The Left Foot

So yesterday after a long stall I had the oppurtunity to hit Devens airfiled again for a autocross. This time i got invited by fellow iracer Ian Cook to join him with another fellow iracer Ryan Field at a Renegade Miata club event...

It was definetly packed, compared to the other clubs i go with usually (Track Club USA, Bay State Corvette Club, etc..) and ofcourse the # of runs got a hit at 7. Maybe I am spoiled with 10+ runs from the other clubs :) However they did lay down a very nice track, with a lot of technical and high-speed sections... so that was a nice change from the slalom heavy configurations i have got custom to over the years...

Ian had brought his project 90's miata, and he would co-drive it with Ryan. Keep in mind this was Ryan's first time autocrossing, however do not be fooled as Ryan is proabbly up in the top %1 drivers on Iracing.. some of you might say "so whats, thats just a sim" however...he is known for his extremely smooth style...After his 4th run, he was able to lay down solid times with a completely stock 90's project car, his smooth style from iracing had resignated well here.. i look forward to watch him in the future...

Ian's style was very similar to mine, especially my style from last year when i first started, fast and good car controll or controlled madness, and crowd cheering stunt driver abilities.. Since this is Ian's first year autocrossing, he will soon come to the same realization that i have come to and try to adapt and evolve his style to be right between the old aggresive and fun Ian and the smooth and boring Ian... it is a though balance to get to, and i've been working for a while for my self as-well, and i look forward to watch Ian unleash his true potential next year...

So watching these guys on the track, complete opposite styles gave me the clear picture, "the happy place", the style to adapt was actually a bit of both...or meet them right in the middle. Ian and i had a lot already in common, and i know i had to smooth out my transitions.. keep in mind my car, bone stock, with front skinny tires understeer's alot,, it is specifically designed to come out of the factory with understeer in mind (to decrease the # of clueless driver wrecks).

I had been left foot braking on Iracing for almost more then a year now, and finally had the courage to try it in real on my last race on Summit @ 24 hours of lemons with medicore success ( locked a couple times).

So what i decided was the first half of the day drive normal, and the last couple runs i would try left foot braking to ease the transitions and settle the car...

Here is a simple graph of my laptimes, comparing the diffrence in both methods (Blue : right foot, Orange : left foot)

You can ignore the first 2 runs, as thats when i try to learn the track, but after that, the amount of progress starts do decrease in each run, and i almost hit a wall (4th, 5th)... but once i switch to left foot braking, i get a great reduction on my lap times...

I can say as advertised left foot braking did not only help with the transitions, cut down the amount of time lost between changing from brake + gas, but it actually improved (in my car) the amount of understeer i used to get...which was exactly what i needed.

I still think the car has more potential with smoother hands(looking at the graph you can see if we had run #8 or even #9 there was room for improvement), but this was proabbly one of the fastest runs on street tires on the event, here is my last run where i finally break the 113 second mark:

Phil-1800 a.k.a "Stockholm Saint"

Yes kids it official, there is a high possibility that next year the team might have a 2nd car as a contender...

This one is a true "piece of shit", but comes with a history and class... I have a feeling once Phil gets done with this, it will be one of the better looking cars on the northeast lemons tracks

Early reports indicate that the car will be named "Stockholm Saint" and will include a swedish theme,, lets hope nothing to do with ABBA :)

Saying that, Phil...(who's apperently dad still owns a restored version of this car ) has some scary plans for this baby. One thing about Phil is he is a true jack of all trades, a perfect engineering genius..once done with this car, it will be pumping a good hp/weight ratio i am sure!! :)

Nothing Phil does is "under-whelming", and i truelly cannot wait to get more updates of the car through out the winter as it morphs into a race car by spring...and shit in my pants on the track while drivin it!

The other cool aspect would be running a 2 car team, although logistically speaking towing 2 cars to each race will definetly become a costly nightmare... However running the fox and the saint side-by-side drafting on the straights, while taking in team orders on intercom will definetly add a nice twist to the equation... a equation that keeps getting bigger and larger each year, just like the team :)

24 Hours of Lemons Capitol Offense

Wow...what a great track that was, i don't think i have ever droven on anything quite like it...very technical and physically demanding (especially with 85-90F degree weather).

Lots of elevation changes, banked turns, crazy S's, off-camber turns, double and even triple apex turns,, you name it they have it :) And when you put 102 x $500 worth cars on the track... you know you will have a good times :)

"Good times" i think is the correct phrase to describe the whole weekend...although we where thrown off when we found out that we got promoted to class B from C because of our previous domination in the C class we knew we had nothing against some of the faster class B cars...

But we where not going to give up without a fight... while some Class B cars where turning in 1:53 lap times, ours fastest time (GJ) was ~2:00 and we were pretty happy to come 10th in our class and 20th overall (may i remind you that it was out of 102 cars)

Its also good to point out that if we where still in Class C we would have won that by a 30 lap margin(!)... but fellow team member and iracer and gt academy finalist Andre contributed for the Class C win in the Sputnik piece of shit car..(because we had no open seats for him on this race he took a arrive&drive seat with Team Sputnik) so atleast that victory did not go too far away from the family ;)

We had a few hickups during the weekend... Chris missed a few yellow flags, Steve got a hit & run (again but this time on the track :) ) but luckly no major flags..

Mechanically the new engine did wonders,, we had to swap out the ECU that was acting funny...which I have to say its great to be part of a team who does not mind carrying around extra parts for easy swaps like this to save the day! :)

I also captured quite a amount of racing footage from Tom, GJ and Chris's sessions, i still have hours of video to edit, but in the mean time here is a quick POV one from me on Sunday morning working traffic and battling out with some of the class A and B cars... enjoy :)



This might very well be the last race for the season for us... but who knows maybe we'll find enough time & budget for another race weekend, but either way i'll have more too post soon...

The next race is coming up :)

Yes...its been quite some time since i had the oppurtunity to update
the blog, but actually there has been a lot of developments since the last
race in NHMS.

Since we fried the engine only a few hours away from capturing our
first victory as a team last race, the majority of the team spent
most of their weekends getting in a new engine from the parts car
that was bought some time ago incase we ever needed it...smart move
on buying that other crap-can fox guys :)

Here is our Craptain working on setting up the install for
the new engine :)

It sucked i couldn't be there with the guys to help out during the
engine swap but a 8 hour round trip drive and the fact that I lack
in mechanical skills, i had nothing to offer then just moral support...

Initial tests of the new engine (on closed course, closed to traffic :P)
hinted that we had more horsepower! This can be explained by the fact that
the old engine proabbly had 150k miles + 4 races under its belt, while i
think this engine is under <60k miles (although not sure)

So new engine = more horsepower, but it can also bring some negative
suprises during the race weekend, as it has not been tested under
stresfull conditions. But i think we will try to do the practice session
on friday to see how the engine behaves..

Practice i think will be important as-well for the team, as the race
will be on Shenandoah Circuit @ Summit Point Motorsports Park which we have
never raced on. It is supposed to be one of the popular lemons tracks
( in meaning a lot of traffic) and a very technical track...

It also sucks that although we have the other tracks scanned from Summit in Iracing
we seem to have this one missing... I had used NHMS Iracing version
effectively in the previous race, but looks like all I have is a few
youtube videos to learn the track this time..

I'll have more updates after the race next week and hopefully some great
news!

F1 Outdoors leaguge and summer action :)

So what other way of cooling down in summer months then racing
on the F1 Outdoor track in the summer leaguge :)

The track is truely beautifull:

The races are usually every other week Fridays after work, so that
means I spend 1.5 hrs in rush hour getting to the track, and we
get 3 races + 1 practice session.

The track hosts a wide array of track configurations, and there is
plenty of room for passing... here is a recent video from Round #1
(I still am trying to figure out how i got the penalty on this
video though...let me know if you figure it out)



The racing is very real, but not everybody obeys the rules..especially
round #2 i have been used for brakes many times, while the flag stations
where chatting about their nail polishes.. I literally raised my hand
waved at them, etc.. but nothing could get their attention :)

I am still learning the tracks and should get higher in the points
in the upcoming events, but there is some serious talent in the top #3!
Some of these guys are old timers who have done the same leaguge last
summer.. and just following their lines i see great improvements...

More mario karts flavoured videos to come, next race 1st week of July...

BSCC Autocross - 5/21

Had a great time @ the BSCC autocross event in Devens Airfield.

The track was set yet again to be a high speed with a lot of slaloms.
This time i tried to play around with the front tire pressures to
help with the dreadfull understeer I get with the stock 175 front tires.

I think i had the narrowest front tires in the whole event...!

But changing my driving style, and lowering -2 psi on the fronts def
gave me a nice bit on the turn ins,, which allowed me to get first place
in the experience street tire class! :)

Here is the video from my fastest run of the day(with a passenger)



I think there was a potential of shaving off 1 more second from the
time, but for that i need to get smoother...and smoother.. getting there
slowly but surely! :)

24 Hours of Lemons New Hampshire Speedway

Wow..what a crazy weekend it was... I was in TX for work
last thursday, flew back to Boston @ midnight, and headed
to NHMS Friday morning for a race weekend with Team FarFrumWinnin
again.

Friday practice was great, a perfect sunny day, and I had the oppurtunity
to take the car for a good ~20 minutes and a get feel for the track and
compare the track to the iracing version... I have to say hats
off to Iracing again.. i felt at home from lap #1...

I also had the pleasure to meet fellow iracer Andre Gomes
who joined the team for only this race.. Andre is a true talent and
a finalist in the PS3 GT Academy, he will be heading to a week
of final qualifying in Silverstone @ the end of this month...
and if he makes it (which I am sure he will) he will get a real seat
to race in high profile races around the world.

It was Andre's first time on the track, I mean "any" track...and
he was already 1 second faster then my fastest laptime...
He showed great car control in wet, dry and in traffic...
I have a feeling if the racing gods are on his side, and he
gets the seat after Silverstone he will have to consider
changing his career :)

Speaking of "wet" my Saturday stint during the race had a nice
down pour of rain,, the car was exteremely tricky to drive and
unpredictiably scary as soon as the puddles started to form...

Little to my suprise going into the last S before the final straight
2 wide in a downpour was not the smartest choice and when I got cut off
right when I was about to apex i had to lift, and round and round I went..
My first track spin, and it was quite scary.. I also had the honor
of get the first black flag for the team :/

However, Sunday the sun was on our side,, and i did a really solid
stint and had a great time, here is some video footage from that day
mostly focused on traffic fun stuff:



When my stint had ended we were first in class C, and had a ~30 lap
lead to the second car...and we where upto 12 place overall (out of 75 cars)
Nothing could stop us from winning in our class...until the engine died
during Andre's stint which was right after me :/

It was a very low point of the weekend as we had to pack and leave...
But I guess that summarized a perfect racing weekend, rain or shine
we try our best, and sometimes shit happens...

Looking forward to the next race in mid June in Summit Point..!!!