fast.

This is a really big downer. To make it worse, we’re ****RIPPING**** thru tires. The tires should be doing 45-55 laps a set before the adhesion drops to the point where driving the pace becomes a very startling affair. We’ve burned TWICE the tires budgeted for this practice…at $2200 a set, that’s not cool. We need to have a car setup that can easily see a set of tires thru to the end of the stint AND potentially take a 2nd stint if needed.

Yesterday I got into the car with 30 minutes left in the day and 28 laps on the tires. The first lap out was frankly disconcerting, the back of the car was all over the place. Nursing the car thru the lap, had me coming thru NASCAR 4 in the low lane (my preferred one) with a fellow GT car immediately above me in the middle lane and a DP above him in the high (3rd) lane. As we crossed over the tunnel tubes the back of my car jumped and lurched me up the banking towards my neighbors. It was one of those moments when your hands instantly have a cold sweat and your neck bristles. It’s just not a place you want to “hug and kiss your neighbor”.

Barreling down into turn one the afternoon ‘race’ was on. I led a parade into 1 due to my defensive line on the inside. Rounding turn one off the super speedway and into the infield I had 2 Daytona Prototypes inches behind me. I pointed them by in turn 2 and looked to see 2 Mazda GTs screeching up to take their place. My snap decision was that they would have to wait. Crossing the blend line, braking from 110mph and setting up for the right hander called International East Horshoe (turn 3) the car wiggled and snapped it’s back out to the left. I couldn’t save it….I was toast.

All I kept thinking was, “this is it, I’m going to get broadsided and the car is done.” Skidding tires, smoking rubber, revving motors, flying dust and my front tires bounce up onto the infield on driver’s right about 1 car length before the apex of the turn. As I come to a rest 90 degrees to traffic flow, I turn my head right to see a Daytona Prototype driver’s eyeballs. No, scratch that, I saw his retinas. He had come to a complete stop perhaps 6-8 inches from my passenger door.

You can only drive as fast as your Guardian Angel can fly.

I’m furious.

My blood pressure is sky-rocketing as we have only 2 1/2 hours of track time left to figure this out before it’s game time…..I, as an amatuer, can’t be doing a professional 24hr race with a chassis that is this tweaked. As a driver, you need a stable platform to manipulate well. As an amateur, you need a ROCK SOLID platform. I can’t get this car to go as fast as our Toby when it ***SHOULD*** be easily quicker.

More-over, ALL of us spun the car yesterday and we’re just simply not that bad or that wreckless a team of drivers…and as my friend Ian Prout says, “A spin, is an accident that didn’t happen.” Dave Quinlan is so psyched out by his incident and concerned that he’ll be the guy to let down the team with another, bigger accident that he can’t break the 2 minute mark, which he is clearly capable of. We’re all braking way early to be as conservative as we can - but look at the impact it’s having on our speed. The low red circles show where Steve Zadig is playing it safe and braking early, the high red circles show the price he pays for that vs. Andy Lally’s data lap.

Not knowing how to handle it, I speak with the team engineer, Mark. He feels excitement as we’re driving the 2008 chassis, not the 2009 and he has many tweaks he can share. It builds my confidence that there is a problem (vs. our bad driving) and that there might be a solution.

Mark talks about how we might add some wing to compromise banking speed in favor of more stability on the infield. He shared the team experience that by giving up just 1 mile per hour on the banking would reduce tire heat by 10 degrees and extend life by as many as 5 laps. Holy cow - talk about having it down to a science huh?

In catching up with Kevin Buckler and Spencer Pumpelly at dinner I found myself recounting the situation and pleading for help. They were happy to comply. Upon returning to my room at 11 pm last night - I found Spencer had sent me the following email;

“…If I don’t get the chance before the Koni session could you check on the following things with the car chief so we can troubleshoot:

• Ride height front and rear
• Wing angle and wicker height
• Front splitter length (compared to the other TRG cars)
• If it has bump rubbers and if so which ones and how high (again, we just need to know if they are similar to any other TRG cars)
• Brake master cylinder sizes front and rear (should say on the side. 700 and 750’s are what we use)

If we have this info we can perhaps pinpoint the differences between the cars that are working right and know where to look first. It may be something that is as simple as brake bias or it might be too complicated to solve in a lap or two but lets see how far we can get…”

With that, I felt a sense of calm and called it a day.