nostatic at all...

This event was to be my second time trial as a student. My first was Laguna Seca back in August of last year. I wasn't able to do any other POC time trials last year, and I'm itchin' to move up to wheel-to-wheel racing, but that requires a TT license first, then 6 TTs, then 2 race clinics. So I've got some work to do. But for this weekend, I had to get through it to my instructor's satisfaction so he would sign off on my license.

I was assigned "Behr", who is a great guy and experienced driver (he also pits with Marty who is chief driving instructor who has ultimate signoff on my license, so I knew if I screwed up Marty would hear about it). There were four run groups: red, orange, white and yellow. Red is the fastest group (where Behr ran), then orange. White is for people who have not done the race clinics yet, and yellow is students. There were only a handful of students so for the first session the track was wide open. It is always a challenge at a new track as you don't have any idea of speeds, gears, etc. Behr gave me some hints along the way and it started to get imprinted in my mind. He suggested higher gears in some sections than I would normally use, and while I generally drive high revs all the time, I stuck with his ideas.

After a couple of sessions I was carrying more speed, and I could see that the higher gears actually were working well. I slowly dropped form a 2:09 lap time down close to 2:00. After the 3rd session Behr told Marty that there wasn't much for him to do...that I had a good handle on the track, was in control, and just needed more laps. Plus he was getting pretty beat having to instruct and do his red group runs, as they combined white and yellow so he was going back-to-back. Marty said it was cool for me to do the rest of the day by myself, then Behr would go with me the next morning to see how I was progressing. So the rest of the day was lapping, lapping, lapping. Broke down below 2:00 so I was happy.

Now most of the "serious" contenders have quite the setup at these events. At a minimum it is a truck and trailer, but some have RVs pulling the trailers, and a few have semis. My accomodations are a bit more...uh...spartan (that's my pile of stuff in front of my car - 139):

But the cool thing is there isn't a lot of attitude, and plenty of guys will help you out, etc. So Sunday came early but part of it was my fault as I didn't check the schedule and assumed that there was a 7am driver's meeting. But there wasn't. Doh! Anyway the schedule for Sunday was going to be great. The white and yellow groups were combined again, and we were alternating with the red and orange...so it went orange-white-red-white-orange-white-etc. TONS of track time. I went out with Behr for the first two sessions, then he said, "OK, you're on your own. Just don't do anything stupid." So I didn't. Well, I actually made a mistake on the second session with Behr in the car. I spun going into the "legends' bowl". Nothing major...both feet in, no stall, was off the racing line, picked up the corner worker and got back into it. He asked me, "do you know what happened?" to which I replied, "yeah, I turned in too early." Behr said, "ok, you're good to go on your own...as long as you know what you did wrong it should be fine."

So after lunch it was the "real" time trial. At Laguna Seca they gave the choice of taking the best time from a 25 minute run session or running a "classic" time trial. At Laguna I chose the former as it was the "safer" bet (although the track got black flagged halfway through that session but I digress). No such choice this time...all the laps on Saturday and Sunday morning meant nothing. The 1:58.4 that I turned in the 3rd session was wiped off the board. We were placed on the grid according to earlier times, and sent off in 5 second intervals in groups of 9 cars. You get a warmup lap, then 2 hot laps, then you're done. That's it. You screw up, you're stuck. Doesn't matter how fast your were the rest of the weekend. It comes down to performing on those two laps.

So I was sent out 6th out of the 9 cars in our session. I just wanted to make sure I didn't get caught by the car behind me. And luckily I didn't. My heart was pounding, but I remembered to breathe, and got down to business. I wasn't pushing too hard as I wanted to make sure I got one clean lap in. I tried to be smooth and calm. Did my first lap and it felt fine, so I pushed just a bit more on the second. Then it was over. Checkered flag and it was into the pits and wait. Final result? a 1:59.6. Perfectly acceptable. I was the only IP car running so I won my class. But the time was perfectly respectible wrt other "close" classes.

So packed the car, and headed back to LA. Traffic wasn't too bad, and managed to catch a beatiful sunset. Until we meet again (the track and I that is). Tchuß.