2006 Race Diary #4 - NASA HPDE La Junta 6/10/06

[Warrtalon]

This was last weekend at the most recent NASA Rocky Mountain track event. The track is in La Junta, CO, at the airport and is 1.5 miles long with 7 turns. I was in HPDE3 with 4 other cars (3 C5 Z06s and an '84 Dodge Charger race car). They all had race tires, but I started out on my 255/40-17 Falken Azeni RT-615 with the intent of putting on my V710s for the 3rd and 4th sessions in the afternoon.

Your choice of 4 vid locations (all the same but different quality):

YouTube
20MB (right-click/save-as)
100MB (right-click/save-as)

The vid shows us in the 1st session learning the course for the first time. You can see many mistakes and can see how I was really struggling with the street tires, since I am used to racing on my V710s, so I was going too hot into most of the turns. When I pass the Charger, he screwed up and moved to the right instead of the left, so I had to slow down and wait for him to move left and signal before I could pass right. When I catch up to the yellow and silver Vettes, the silver guy also screwed by giving the pit signal instead of the pass signal, so that is why I slowed down there, too. The vid is chopped so that it doesn't show all the boring footage of me by myself, so that's why it jumps at certain places - not perfect editing.

The last lap of the vid was my fastest lap of 58.4s. The fastest lap of the weekend was a 57.4s by a World Speed Challenge SRT-4 (Chronohunter has raced/beaten him here locally), 2nd was an American Iron Z28 that ran 58.0s, then 3rd was the silver Z06 in this vid that I passed but driven by the father of the two in TTU - he dropped down to 57.8 on day 2. I never got to put on my V710s, because I blew out a brake pad that then killed my rotor with deep grooves, so I had to go home. I believe that I could have maybe surpassed the 57.4 by the SRT-4 - there's no guarantee, but it would have been fun trying, especially since I put down that 58.4 on my first session. The SRT-4 only did one session, so it's possible he could have eventually done better, too, had he kept racing.

Here's some pics:

http://performanceimagery.com/track/...ton/index.html

[Ludachris]

Originally Posted by Warrtalon

This was last weekend at the most recent NASA Rocky Mountain track event. The track is in La Junta, CO, at the airport and is 1.5 miles long with 7 turns. I was in HPDE3 with 4 other cars (3 C5 Z06s and an '84 Dodge Charger race car). They all had race tires, but I started out on my 255/40-17 Falken Azeni RT-615 with the intent of putting on my V710s for the 3rd and 4th sessions in the afternoon.

Your choice of 4 vid locations (all the same but different quality):

YouTube
20MB (right-click/save-as)
100MB (right-click/save-as)

The vid shows us in the 1st session learning the course for the first time. You can see many mistakes and can see how I was really struggling with the street tires, since I am used to racing on my V710s, so I was going too hot into most of the turns. When I pass the Charger, he screwed up and moved to the right instead of the left, so I had to slow down and wait for him to move left and signal before I could pass right. When I catch up to the yellow and silver Vettes, the silver guy also screwed by giving the pit signal instead of the pass signal, so that is why I slowed down there, too. The vid is chopped so that it doesn't show all the boring footage of me by myself, so that's why it jumps at certain places - not perfect editing.

The last lap of the vid was my fastest lap of 58.4s. The fastest lap of the weekend was a 57.4s by a World Speed Challenge SRT-4 (Chronohunter has raced/beaten him here locally), 2nd was an American Iron Z28 that ran 58.0s, then 3rd was the silver Z06 in this vid that I passed but driven by the father of the two in TTU - he dropped down to 57.8 on day 2. I never got to put on my V710s, because I blew out a brake pad that then killed my rotor with deep grooves, so I had to go home. I believe that I could have maybe surpassed the 57.4 by the SRT-4 - there's no guarantee, but it would have been fun trying, especially since I put down that 58.4 on my first session. The SRT-4 only did one session, so it's possible he could have eventually done better, too, had he kept racing.

Here's some pics:

http://performanceimagery.com/track/...ton/index.html

My pads were done by the 3rd session on Sunday too. I drove home metal on metal, again... time for the new brakes. Whit and I both got moved up to HPDE3 finally. I never did have the car running perfect between the throttle body issues and the brakes. Hopefully Pueblo goes much smoother.

[Warrtalon]

Sweet, then we should have some good fun in HPDE3 at PMI next month. I haven't been told directly, but I'm pretty sure Chuck didn't approve me for HPDE4 yet, since I only got 2 sessions of evaluation, which wasn't enough time for me to work on all the advice he was giving me.

Btw, I plan to do the CarZ open track day on June 22d (next Thursday) at PMI in order to get some extra practice and test out the new brakes (replacements for the ones from Saturday).