(Relatively) quick race-weekend update11:19:47 AMAnother weekend spent at Mid-Ohio with NASA. Races on both Saturday and Sunday resulted in a pair of third-place finishes. Not bad, but I'd like to be a bit higher on the podium. The good news is I'm sneaking 
up on a suspension setup that works...in Sunday morning practice I was the fastest in class (though I managed to give it all back in qualifying).
Saturday's race started with a very disorganized run to the flag. After the first 5 or 6 rows nobody was lined up when the green flew (we run in mixed classes so my group started in the upper teens in a full field of 50 or so cars). I started 22nd overall, fourth in class, but quickly moved up half a dozen slots. That's "quickly" as in "by the first turn," thanks to being so far behind the leaders that I got a full run off the Keyhole coming to the green flag.
My friend John Graber shot this great video of his race, much of which was with me. The video starts right at the green flag and you can see what a disorganized mess it was. If you watch his mirror, you can also see the kind of run I got as I swoop from left to right, slicing through traffic, to ultimately pass him into the first turn (John started several rows ahead of me).
Later, if you're interested, around 6:30 into the video, I start lurking in his mirror again and come back past shortly after. He and I have a good race through the rest of the film even though he and the black BMW you'll see throughout are both GTS3 cars, a faster class than my own GTS2, so passing them neither helps nor hurts my in-class position.
Sunday I started and finished 3rd but had another terrific start, going from 19th to 15th on the run down to the first corner. Four or five turns later I made past Jim Child into 2nd place in class, pushing hard on the leader, Carl Picelle, but after a couple of laps my not-quite-right setup had me overheating the front tires and Jim got back past (then pretty much left me for dead).
This weekend we'll at Putnam Park in Indiana with the Porsche Club. I'm hoping a new set of rear springs will get up up onto the top step for a change (fingers crossed).
1. Joacim Boive08/29/2007 05:35:13 AM
Homepage: http://boive-racing.com
Congrats on the podiums! Very(?) unusual for a developer to race as well, I thought I was the only one until I found your blog... I don't race cars though, for me it's quadracing. Anyway, keep up the good work! Both on the track and off... ;)
