Sebring HSR

Just returned from the HSR vintage races at Sebring. Over 300 awesome cars. They had nearly 30 cars in the GTP race!!!!

Got to drive Dana's 355 Challenge in the 4 hour Enduro on Sunday with zero seat time beforehand......I was scheduled to co-drive with Kitchak in his 73 RSR, but the fuel cell ruptured in the morning practice.

I had a blast. Her car was so much fun to drive as we nailed the setup on the camber and toe.....actually ran on soft shock setting for the corn rows of Sebring's track.

We also had none other than the great Randy Pobst in the car for the weekend with Dana. He co-drove in the Historic Enduro on Sat. with Dana and did 2 other sessions.

For the 4 hour race, Randy started the car and drove the first 50 minutes. Dana took over and drove until the 2 hour mark for the 20 minute mandatory pitstop/break, I drove after the break and turned the car back over to Dana to finish the last 30 minutes.

There were some 70 cars entered and we finished 21st overall. We just missed the yellow flag by 1 lap for the Pobst/Gribi driver change or we would have finished in the top ten.

Pretty damn good considering the winner was the Oldsmobile Aurora GTS car, followed by a Lola T-70, a number of Trans-Am and IMSA GTS/2 cars.

I managed to run times 2 seconds off of Randy's times on old shag tires and no warmup.......needless to say, the crew was pretty pumped their boss was keeping close to the pace of Randy the Rocket. NOt only that, but Dana managed to keep within 10 to 12 seconds of me which was awesome. She drove hard the whole time doing 2:36-2:38's. Randy was doing 2:22-2:25s, I got in the groove and was ripping off 2:24-2:25s

I had a hell of a time figuring out the brakes, as the ABS went out sporadically and the fronts would lock up almost immediately if I did not tap dance on the pedal with the left foot before going in and could not go deep to pass under braking which is my usual way to get around folks. Had to change my strategy completely and try to catch them and pass on exit acceleration. So that was frustrating at first but challenging to adapt to keep up the speed.

I think we have some in-car footage of all of our stints behind the wheel that we will have to show at the next tech session.

Sebring is rough as hell, I love that track......no time to catch your breath.

d

 

Do you have a Class A CDL???????????

[/QUOTE]When it goes double yellow, should you stay out until you catch the pace car as to make sure not to loose a lap as it will take the pace car more than 3 minutes to lap the 2.9?[/QUOTE]

Depends upon fuel window and driver change. My general rule of thumb is to get pit out of way under dbl yellow as you can almost get your pitstop completed before the pace car goes around and absolutely catch the pace car if time permits "long yellow to clean up mess" that way you may be able get out before it comes back around. Our stops are 5 min, so it's crucial to catch and dive in

[/QUOTE]What other enduro strategy and advice can you offer?[/QUOTE]

Make sure you time it right. Our stops start/stop at cones at the entrance to and from pit lane. The in and out laps are critical especially if under green.

[/QUOTE]For the SCCA, each pit stop has to be at least 3 minutes. Also, one driver can't be in the car more than 2 hours continuous. So perfect would be pit stops at 2:00 and 4:00 under double yellows. Should you pit earlier than the 2 hours if a double yellow comes out? I know it wouldn't make sense after 30 minutes, but at what time does it make sense to pit early so you don't under green?[/QUOTE]

It's always a gamble, roll of the dice.......but taking advantage of dbl yellows is how you win endurance racing in any amateur or pro race. I can't tell you how many times I've won races because of pitstops.....as well as lost races due to having to pit under green when my competitors were able to pit under yellow............Just think of how long 1 second is on the track. 1 second behind the car in front of you at full throttle is a pretty good chunk to make up. If you can pick up a few seconds each time, it's going to pay off.

Case in point, in 97 24 Hours of Daytona I was working on a WSC team with Hurley Haywood, Derek Bell, Jim Pace, Jim Mathews. We hit debri on the track at about hour 3 that knocked the right front corner off the car. We had a spare upright with a-arms already to go, but still took 5 minutes to change. We managed to make up the time by the 18th Hour by doing double stints (driver change took longer than fueling) and by making zero mistakes. We were consistently getting out of the pits 15 to 20 seconds ahead of our competitors and thus put us back in contention.....think how hard it is on the track to make up 15-20 seconds per an hour session.....that means every lap must be faster than your competition even in traffic....hard to do.....

d


Thanks,
rob[/QUOTE]