Racing WITHOUT the restrictor plate...

[SoundGuyDave]

Due to a really weird confluence of events, I wound up back at Blackhawk Farms again last weekend, instead of Gingerman like I had planned, but this time I was armed with some serious power, especially compared to last time.

As you may recall from THIS thread, I was down on power from a duff tune, and was lapping at a hair under 1:33. This time, I was running almost seven seconds a lap faster, trying to break into the 1:25's, on the same set of street rubber that I've been running for over THIRTY LAPPING DAYS! I had about 10-12 minutes of track time per session before the tires just got slippery, and it also took them a lap and a half to come in to temp, so I had a narrow window to try to shoot for any kind of real time. With a 1:26.03 backed up by a dozen other laps under 1:26.30, I figure that with fresh R-comp rubber, I could shave that by around 4-5 seconds, which would make me very competitive in TT-B, where my car classes out.

I had a student with me on a ride-along, and I was showing him the line and a few other little tricks when it went kind of a little bit wrong. I was carrying out a conversation with him about the turn-in point for turn five, and got the car just a wee little bit out of shape, got a tiny little bit more slip than I thought going to apex, and wound up kind of off the line...

From high to low in less than one lap!

 

[ZmanM3]

Haha that sucks, did those little flags do any damage?

 

[SoundGuyDave]

Hey! Easy there! I missed most of them! Just not the "1" marker... It's kind of funny that you can see it disintegrate on the video, and a little chunk of it lands right in front of the cowl rise...

Dug about 5lbs of grass and dirt out of the undercarriage. Do you have any IDEA how many spots there are under there that can grab grass??!! When my "machinery met the greenery," it flexed the faux splitter hard enough to pop a bunch of paint off, and the radiator air deflector almost tore off the bottom. Other than that, a small amount of turf ignited on the brakes, but no damage from that. The only thing that was REALLY bruised was my ego...

Oh, before you guys think that I'm just a slow, spinning type of driver, I will also submit THIS for your viewing pleasure... And yes, you can DEFINITELY hear me lift a little longer before turning in for T5. Please note the missing "1" marker at T6...

 

[race4food]

What does this have to do with a restrictor plate?

 

[SoundGuyDave]

Reference to an earlier thread: LINK. I had a tuning issue last time out that dropped a 185lb-ft limiter on the engine, hence the "restrictor plate" comment...