continued from above
There is a lot of strategy involved in Time Trial - making good laps in the Saturday "Warm-up" to make sure you have good grid position, watching the temps and weather, knowing the track condition and any debris on track, keeping an eye on the times in your class, and watching to see if your competitors come to grid for any given session. I'm really tempted to get radios in the car and the pits to have a track side helper watch the NASA Live Timing and relay to me how I'm doing in class in real time.
The crazy trike thing above was the pace car for some races, including this Blitz group (led and won by Paul Costas's GT1 Camaro)
Radios would have been VERY helpful at NASA Nationals in 2013, where I ran the time I needed in the very last session but didn't know if my competitor got any faster (who was behind me on track). It was down to hundredths of a second, but then he got DSQ'd for blowing his dyno numbers and weights on the scales and I managed to keep the spot. Something like this from a helper track side would be a real lifeline: "OK, the 2nd place car has come in, you have his times covered, so take a cool down and come in now". For me its all about saving the tires for the GOLDEN session, to get that PERFECT lap. Others want to just barely win, not over-sharing their true performance, to avoid extra scrutiny. There's a lot of things that go into winning in Time Trial, and its all part of the fun.
After 2 laps I usually come in, to preserve tires and other consumables. Getting off-line and not impeding others is key
Its easy to say "Well just run all of the laps in all of the sessions, stupid!" but that's not what you want to do in TT. All of the consumables have a finite life, like the brake pads, rotors, and especially Hoosier A7 tires. I usually have a 1-2 lap window in any session where the tires work their best, and it can fall off a second on each successive lap. Not to mention the traffic issues (the front of the pack often catches the tail by lap 2 or 3). For this car on these tires, the cooler the session the faster the car is. That's usually the FIRST session of the day. Well on Saturday in the rain, that wasn't to be, but not going on track in the warm-up cost me grid position all day long. My 1:52.2 lap was way off the pace but it was enough to win, so I sat out very hot session 3. Nursing the tire rub issue made this even more important.
So we ended up winning Saturday, placing 1st out of 11 cars in TT3, but only by about 1.5 seconds - the closest margin we've had in this car in a while. But I knew it had a lot more left in it, if I could get around traffic. This time was still 7th quickest for all of the TT field, which would mean we would finally grid higher up on the grid for Sunday (7th).
It was hot at the end of the day and everyone was sweaty and tired. There was the usual NASA dinner party Saturday night, but the 300+ entrants made for super long lines, so a few of us decided to go into town and get some good food we missed from our days living here decades ago. Los Cucos is a Tex Mex restaurant I first ate at in 1996 in Houston. They opened one of these in College Station a few years back - I really wanted to get some of their fajitas a la Cucos, and of course a TALL and cold mug of Dos Equis lager on draft to cool me down. Paul and Anna joined Amy and I and we feasted surrounded by lots of other NASA racers eating there as well.
Sunday - Race Day 2
Each weekend day of a typical NASA race weekend is a new race for TT, so with a win and two Hoosiers won on Day 1 we were aiming to repeat this on Sunday - plus with the better grid placement, were hoping for clear track and a new TT record for the class on Day 2.
The rain and bad weather held off Saturday night, so we were treated to a dry track in the morning - something Texas hasn't had much of lately! The off-track areas were still SATURATED with rain and any cars going off were almost guaranteed to get stuck in the mud, so I really wanted to avoid any "offs" in the pretty and clean Mustang.
The car had been running great all day Saturday but I wanted to really limit our laps on track Sunday, if possible. Amy was still just trying to get in her last few laps at TWS before the track "closed in June" and she wanted to run at least two more sessions, but I was worried that this $1700 set of Hoosiers were going to get chewed up if we kept pounding laps on them, and that we really needed to fix the rear rubbing issue before we pushed the car any harder. We also had this car FOR SALE, so we needed to keep it clean and unbroken.
So after our "strategy session" that morning we decided to put me in the car in TT session 1 Sunday with a goal of making ONE HOT LAP, then come in and see how the car looked for Amy to make some laps in a later session. There's also the fact that in TT if you have an off or spin you lose ALL your times from that session. Also, if we could get loaded up and on the road home before noon we could make it back to Dallas before dark, relax for a few hours, or - more likely - go back to the shop and CNC machine more parts. That's all Amy and I do at night and weekends - load metal and run the CNC machines, making all of the pieces we need for camber plate orders.
So we checked all the fluids and pressures and got the red Mustang to grid for TT Session 1, the coolest session of the day. With a dry track and cool air, it would be THE perfect session all day to get a fast lap in. Since I knew this car well (after 5 years) and knew this track like the back of my hand (my first laps were taken here in 1989!), I felt like I could get it done in a single lap. It was the LAST EVER event that TWS would have at TWS, so I wanted to cement our lap record in the books for good, and improve on our 1:50.6 TT3 record from 2 years ago.
Excuses: we should actually be about 2-3 seconds faster than our 2013 laps, with the improvements we made in the 2014 season, so I was still 4-5 seconds off the pace. With the wounded rear I was taking it easy going into Turn 1 off the banking, keeping it to around 140 mph on turn-in and braking early. Still, I REALLY wanted to improve upon our 2013 record, as this might be the last time we run this Mustang with NASA, if a buyer finally shows up (we're at 4 flaked out buyers and counting). So, the goal was nothing less than a new a track record and two wins.
The one lap I drove on Sunday, in TT session 1...with data overlay
So my lone lap of the day is shown above, and with some careful gapping on the out lap I managed to get a traffic free lap. I was still feeling the tire rub on most high speed corners, which made me cringe, but I drove through it and managed to get in a clean lap. As you will see at the end of the video there was a big "off" by TTC Mini competitor BJ, who I race against in the TTC Corvette (when it runs). With the wet grass he was stuck and they had to roll a flat bed and tow him out of the mud, shutting down the session early.
After that 1:49.9 lap I felt fairly confident we had the win in the bag, but it turned out to be a 4.2 second lead over second which stuck all day. Amy went out in an HPDE 3/4 session but a DE driver went off track pretty hard and found something to run into, which ended that session after 2 laps. So she brought it in and called it a weekend also.
The sun came out and everything heated up, and in the end most of the TT field set their fastest laps in TT session 1 or 2, but 2nd place Andrew got his best lap in during TT session 3 (after we had left). We stuck around until noon, loaded up, said goodbye to our friends, and hit the road by 12:30. I watched MyLaps app for live timing on the way home, fingers crossed, and wasn't really sure we had won until later that evening - another "whew" moment.
So that worked pretty well - 4.2 second win over 2nd, 6th quickest in TT all weekend, 2 wins, new track record, won four more tires, took one lap to get it done Sunday, and the car was reliable even not being 100% going into the weekend. The new set of A7 tires still had plenty of life left in them when we were done, too.
Watch Out For Skin Cancer
Quick public service announcement - I've been outdoors for much of my life, back when I was a kid in Scouts, then all through college and adulthood racing. Spending a lot of time in the sun (working corners at autocross was probably the bulk of it) means you need to slather on the sunscreen, often and heavy. 50 SPF, waterproof - the nasty stuff.
Otherwise you will get sunburned. And like getting heat exhaustion - sunburns are CUMULATIVE. The damage builds over time and eventually, almost without fail, you will get skin cancer. It looks nasty, and if left untreated, it can get much worse. In some cases it can even be deadly. So yea, I've had dozens of sunburns over the past 30 years racing, but they are finally catching up to me. Over the past 6 months I had a few spots on my face and arms that were red colored, and the skin would get flaky on these small patches every few days. Just a little discolored but I knew something was wrong.
"Statistically, in the United States approximately 3 out of 10 Caucasians may develop a basal-cell cancer within their lifetime. In 80 percent of all cases, basal-cell cancers are found on the head and neck"
After my regular doctor looked at me during my annual physical "You've got skin cancer, dummy!", I finally went to a dermatologist and she said, yea, that's "Basal-cell carcinoma". This is one of the easily treated skin cancers, luckily, but if left untreated it can spread and damage surrounding tissue, possibly leaving you disfigured. If you want to be grossed out, just Google search this stuff. "Let me get the sprayer"... she says. Comes back and freezes the patches with liquid Nitrogen, seven spots in all, none bigger than your finger nail.
Sporting the zombie look at TWS was fun. Thanks to Costas for the Hello Kitty band aids...?!
That process is supposed to be the easiest way to kill the cancerous skin cells and let the regular skin cells come back, but liquid Nitrogen spraying on my face FREAKIN HURT. Felt like a red hot poker burning my skin, but the pain subsided substantially as soon as the liquid N2 spray stopped, and pain was gone completely in about 8 hours. The patches were REALLY red now, and in 2 days they were NASTY. I won't show it, but I looked like the Walking Dead. The spots were nasty and blistered badly within 72 hours (while I was at the TWS event). I put band-aids over most of the spots for about a week, but it was about 4 weeks before I looked human again. There are still some divots in my face that I hope will grow back, but maybe not.
So, learn from more of my mistakes - PLEASE WEAR SUNSCREEN when outdoors, reapply often. And yes, get a big floppy hat. /EndOfPSA
continued below
There is a lot of strategy involved in Time Trial - making good laps in the Saturday "Warm-up" to make sure you have good grid position, watching the temps and weather, knowing the track condition and any debris on track, keeping an eye on the times in your class, and watching to see if your competitors come to grid for any given session. I'm really tempted to get radios in the car and the pits to have a track side helper watch the NASA Live Timing and relay to me how I'm doing in class in real time.
The crazy trike thing above was the pace car for some races, including this Blitz group (led and won by Paul Costas's GT1 Camaro)
Radios would have been VERY helpful at NASA Nationals in 2013, where I ran the time I needed in the very last session but didn't know if my competitor got any faster (who was behind me on track). It was down to hundredths of a second, but then he got DSQ'd for blowing his dyno numbers and weights on the scales and I managed to keep the spot. Something like this from a helper track side would be a real lifeline: "OK, the 2nd place car has come in, you have his times covered, so take a cool down and come in now". For me its all about saving the tires for the GOLDEN session, to get that PERFECT lap. Others want to just barely win, not over-sharing their true performance, to avoid extra scrutiny. There's a lot of things that go into winning in Time Trial, and its all part of the fun.
After 2 laps I usually come in, to preserve tires and other consumables. Getting off-line and not impeding others is key
Its easy to say "Well just run all of the laps in all of the sessions, stupid!" but that's not what you want to do in TT. All of the consumables have a finite life, like the brake pads, rotors, and especially Hoosier A7 tires. I usually have a 1-2 lap window in any session where the tires work their best, and it can fall off a second on each successive lap. Not to mention the traffic issues (the front of the pack often catches the tail by lap 2 or 3). For this car on these tires, the cooler the session the faster the car is. That's usually the FIRST session of the day. Well on Saturday in the rain, that wasn't to be, but not going on track in the warm-up cost me grid position all day long. My 1:52.2 lap was way off the pace but it was enough to win, so I sat out very hot session 3. Nursing the tire rub issue made this even more important.
So we ended up winning Saturday, placing 1st out of 11 cars in TT3, but only by about 1.5 seconds - the closest margin we've had in this car in a while. But I knew it had a lot more left in it, if I could get around traffic. This time was still 7th quickest for all of the TT field, which would mean we would finally grid higher up on the grid for Sunday (7th).
It was hot at the end of the day and everyone was sweaty and tired. There was the usual NASA dinner party Saturday night, but the 300+ entrants made for super long lines, so a few of us decided to go into town and get some good food we missed from our days living here decades ago. Los Cucos is a Tex Mex restaurant I first ate at in 1996 in Houston. They opened one of these in College Station a few years back - I really wanted to get some of their fajitas a la Cucos, and of course a TALL and cold mug of Dos Equis lager on draft to cool me down. Paul and Anna joined Amy and I and we feasted surrounded by lots of other NASA racers eating there as well.
Sunday - Race Day 2
Each weekend day of a typical NASA race weekend is a new race for TT, so with a win and two Hoosiers won on Day 1 we were aiming to repeat this on Sunday - plus with the better grid placement, were hoping for clear track and a new TT record for the class on Day 2.
The rain and bad weather held off Saturday night, so we were treated to a dry track in the morning - something Texas hasn't had much of lately! The off-track areas were still SATURATED with rain and any cars going off were almost guaranteed to get stuck in the mud, so I really wanted to avoid any "offs" in the pretty and clean Mustang.
The car had been running great all day Saturday but I wanted to really limit our laps on track Sunday, if possible. Amy was still just trying to get in her last few laps at TWS before the track "closed in June" and she wanted to run at least two more sessions, but I was worried that this $1700 set of Hoosiers were going to get chewed up if we kept pounding laps on them, and that we really needed to fix the rear rubbing issue before we pushed the car any harder. We also had this car FOR SALE, so we needed to keep it clean and unbroken.
So after our "strategy session" that morning we decided to put me in the car in TT session 1 Sunday with a goal of making ONE HOT LAP, then come in and see how the car looked for Amy to make some laps in a later session. There's also the fact that in TT if you have an off or spin you lose ALL your times from that session. Also, if we could get loaded up and on the road home before noon we could make it back to Dallas before dark, relax for a few hours, or - more likely - go back to the shop and CNC machine more parts. That's all Amy and I do at night and weekends - load metal and run the CNC machines, making all of the pieces we need for camber plate orders.
So we checked all the fluids and pressures and got the red Mustang to grid for TT Session 1, the coolest session of the day. With a dry track and cool air, it would be THE perfect session all day to get a fast lap in. Since I knew this car well (after 5 years) and knew this track like the back of my hand (my first laps were taken here in 1989!), I felt like I could get it done in a single lap. It was the LAST EVER event that TWS would have at TWS, so I wanted to cement our lap record in the books for good, and improve on our 1:50.6 TT3 record from 2 years ago.
Excuses: we should actually be about 2-3 seconds faster than our 2013 laps, with the improvements we made in the 2014 season, so I was still 4-5 seconds off the pace. With the wounded rear I was taking it easy going into Turn 1 off the banking, keeping it to around 140 mph on turn-in and braking early. Still, I REALLY wanted to improve upon our 2013 record, as this might be the last time we run this Mustang with NASA, if a buyer finally shows up (we're at 4 flaked out buyers and counting). So, the goal was nothing less than a new a track record and two wins.
The one lap I drove on Sunday, in TT session 1...with data overlay
So my lone lap of the day is shown above, and with some careful gapping on the out lap I managed to get a traffic free lap. I was still feeling the tire rub on most high speed corners, which made me cringe, but I drove through it and managed to get in a clean lap. As you will see at the end of the video there was a big "off" by TTC Mini competitor BJ, who I race against in the TTC Corvette (when it runs). With the wet grass he was stuck and they had to roll a flat bed and tow him out of the mud, shutting down the session early.
After that 1:49.9 lap I felt fairly confident we had the win in the bag, but it turned out to be a 4.2 second lead over second which stuck all day. Amy went out in an HPDE 3/4 session but a DE driver went off track pretty hard and found something to run into, which ended that session after 2 laps. So she brought it in and called it a weekend also.
The sun came out and everything heated up, and in the end most of the TT field set their fastest laps in TT session 1 or 2, but 2nd place Andrew got his best lap in during TT session 3 (after we had left). We stuck around until noon, loaded up, said goodbye to our friends, and hit the road by 12:30. I watched MyLaps app for live timing on the way home, fingers crossed, and wasn't really sure we had won until later that evening - another "whew" moment.
So that worked pretty well - 4.2 second win over 2nd, 6th quickest in TT all weekend, 2 wins, new track record, won four more tires, took one lap to get it done Sunday, and the car was reliable even not being 100% going into the weekend. The new set of A7 tires still had plenty of life left in them when we were done, too.
Watch Out For Skin Cancer
Quick public service announcement - I've been outdoors for much of my life, back when I was a kid in Scouts, then all through college and adulthood racing. Spending a lot of time in the sun (working corners at autocross was probably the bulk of it) means you need to slather on the sunscreen, often and heavy. 50 SPF, waterproof - the nasty stuff.
Otherwise you will get sunburned. And like getting heat exhaustion - sunburns are CUMULATIVE. The damage builds over time and eventually, almost without fail, you will get skin cancer. It looks nasty, and if left untreated, it can get much worse. In some cases it can even be deadly. So yea, I've had dozens of sunburns over the past 30 years racing, but they are finally catching up to me. Over the past 6 months I had a few spots on my face and arms that were red colored, and the skin would get flaky on these small patches every few days. Just a little discolored but I knew something was wrong.
"Statistically, in the United States approximately 3 out of 10 Caucasians may develop a basal-cell cancer within their lifetime. In 80 percent of all cases, basal-cell cancers are found on the head and neck"
After my regular doctor looked at me during my annual physical "You've got skin cancer, dummy!", I finally went to a dermatologist and she said, yea, that's "Basal-cell carcinoma". This is one of the easily treated skin cancers, luckily, but if left untreated it can spread and damage surrounding tissue, possibly leaving you disfigured. If you want to be grossed out, just Google search this stuff. "Let me get the sprayer"... she says. Comes back and freezes the patches with liquid Nitrogen, seven spots in all, none bigger than your finger nail.
Sporting the zombie look at TWS was fun. Thanks to Costas for the Hello Kitty band aids...?!
That process is supposed to be the easiest way to kill the cancerous skin cells and let the regular skin cells come back, but liquid Nitrogen spraying on my face FREAKIN HURT. Felt like a red hot poker burning my skin, but the pain subsided substantially as soon as the liquid N2 spray stopped, and pain was gone completely in about 8 hours. The patches were REALLY red now, and in 2 days they were NASTY. I won't show it, but I looked like the Walking Dead. The spots were nasty and blistered badly within 72 hours (while I was at the TWS event). I put band-aids over most of the spots for about a week, but it was about 4 weeks before I looked human again. There are still some divots in my face that I hope will grow back, but maybe not.
So, learn from more of my mistakes - PLEASE WEAR SUNSCREEN when outdoors, reapply often. And yes, get a big floppy hat. /EndOfPSA
continued below
