Hello again, Podium

Saturday night at the hotel was spent reviewing lots of race video and discussing lines, where to pass, etc. This was a great opportunity to take a step back and focus on what I had learned about the track (and my competitors) throughout the day. I felt confident that Sunday would yield better results.

As usual, there is no practice on Sunday. Just qualifying and the race. Our qualifying session was scheduled to begin at 8:30am. While this is relatively early for the Sunday quali, we were all fine with it as it meant our race would be at an equally early 12:30. The prospect of being packed and gone by 2:00 is a serious plus when facing a 6 hour tow home. I looked the car over once I got to the track. Everything seamed ready to go and nothing out of place following the race the day before. I still had plenty of gas left over from the day before so I decided not to add any before qualifying. This meant I would be even lighter after quali than I was after the race on Saturday. I knew I'd have plenty of time between quali and the race to figure out the weight issue. I wasn't going to be able to add more than 200 pounds of ballast, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Regardless, I had to put that out of my mind and focus on a good qualifying effort.

This time I cared about where I gridded up. I waited for all the crazy, front-running SpecE30 and Spec Miata guys to line up and then got in behind them. I felt they would likely all take off as soon as we left the pits and I would try to build up a gap behind them before my hot laps started. Again a couple of my competitors had the same idea and we lined up together. I vowed to stay on the bumper of the fastest car in my class and knock more time off. That strategy worked for a couple laps before we caught a BUNCH of slower traffic. I pulled into the pits feeling that I had done much better than the day before. My official time was a 1:46.0. I knocked off 0.6 seconds and everyone else got a little slower. While my time was far from great, it got me up to 4th position in class and in a much better position overall.

Next up was dealing with the weight issue. I let the car cool off and headed for the scales. The scales being used at Road Atlanta were a portable set with adjustable pads that can be slid back and forth to accommodate cars of different wheelbases. Two other racers helped get the pads correctly positioned and we weighed the car again. This result: 3020 pounds. A difference of 145 pounds more than the "official" weight from Saturday, and I had even less gas in the car! Most importantly, the car weighed exactly what it should have and I wasn't going to have to add any ballast. Obviously the folks manning the scales after the race didn't quite get the car centered on the pads and caused the discrepancy. We discovered during the racers meeting at lunch that every car they weighed was underweight. Thankfully, the GTS series director understood the problem and chose not to penalize any of us based on the post-race weights. He also urged that we make sure we not leave the scale area if we expect problems like that again. Another lesson learned for this rookie.

Race time. My number one goal for this race was to be more aggressive at the start and not stay out so far going into turn one. Everyone in front and beside me took off at about the same time and no one changed position. That wasn't true of the cars right behind me. A couple cars got really good starts and a Porsche 944 from another class was able to move into position beside me going into turn one. I moved down to the inside enough to hold others off, but the 944 was able to get enough of a run to get by me going into turn two at the top of the hill. I hadn't lost any positions, so I was very happy with the much better start. I was able to take of the out-of-class 944 during our first trip down the back straight and set my sights on the in-class car right in front of me. On to the video:

Part 1

Part 2


Part 3

I was able to stay with the GTS-2 E30 in front of me and finally get by him (to put me into 3rd place in class) in the braking zone coming into turn 10a. The red GTS-2 944 also caught up and the 3 of us were nose to tail. After about 1 lap of that I realized what I had gotten myself into; those two cars were likely faster than me, but were making up ground on me in places where passing is tough. I was then able to stretch out a gap on the straights and keep them at bay. I knew that they would be there for the rest of the race and any mistake by me would let one or both of them by in a heartbeat. We got a handful of laps into the race before a FCY for a stopped car in the downhill esses. I was happy to take a breather for a couple laps while they got the car towed in. While the caution got me back to the rear bumper of the 2nd place, I knew I didn't have anything for him as he was a couple seconds a lap faster than me. Therefore, I focused on making sure I got a good restart and kept the in-class guys behind me behind me. With no drama at the restart, I set off to try to keep running consistent laps and hoped neither of those guys could mount a challenge to get by. Fortunately for me, they had a pretty good battle going on and switched positions a couple of times. Eventually the 944 got by the E30, but they had undoubtedly slowed each other down while battling. The 944 got back onto my bumper, but I was confident that I could keep him back there. A local yellow flag in turn 6 meant that I could take my time getting into turn 7 and focus on getting a good run onto the back straight. As long as I was able to do that, I knew the 944 couldn't get by. While I didn't drive very consistently, I was able to hold him off and bring it home for a 3rd place class finish.

Ending up with a podium finish was a great result, but I was most proud of having been able to hold off two well-matched competitors for almost the entire race. There is still lots of room for improvement, but doing what I needed to do to gain a spot and stay there was very rewarding. I ran a best lap of 1:45.5 during the race, knocking off another half second. My data showed that my theoretical fastest lap using all of the race data was a 1:43.7. The numbers proved how inconsistent I was being as I am typically within 0.2-0.3 seconds of my TFL at tracks I am familiar with.

Road Atlanta is a blast. I can't wait to go back and give it another shot.

Long tows and elevation changes

Road Atlanta is one of the most famous race tracks in North America. Its fast turns, crazy elevation changes, and unforgiving walls are well known throughout the racing world. For many reasons, the biggest being my hometown's proximity to Virginia International Raceway, I have never been to Road Atlanta. Not even to watch a race. I've driven many laps there on various video games and watched hours of race coverage at the place, but none of that even remotely prepared me for what awaited me in Braselton, GA last weekend.

The race weekend began with a towing convoy. 5 tow vehicles with 5 trailers carrying 5 race cars. We somehow managed to all get together as planned and headed off on our 6 hour journey to the track. Tows that long can be pretty stressful, especially when done in the midst of Friday afternoon traffic. Having radios to talk to each other and others to follow/draft made things bearable and we made our way to northwest Georgia without much trouble. The others had informed me that parking at RA can be hard to come by when the crowds are big; a fact that was reinforced when we found out that all of the parking in and around our "designated" parking areas was already gone by 3:00 Friday afternoon. We decided we would find a chunk of parking lot that could fit all of us and park there, regardless of where it was in the paddock. We got to the track around 7:00. At that moment I was introduced to a startling reflection of the track's elevation change; the paddock road leading from the main gate to the top of the hill. A full throttle blast away from the main gate got us up to the top of hill. From here I got a shadowy view of the famous turn 12 and knew I had quite a challenge in front of me. We all got unloaded and headed out for some required track weekend Mexican food. Road Atlanta is much closer to civilization than all other tracks we go to. The short drive to dinner and the hotel was very welcomed after the long road trip we'd already had.

My nerves finally started getting to me when we got to the track on Saturday morning. Our morning practice session was only going to be 20 minutes long. With the out lap under double yellow and the fact that they have to throw the checkered flag with about 4 minutes left in order to get us all in, I knew I'd be lucky to get 5 or 6 laps under my belt. My Spec E30 buddy agreed to lead me out so I could at least figure out where the track went. That plan worked fine until the green flag dropped. Not surprisingly, not many of the 40+ other drivers on track cared that I was trying to learn a track I had never seen. About 8 cars got by me by turn 6. Several more flew by over the next couple of laps. About the time I got my heart down out of my throat the checkered flag came out. I pulled back into the pits fully confident that I was going to crash in qualifying later that morning.

My plan for qualifying was to use the full 15 minutes to continue to learn the track. I lined up by myself in the middle of the grid and let the field fill in around me. Fortunately, two of my in-class competitors lined up with me...one in front and one behind. My plan was now to follow the two of them around in order to judge my performance against them while learning their lines. We knocked out about 4 laps before they both drove off and left me behind. My data system flashed that I had managed to run a 1:46.6. I wasn't sure where that would put me, but I felt good about going faster without doing anything stupid. As it turned out, that time put me in 5th place (last) in class. To make things worse, it put several cars between me and the others in my class.

I remained strangely calm when race time arrived. I knew I was several cars behind my closest in-class competitors, all of whom were quite a bit faster than me. This meant I didn't really have any pressure on me to stay around any of them at the start of the race. I was ready to take it easy when the green flag dropped and let the race come to me as I learned the track some more. As we moved from turn 12 onto the front straight during the formation lap I realized I didn't know where the guy throwing the green flag was going to be standing. They had told us he would be on the pit wall alongside the track, but I didn't know which side of the track he would be on or how close to turn 1 he would be positioned. Since I didn't know where he was going to be my only choice was to wait for those in front of my to hit the gas and I would follow suit. That method did not work well. Several cars behind me got a run on me heading down to turn one. I stayed out way too wide and several of those cars got by me between turns 1 and 2. I was a little disappointed to drop so many spots right at the beginning of the race, but since none of them were in my class I knew I could use it as a learning experience and try to learn the track without much pressure. Here's the race video:

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

We had only one full-course caution period in this race; a stark contrast to what I had experienced at CMP. As a result, I had the opportunity to race hard for a much longer period of time than I had before. When the yellows came out, I discovered I had worked my way up to 3 or 4 cars behind another in-class car. On the restart, he got a great jump and took off, picking up a couple more spots. I never got any closer and finished 5th out of 5 in class. Not exactly the result I was hoping for, but I had kept my nose clean during a race on a track I had never seen. I could not complain about that.

After the race all of the GTS-2 class were sent to the scales to weigh-in to check our compliance with our class horsepower to weight ratio. Also in line were the winners from the SpecE30 and Spec Miata classes. This meant the guys working the scales were constantly having to move the scales around to make sure the cars fit on them properly. Once it was my turn they eye balled my wheelbase and told me to pull onto the scales. I had to move back and forth a couple times while they positioned me. They got me weighed and I began to pull off. As I drove away I heard the scale operator yell out "2,875 pounds". I couldn't believe what I heard. That was about 200 pounds less than I should have been with that amount of fuel and meant I w0uld be disqualified from the race. Losing a 5th place finish wasn't going to destroy my season, but I had worked hard to make sure my car was right were it had to be. The car was starting to overheat while waiting in line, so I'd have to wait until Sunday to find out what the problem was.