Anyone going to FCA @ Pocono tomorrow?

I was there, Blueish purplish BMW, with white valences, ran blue group for the day (was only like 10 people in the group, a lot more in red).

It was a fun event, pretty open track, not a lot of people in ran all day, and the weather held out.

Only one real incident with that guy in the viper...just a rookie mistake really, not sure what it was doing in the blue group, but he was ok, so thats good.

Lots of big HP cars getting beaten by much slower cars I just hate when they know there is a "faster" car behind them, and they still try to haul ass on the straights, holding everyone up in the infield...makes me want 600hp too

I have a whopping 265hp and was cruising by those guys, viper comp coupes, race vettes, etc...it was fun, and I got loads of Data to play with now to see where i can go faster. I could not get a clean lap, but i was doing low 1:33's, I figure I can do 1:20 with a bit more gear (maybe 3.46 instead of 3.73) and 50-100 more hp would help on the straights too.

I entered nascar one at 120-122, and exited at 128-130, and basically topped out at 143 by the middle of the back straight, and just kind cruised at 135 for the remained of the straight, as there's no use to stress the motor maxing it out. Tunnel turn I was consistently doing 125-127 over the bumps, which got WAY worse this year, the car was getting airborn, kinda scary but if you keep the steering tight but allowing it to move over the bumps, it was eacy to control.

I have to adjust my front sway bar a bit, was picking up inside wheels in the infield as you can see in the attached pic.

We also had our Formula SAE car on display, everyone was really impressed...I just wish we could have driven it around, it would have blown everyone's minds, especially since it would have destroyed every car at the track, easily! www.formularpi.com for more info on that.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Sweet write-up and pic! Getting good at track driving takes a lot of practice

 

Haha yea, racing is a difference story. I get car control practice from these track events, and racing experience (i.e. W2W) from karting. Its much faster pace and requires much quicker hand eye coordination as well as decision making. Plus we do about 125 in the shifters on a long track, hell even my pile of crap Kt100 does 75mph in a decent sized parking lot.

I could have written quite a bit more, but I am doing test driving this weekend for our formula sae team, and thats why I am up right now at 7:20am, ouch.

Anyways, time to go and do more testing today.

I'll have more pics to post hopefully this week, i'll just toss the links and pics in here.

 

Thanks, , even though i had 150hp less then everyone else

I have video of me lapping that newer viper, even though he passes me on both straights each time i caught him, haha, I guess he had something to prove...too bad he was not as quick in the turns.

Since I topped out at 140 (from my short gearing) by the middle of the back straight, i was getting killed by the vettes and vipers who were just hauling, and then braking to 50mph for the tunnel turn and infield.

I was taking the tunnel turn and nascar 1 atleast 40-50mph faster b/c you can even see in the video when i come out of nascar one, even if they were on the gas they could not keep up with the pace i had made through the banks. I wanted to run red so i was not held back as much, as i knew blue would be too slow, but red was congested in the morning, even though by mid afternoon it was like 4 cars out in red..oh well, I still got a TON data logged for testing, and know the adjustments I have to make to the car now. I was hitting 1.45g's instantaneous in the infield, with a couple turns 1.2g's static mid corner. I had to do some calculations to get the correction factor for the g's on the banking, since using an accelerator it would need to be calibrated on the bank, otherwise the normal force would not be pointing normal to the ground...it came to like a factor of 0.92

I was basically playing with the car in the infield and just trying not to get destroyed on the straights. Pocono long course is really boring, but the infield i like b/c you can experiment a lot, with lots of run off, and decent surfaces. I used to run a 355ch here (and limerock), but I think I can run this car much closer to the limit...now if i had 150hp more in the car (via S54) thats a different story. I'm going to develop this car a bit more this year and then probably sell it, race shifters for a bit while I save for a dsr or csr and run that class for a while, develop that car, and see where it goes.

The company I am engineering for now is expanding rapidly and has a large new facility that is already packed with work, so its going to be interesting years to come for sure.

Thanks again,
Steve
www.formularpi.com
www.roadracetech.com

P.S. The vintage car was a Lola, i dont think it was running too well, but its a pricey peice of history, i'm glad its atleast still being run at all, keep the passion alive. Camaro was pretty quick, I passed both them pretty easily, but they were fast on the straight...but what fun is that Again, I only have a 2.5L with 265hp, and like 225ftlbs of trq.

My favourite car of the day was the grp A e30 m3, centerlocks, airjacks, not the best cage, but its 20yrs old, thing was awesome!

Here is the fsae car I raced this weekend, I was quickest, but we were all on pace with each other....oh yea, did i mention we design and built this from scratch, a new one every year. 6 months to build, 4 months racing it, 2 months more of design and then 6 months to build another, 4 months racing it, etc etc etc. 0-60 sub 3
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I've been with the club for a while (10yrs now i think) we've run a lot of italian Horse-powered cars (308.328.348ch.355ch.360.etc), i'd have no problem running red, nor instructor soon most likely, however i'm not a big fan of instructing at these types of events, too muchliability.

I'll think about moving to red for the next event, probaly start in blue to get the car dialed in a bit more...since i can't pull 160 on the straights like they can, its tough to think about moving to red, b/c it we would just be swapping positions back and forth. Straight away they'd pass me, and then i'd get held up in thw twisties...we'll see though.

The video's are fairly large b/c i only edited them for my collection and I like to keep the quality pretty high.

Thanks,
Steve

 

1. The car is spec'd for a certain class right now (WCT and bmwcca DM). Raced W2W later this year time permitting.

Track days get old, W2W is where its at. I'll hopefully be developing a sports racer in csr or dsr within 2 years, probably from the company i'm engineering at.

2. Above is not a kart, its an engineering project, costs about 50x more than a top end shifter kart Its a hybrid monocoque formula car, we design and built everything on the car except we buy the steering wheel and wheels, otherwise its all handbuilt in house and in our machine shops. www.formularpi.com for more info. 0-60 in 3s, 1.5+ g's.

I will probably be running some karts at Summit point when it opens. I used to run at WestHampton on longisland (my friend owned the track), but the track is gone now

I have a kt100 kart here for our race team to train with, its about 18hp, its pretty quick, but nothing like a 80/125 shifter.