First, let me thank everyone who came out yesterday - great job everyone! Special thank you to Alex and Juan, for being, really, the backbone of our organization and efforts yesterday - it seemed like while I was yelling at everyone, co-manager Alex was steadily counting laps, measuring lap time, and calculating our fuel consumption while Juan made sure our fuel canisters were topped off, assisted Alex, and while timing our pit stops, helping out there too, even making sure our car could clear the pits with no problems! Thanks so much guys - hope you'll be able to join us again next time! Go Navy!!!
Our pit stops, by the way - were a real team effort. Our shortest pit stop - with a full refuel and oil level check - was somewhere about 2 minutes and 30 seconds! Even with full four wheel tire swap - front to rear - AND fuel - we did it in less than 5 minutes! FANTASTIC! I don't think we can get much better!
Second, I think we all learned a lot about car set-up. It was clear to me that our car - while certainly one of the more unique shapes out there - had some tremendous mechanical disadvantages. Our last minute suspension replacement left us with a severe handicap, as demonstrated by excessive tire wear (see earlier post Bad Hair Day). The spring rates were actually the same (I think) as the Aragostas we ran last time in the 12 hour race, yet the overall spec of these coilovers just were not up to the tasks of driving hard on a circuit. After we discovered how bad the problem was after the second hour, our drivers had to back off and with some smooth driving, were able to keep going to the end on our spare set of tires. So we'll have to get those Aragostas fixed in time for the next race, and with specs appropriate for a racing course.
On the way home last night, Miguel and I discussed certain other mechanical changes and improvements we want to make, but if I told you now, I'll short myself topics for the blog, so stay tuned for further updates!
Finally - it's very obvious that we have tremendous driving talent. Nice circuit debut for Hiroshi - despite running on worn tires he brought the car back safe! Also, good idea with the last minute pedal mod too (worked for me!).
I also want to thank, and apologize to Mike especially, not only for his spectacular driving (the tires when he came back into the pits looked like they weren't even worn!), but for leaving him without the Traqmate running (so he couldn't measure his times while driving), and for not allowing him the pleasure of some aggressive, racing driving. Sorry about that Mike!
So, despite the troubles we had with our car, not only did our drivers extract the most from the car - even with the limited resources, we still finished in a respectable position - of the 38 cars in the field, we qualified in 27th place, yet finished 23rd! How's that for some great driving! Admittedly, we dropped a couple of spots in our class (from 6 to 8 of 10 - but frankly, I am very suspicious of some of those other so-called "street-legal" cars...), but to be able to compete with fully race prepped machines (non-street legal) and yet move up 4 spots in the overall field really says something about our driving! And this is still our second race!
So - overall, I was happy with our efforts. Not only do we seem to be getting better everywhere - in organization, in our talent, in our car prep - but as we were able to finish without injury and go home in one piece, I think the difficulties we had really were a tremendous learning experience which should serve us well in our future efforts!
Go Team Gaijin!!
