Thursday, May 7, 2009

5-3-09 Club Race (Knock off the rust)

Kirk and I went to the second day of the doubleheader club races at Centennial this past weekend. The 1st race was postponed due to weather in April and was held on Saturday, May 2. The weather was cold and overcast on Saturday, so I passed. Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day. Our goal was to shake off our rust and see what we could do with the new chassis. We learned quite a bit and did some things to fix a somewhat surprising understeer that was quite a nuisance.

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My guess at an initial setup was way too tight and I qualified poorly, 9th of 12 overall (4th Spec Honda). No big deal, this club race has a format of two 10 lap heats leading into a 20 lap main. I had plenty of time to work my way up. We made huge changes for the 1st heat and they worked. I went more than a second per lap faster, setting a 54.2s lap at the half way mark. It was still a little tight, but rolled way better almost everywhere. I was still losing time on the way in to the corner. I moved up to 6th overall which was really 3rd in spec moto (top 3 specs occupied 4th, 5th, and 6th). The 2nd heat went a little better, I never lost touch with 5th and had a little run on him at the white flag. It didn't work out and I could have been a little more clever about it. Oh well, I held 3rd in class and felt pretty good about taking a few more tenths off my previous best. The class leader did a lap about 0.5 faster than I went, so I'm curious where I'll find that. I've got some ideas, so look out, Jack (his home court pace is very impressive).

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We made some more changes to the kart for the 20 lap final to "free" it up some more. It helped a little, as I set my first ever 53.X lap at centennial in either direction. We were running "uphill" or CCW, which is historically my weaker direction. Yay, us. So, in the final, I was cruising around a little behind 2nd in class, waiting to see how the last 10 laps would go. An ICC driver working is way up from way back made a surprise move on me in lap 12 in a hairy spot. Then on lap 13 he did the same to the fella I was chasing down, unfortunately sending him off track. Once I had inherited 2nd and knew 1st had a big gap, I backed it down a bit to finish 2nd ~10 seconds off the leader.

Not a bad day at the track. Learned some stuff and cranked down on my personal best so far. The kart is going pretty well, and we have some tricks up our sleeve for the first regional event in Grand Junction on the 17th. Results and video below.

RESULTS

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Our buddy, Troy pointed out Kirk's racing stripe as we were calling it a day. :)

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Some clips from the 2nd heat race and the final.

Mile High Challenge Race #2, Spec Honda Video Clips from Jeff Field on Vimeo.

5 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Hmmm, i wish there were a preview option so that I may edit my stupidity when the links don't work as expected.

Unknown said...

Well, i did find the 'delete' option to remove my stupidity.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Nope, that doesn't work either.