Cliffs: Sucky way to spend 42 hours.
Made the trek down to COTA this last week. We left about 6am on Thursday and pulled in the gates about 4:30pm. The trip down was fairly uneventful. Hit some traffic in OKC, Fort Worth and Dallas. Literally hit something on the side of the road going through Dallas in the rain; missed it with the truck, but hit it with the rear left tire on the trailer and caused a little damage to the siding. No blow out, or not tire damage, so that was lucky.
It was my first time down to COTA, the facilities are incredible; exactly what you'd expect from a F1 track. We got unloaded and our area set up for preparation for Friday. We had six 40 minute sessions lined up for the day, beginning at 8:40 and then every 40 minutes after. My goal for the day was a sub 2:15.
1st session: We sat on pit road for 10 minutes passed 8:40 while they were scraping a car out of the wall. Track was still fairly wet from the rain the day before. Finally released us and I ran around fairly cautiously. My goal was 8 laps, and progressively building up to find where I could push. I made it to the back straight and hammered it. I hit the brakes early while I was still building up some guts, my gps tracked me at 171mph. The downside was at about 150mph the rear straight was so bumpy that my hood was catching air by the headlights and vibrating violently, so I pulled in back to our trailer to fix it. We used speed tape to completely seal the front of the car where the air was getting in.
2nd session: I went to grid 5 minutes late on purpose so I didn't have to wait to go out. Made it to T6 and felt something bouncing. In my head I was either going to push it or not...I started to push it coming out of T9 and it got way worse. I lipped it around back to the pits. Realized the passenger outer splitter cable was broken. Not sure if the splitter hit a curb and broke it when it forced it up, or what...but it was broken. 30 minutes later we had it safety wired back together and for all intensive purposes seemed like it would hold fine.
3rd session: Went out, made it through the first lap, started the second lap. By this time the track was pretty dry and the weather was nice. 2nd lap...which was the first full lap I've done I ran a 2:28.118 and it felt like it should..about 70%. 3rd lap I ticked a 2:21.884 and was overslowing in most corners still, but was working my way backwards as far as comfort level. (I was focusing on my corner exit first...then my min speed in corner...then my entry speed). On lap 4 I was running a predictive lap of 2:16.921 coming through the carousel and everything felt pretty good. Hit the second apex that leads down to T19 and all of a sudden I lost all power steering, dash, etc. The engine was still running, but at an idle and wouldn't respond to the throttle. I coasted into the pits and as soon as I came to a complete stop the engine stopped running and I was stuck. Ended up getting towed back to the trailer. The bracket that holds the battery was tight...but I guess not tight enough. It allowed the battery to shift over about half an inch allowing the positive terminal to arc off of the bracket and fried the battery. Super thankful there wasn't a fire situation. At this point, I drove 35 minutes to the nearest O'Reilly Auto Parts that had the battery I needed, then 35 minutes back. Missing session 4.
Needless to say I was pretty frustrated at this point. My original plan was to leave when we were finished, about 4:30pm and drive straight home. It was my birthday weekend and my kids had all kinds of things planned that they wanted to do. So as I was getting the new battery put in, and truly doing a once over on everything to see what was next to fail.... I decided that I had enough for the day. I loaded up and headed North about 3:00pm. Ended up getting home at 1:30am, I was beat.
A couple of takeways. The track needs to be resurfaced terribly. I can't imagine that F1 will be back until it is corrected. Large bumps every where. Most noticeably coming out of T1 about 1/3rd of the way down the hill, the entire rear straight away, and coming out of the carousel at T18. I will definitely make it back down there. I think my goal of a sub 2:15 is definitely attainable, and probably should be closer to the 2:08-2:10 mark. Car is already getting take apart and gone through as I type. Fingers crossed it was just a string of bad luck at the end of the season, but we'll see!
There was an 'exciting' end of the race Sunday. Keep your eye on Kyle Busch in the white Camaro, and the guy in the Mercedes.
Made the trek down to COTA this last week. We left about 6am on Thursday and pulled in the gates about 4:30pm. The trip down was fairly uneventful. Hit some traffic in OKC, Fort Worth and Dallas. Literally hit something on the side of the road going through Dallas in the rain; missed it with the truck, but hit it with the rear left tire on the trailer and caused a little damage to the siding. No blow out, or not tire damage, so that was lucky.
It was my first time down to COTA, the facilities are incredible; exactly what you'd expect from a F1 track. We got unloaded and our area set up for preparation for Friday. We had six 40 minute sessions lined up for the day, beginning at 8:40 and then every 40 minutes after. My goal for the day was a sub 2:15.
1st session: We sat on pit road for 10 minutes passed 8:40 while they were scraping a car out of the wall. Track was still fairly wet from the rain the day before. Finally released us and I ran around fairly cautiously. My goal was 8 laps, and progressively building up to find where I could push. I made it to the back straight and hammered it. I hit the brakes early while I was still building up some guts, my gps tracked me at 171mph. The downside was at about 150mph the rear straight was so bumpy that my hood was catching air by the headlights and vibrating violently, so I pulled in back to our trailer to fix it. We used speed tape to completely seal the front of the car where the air was getting in.
2nd session: I went to grid 5 minutes late on purpose so I didn't have to wait to go out. Made it to T6 and felt something bouncing. In my head I was either going to push it or not...I started to push it coming out of T9 and it got way worse. I lipped it around back to the pits. Realized the passenger outer splitter cable was broken. Not sure if the splitter hit a curb and broke it when it forced it up, or what...but it was broken. 30 minutes later we had it safety wired back together and for all intensive purposes seemed like it would hold fine.
3rd session: Went out, made it through the first lap, started the second lap. By this time the track was pretty dry and the weather was nice. 2nd lap...which was the first full lap I've done I ran a 2:28.118 and it felt like it should..about 70%. 3rd lap I ticked a 2:21.884 and was overslowing in most corners still, but was working my way backwards as far as comfort level. (I was focusing on my corner exit first...then my min speed in corner...then my entry speed). On lap 4 I was running a predictive lap of 2:16.921 coming through the carousel and everything felt pretty good. Hit the second apex that leads down to T19 and all of a sudden I lost all power steering, dash, etc. The engine was still running, but at an idle and wouldn't respond to the throttle. I coasted into the pits and as soon as I came to a complete stop the engine stopped running and I was stuck. Ended up getting towed back to the trailer. The bracket that holds the battery was tight...but I guess not tight enough. It allowed the battery to shift over about half an inch allowing the positive terminal to arc off of the bracket and fried the battery. Super thankful there wasn't a fire situation. At this point, I drove 35 minutes to the nearest O'Reilly Auto Parts that had the battery I needed, then 35 minutes back. Missing session 4.
Needless to say I was pretty frustrated at this point. My original plan was to leave when we were finished, about 4:30pm and drive straight home. It was my birthday weekend and my kids had all kinds of things planned that they wanted to do. So as I was getting the new battery put in, and truly doing a once over on everything to see what was next to fail.... I decided that I had enough for the day. I loaded up and headed North about 3:00pm. Ended up getting home at 1:30am, I was beat.
A couple of takeways. The track needs to be resurfaced terribly. I can't imagine that F1 will be back until it is corrected. Large bumps every where. Most noticeably coming out of T1 about 1/3rd of the way down the hill, the entire rear straight away, and coming out of the carousel at T18. I will definitely make it back down there. I think my goal of a sub 2:15 is definitely attainable, and probably should be closer to the 2:08-2:10 mark. Car is already getting take apart and gone through as I type. Fingers crossed it was just a string of bad luck at the end of the season, but we'll see!
There was an 'exciting' end of the race Sunday. Keep your eye on Kyle Busch in the white Camaro, and the guy in the Mercedes.
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