EDK's Real Life Racing Exploits

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Or maybe Fords just suck big time. :P I can say that, my family has owned plenty of Fords. All of 'em sucked, from the '78 Granada to the '80 Econoline van to the '95 Towncar (still a Ford). OK, their trucks are maybe...OK...:rolleyes:

EDIT: Yes, this is an attempt to goad you out of playing Diablo 3 and come run some laps with us.

Well my wife drives the f150 since its a super crew cab and we have 3 kids. All 3 car seats fit in the back so I can't complain, but it just started knocking. I hate fords as well but my wife loves them. That's why I drive my wrangler and she drives the ford heheheh. But I'll definitely run some laps this week. I'm level 50 on Diablo with my witch doctor and only have 10 more to go until it maxes out at 60 and I start paragon leveling from 0-100.
 
Had a delay in getting raw video from our race at The Ridge in Shelton, WA in August. This was my second race at the track, although I only had a little over 2 hours in the car last time I ran there.

This video is my fast lap of the weekend, a 2:05.509. It was the fastest lap the car ran all weekend as well, and on Sunday (When I ran it) we had the 7th ranked fast lap in the field of 36 cars.

Lots of elevation change at this track, hard to see in the video. We had good pace in the car, but lost a wheel bearing on Saturday (1 hour repair) and an axle on Sunday (20 minute repair).

Was a fun race weekend, overall.

 
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Video must be still processing. I remember watching the stream last year, that track is nuts. :crazy:

Sorry for flaking out on your last 3 visits to WA. We don't hate on Californians, I promise. :dopey:
(Just the uber-rich ones that jumped in line to be Bill Gates' neighbor 15yrs ago).
 
Awesome Kevin! Thanks for posting. Have you ever posted a picture of the car itself?

Yeah, in the OP. But here you go. From first laguna race 2 years ago. Not pretty, and more dents since then. It's a chump car!

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Been a while since I posted in here, but thought I would give a quick update on what's happening with my RL racing.

We ran a race in December at Laguna Seca, 2 day event that was 7.5 hours both days. Drivers were Jason (car owner), John (guy who ran with us since the 36 hour race in Spokane last July), and Steve (Guy who started the clutch on fire in the first race and therefore named the team).

I drove the 3rd stint on day 1, we were in 1st place when I got out of the car (40 car field). Jason got in, and we developed what ended up being a pinhole in the oil pan. Losing tons of oil, several "meatball" flags, and had to cut our day 15 mins short to be able to work on the car overnight and avoid parc ferme (yes, even in ChumpCar :dopey: ).

A very nice team spot welded the pinhole once we found it, back on the track the next day and in around 10th place.

Steve drove 3rd, I was driving last stint. Steve had an off in turn 5 (left going up the hill to the cork) and put a bunch of gravel in the tire bead. We had changed to 8 inch wide wheels for this race, and had to put one of the 7 inch wide wheel tire combinations on to get him back out. He had 2 or 3 more offs in the same turn, eventually put the car in the tire wall outside of 5. :mad:

We had to change out the radiator (help from the Crabst Blue Ribbon MR2 team, who also loaned us their garage the night prior), and also some front suspension bits, while removing the hood and right front fender.

I took the car out for the final 40 minutes or so, still managed to pass a bunch of cars and get some laps in the 55's, maybe even the 54's.

In my Saturday stint, I had fast lap of the weekend for our car, 1:52.8xx.

Video of that lap.



Anyhow, the rest of the reason for my post. I'll be driving a first gen RX-7 at Laguna next Saturday. 6 hour Chump race that Jason is not towing down for, so I found a ride with another team. I have the first stint, wish me luck. :D

Pic of the RX-7, 1971 Pig Pig Porsche Livery. :)

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The RL original that it's based on.

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No update from Kevin on the 6 hour race :(
Sorry about that.

We finished in 9th place. Were running in 4th when I got out of the car after first stint. 2 big issues cost us roughly 5 laps and 2 positions. 3rd driver hit the tire wall exiting turn 4 and had to get towed from the gravel. 4th driver and car owner spun twice on one lap and had a 2 minute stop and hold black flag.

Onto my perspective.

I asked about gauges on Friday afternoon when I arrived at the track for tech. Standard question when you are getting in a new car for the first time, basically, "What am I looking out for?".

Temp is apparently the main thing on the rotaries, and low and behold, while the fancy numbered temp gauge was still reading 190, the dash gauge spiked to max temp on my second out lap. I immediately steered off the racing line and shut the car off. They towed me in, nice thing that happened with the tow. The brake pads were brand new, a flat tow is a great way to bed in new pads! ;)

Turned out a hose was loose and had sprayed coolant all over the engine compartment. But fortunately I had shut it down in time, and the motor was fine. Car owner was very appreciative and complimentary for that. :)

The car was first gen, has a Holley Carb, no injection. First time I drove a carbureted car on the race track, I have driven them plenty of times on the street. The car would backfire when I let off the throttle from high RPM, and would stumble if you went from half throttle or less right to full throttle. So I had to grow accustomed to steady, even throttle application in a 150 HP Chumpcar. :lol:

The gearing in the car was not optimum for Laguna Seca, the final ratio was over 4.00:1. As a result, 2nd gear was simply not useable, while 3rd was often a compromise in the lowest speed turns, while 4th was a compromise in most of the high speed sections. Really, I was taking the vast majority of the track in 4th gear, shifting to 4th at the T1 bridge between 3 and 4, shifting to 4th on the exit of turn 5 on the way up the hill, and shifting to 4th on the way out of the cork before the T3 bridge, and taking turns 9 and 10 in 4th. :eek:

Anyhow, a picture is worth 1,000 words, so here's a graph of how I stacked up. These guys know the car forward and backward, while I know Laguna pretty well. I had to just choose an arbitrary cutoff of high laptimes to remove to have the graph make sense. That basically removes pit laps, and very slow caution laps. Other slow laps you see are normally due to local yellows, emergency vehicles, etc.

I had fast lap of the day, and generally the fastest stint. :)


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My fast in this car was about 4 seconds slower than in the MR2. Gearing and fuel injection make most of the difference. I can push harder with confidence with the fuel injected car, knowing I will have power at my disposal to correct slides. That's important, especially in some of the banked turns, where you can go in a bit hot and correct the car. Gearing, having to use 4th all the way up the hill and then again in 9 and 10 is not optimum. You'd really like to be able to keep the car in higher revs in all of those areas.

This YouTube is not published, and is actually my second fastest lap of the race. Unfortunately, the forward facing GoPro turned off before the end of my stint.

Anyhow, this lap is only 3 tenths off of my fast, I imagine I picked some time up in the turn 2 hairpin, or maybe with smoother throttle application in turn 11, and no resulting stumble. One of those is likely.

 
Thanks for the update Kevin 👍

Those are some pretty impressive driving stats considering you didn't know the car and a great catch with the temp! Shame about all of the incidents robbing you of a higher place but it sounds like it was a worthwhile experience.
 
I forgot to mention, my next race will be Memorial Day weekend (May 25th).

I'm driving on a track some of you might know, Daytona International Speedway. I rented a seat in a 4th Gen Camaro. It's a 14 hour race, so I'll have 2 stints and about 3.5 hours of drive time.
 
Good luck Kevin, that one really does sound awesome 👍.....also, I hope the car's not pink or painted like cuts of pork! :lol:
 
Just out of interest ; when you say rented ; how much money are we talkin' about ?
Racing is expensive, I think we all know that.

The car has to pay fees just to get on the track, and there's a fee per driver. The series now has several sponsors, most of them are just supplying parts as prizes, giving discounts, etc. The series is at a point that it's not losing money, making is sustainable.

The track fee for Daytona is $1,200 per team, plus $150 per driver. So it costs $450 just to get the car on the track. Then there's transportation cost for the team to get the car there. Let's call that $200. Now we're up to $500 per driver.

Then there's the cost of racing, consumables, as we would call them. Fuel, tires, brakes. A car like this one on a track like this will probably use 8 gallons per hour. In a 14 hour race, I will hazard a guess that this car will use 1/2 of a set of tires and 1/4 a set of racing brake pads, a full set of rotors.

So fuel is let's call it $320 per hour for 91 octane, brakes are about $10 per hour, tires about $20 per hour. There's $350 per hour in consumables.

3.5 hours of seat time, x $320 per hour = $1,120. + $500 track/driver fees = $1,620.

That was a back of napkin for purpose of illustration. I did not pay quite that amount for this race. A typical race is between $150 and $500 per hour, there are just a lot of variables. The track fees, the cost of transportation, how hard the track is on consumables, how thirsty the car you're driving is. The MR2 is fairly easy on all consumables, it's a light car. So there's another advantage to being light in racing. :)
 
Don't forget the cost to fly over there, hotel costs and any rental car/taxi costs. It ain't cheap, not to say it's not worth the money. Good luck buddy, what date is the race?


Jerome
 
Daytona? I thought you hated ovals.
It has to be on the road coarse, obviously.

Good luck and above all have a great time and keep it safe!!

As usual I will be at Lime Rock for Memorial Day weekend, as usual, as a spectator.

And you forgot to mention another race, the longest NASCAR race of the year, the Coca-Cola 600. lol
 
Daytona? I thought you hated ovals.
It has to be on the road coarse, obviously.

Good luck and above all have a great time and keep it safe!!

As usual I will be at Lime Rock for Memorial Day weekend, as usual, as a spectator.

And you forgot to mention another race, the longest NASCAR race of the year, the Coca-Cola 600. lol
Yeah, it's the "Roval", the full layout like we have on GT.

Have a good time at Lime Rock. 👍
 
I sat just to the left of that stand watching the Bud Shootout in 2001 not knowing that 6 days later Dale Earnhardt would have his tragic accident. Despite that though the day was fantastic and watching the juniors in the pre-race event fall off the track was comical. Thankfully on that day nothing but individual pride was hurt and a bit of body work :). The shootout was a great taste of what was to come in the 500 and it was brilliant being able to witness NASCAR racing at first hand.

Good luck kev, hope you have a great race 👍
 
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