Saturday, January 1, 2011

Final .... Miami 2010

What a blast!

So after my last race post before the end of the race, I was monitoring David on the radio in the pits. I let him know that we had 45 minutes left of the race. Then I sat down to await the final. Some how I dozed off, all of a sudden my ears exploded with David asking if anyone was suited up that he did not feel well. Since I was still suited since I was the next driver if David got black flagged I told him I was ready, give me a few laps to put my contacts in. I can't wear my glasses in my helmet as they don't sit right and I end up looking out the bi-focal part.
So I get geared up and tell David that I am ready, but. I realize that my comm gear is hanging down. I quickly remove my helmet, balaclavas and insert my ear phone, just as David pulls into the pit stall. It takes a minute to put everything back on, he is standing there tapping his shoe telling me he could have stayed out another lap.

I get in the car and take off. The mk2 MR2 is just beat up. Loud. Ill handling. The front engine mount is missing. But damn this is fun. I find out that Troy was right, that if you babied the car it felt like it wanted to kill you. But if you drove it like you stole it she was awesome in the corners.

The engine way down on power. It would either crap walk down the back straight at over 100 mph, or the rear end would swing link a pendulum. She would always, and I mean always swing under breaking from top speed. If you tried braking slowly the car would sway so much that I thought I was going to die. So we would late brake as hard as you could with out locking the tires. That would keep the car straight'ish.

One thing that I did not like with the swaying was the car made me a bit sea sick. I felt a little il at the end my last stint. Plus I never relaxed in the car as if you did the car would do something that would make pucker. So those "oh shit" moments made for a not so relaxing ride. So today my body hurts. Most everyone complained of bruising on the back and sides from the metal inside the Sparco Sprint seat. Plus my "mature" body just does not fit a low cost seat designed for ricer skinhead drift kings.

The track was really boring. We think it was designed for the rich Miami super car owner, lots of runoff, wide straights, boring wide long turns. We all took different lines and were still consistently running 1:47s.

Overall it was a very demanding event for us. We have never really had the problems we had with the car. We have learned where we need to change how we prep things. Our helmet setup worked great. We did not like where the mike button was located, the steering wheel is a much better place. The fuel jugs worked awesome. We need to upgrade the mk2 latch seatbelt to what we use in the mk1 mr2, cam lock pull-ups. I need to mak multiple versions of the exhaust systems to keep paddock fixes to a minimum.

Next race is April at new jersey with lemons.

We had fun, though it was a lot of wok

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations! Glad you had a good time.

    ReplyDelete