Here are some video links making the rounds:
From Josh, a reason not to take passengers onto the track, and the driving instructor of the year award.
Just to top it, Mark sent a link to this footage of a Spec Miata at the California Speedway. Watch the tow truck at the end.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Installation Laps and Paul’s Prerace Preparation Paranoia…
Normally a true installation lap is done when you have put new parts on the car or torn something apart and put it back together. The goal being simple enough, are all the parts working properly and harmoniously. I use installation laps during the weekend’s first practice session, a bit differently than that, and frankly differently than all of the other drivers since you can treat a Mazda GT, once it’s warm, a bit more like a daily driver than the full blown race car it is, and just hop in and go. But to pause for a second, let’s first ask the question, from a driver’s point of view just what is an installation lap?
During a proper installation lap the driver is unconcerned with his speed and is going, at best, eight tenths of his normal pace or less. It’s not a time to be learning the track or picking out marks, nor is it a time to be analyzing any off line maneuvers (to pass or avoid being passed) that you might need later. No, a proper installation lap is all about the car and what it’s doing. It’s a chance to narrow your focus to the car itself. Now a lot of the other drivers will take off to learn the track or get some seat time in right off the bat which will work out just fine. But I’ve learned over time that there are some rewards to coming up to speed slower, especially since by concentrating your entire attention on the physical aspect of the car you can spot necessary adjustments to temperatures (more or less tape) and make sure the EGT’s are dialed in as well as get yourself into a good mindset before tearing off like you’re on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. But maybe that’s just me so in the end do what works for you.
In fact, some of the old shoes don’t bother with the practice session at all if they are already very familiar with the track, and the new to middling guys are looking to get some seat time in full tilt boogey mode and so they take off right away and are just fine as well. The Mazda GT is solid enough for you to do that. But it is a race car not some dainty little daily driver, and in some cases it may be a race car that hasn’t been driven in a month or three. So in my mind it’s worth taking at least a chunk of the first practice session and doing an installation lap or two, even if you don’t do the whole paranoid routine that I do.
This begs the question, with no new parts on the car exactly what are the particular goals for such laps? My first goal is pretty general. How does the car sound and feel as I pull it out onto the track. You might, for example, have taken a bit of an off track excursion last time out and have thankfully forgotten all about it. If you didn’t know you bent some little thing last time out, it would be hard to tell the crew to fix it, so it’s possible it’s still there. For me, even if the car was perfect last month, I like to concentrate, at a slower speed, on how the car is currently tracking under acceleration, neutral and braking. There should be no strange thumps or bangs. No odd sounds from the drive train. No unusual vibrations. The brake rotors should feel good, even if they are slippery because they are cold. Our brake rotors and pads will seemingly last forever unless you are unlucky and pick up a stone and it cracks one, which happened to me at Thunderhill three years ago. If you push the brake pedal it shouldn’t push back. Another thing I check right at first, and several more times on the first lap, is the oil pressure gauge. Just because it hasn’t changed in the last four years doesn’t mean it’s not going to change now and the first lap out is a very good time to look at it very closely. Mine will peg after the car is started and pretty much stay pegged as long as my RPM is near race levels.
If the car feels as good as it usually does after the first lap, and the oil temperature is still at least 180 then it’s time for a straight line acceleration test. Well after the apex leading onto the longest straight, once the car is pointed fully forward, I’m going to do a little drag race. I’m taking the engine up to where I plan to shift during the race, in each gear, while keeping my eye more on the EGT’s than the track. The Exhaust Gas Temperature can vary a bit depending on conditions (temperature, humidity, barometric pressure) and it can also vary seasonally based on fuel additives and the amount of Ethanol in the fuel mix. In my car there is about a fifty-fifty chance I’ll need to go up or down one size in the carburetor jetting at the start of the weekend. Rarely, I might need to make a change during the weekend if ambient conditions change radically. The drag race run is going to give me the opportunity to take my time and examine the EGT gauges closely. I already know I’m going to brake very early, I’ve already thrown away the exit, I’m only interested in the top end of third gear not my top end speed, and I’m driving in a straight line so I have plenty of time to look. When pushing the car, later on, it’s still important to have a particular spot to check the EGT’s once per lap, but I get so busy I tend to just glance at the left side and use it as a proxy for both. This is my one chance to concentrate all of my attention on what the motor is doing without any of the distractions you have on a lap where you are fully up to speed.
If the EGT’s are a bit below 1700, for both rotors, at the top end of third gear then I don’t need a change. And don’t over think what the gauges are telling you. After you let off the gas or as you are going up through the gears the readings aren’t that important, what the crew is really interested in is the top end of third gear, just before you let off the gas or shift. Higher than 1700 and it might be worthwhile to go one step richer, below 1700 and a step leaner. It’s important to remember that these temperatures are a bit fuzzy. The car is not going to suddenly blow up at 1701, you are looking for a range and the ability to tell the crew what the car is doing; too high, too low or right on while backing it up by telling them the peak number. If you go too rich, the EGT’s may stay low but the car will be hard to drive since you are flooding it at the bottom of the power band. Too lean and the EGT’s will spike which causes excessive wear on bearings and apex seals as the motor’s internals are getting too hot and are expanding to the limit of tolerance. In the last four years I’ve never had a large valid split between the two gauges, but there is always the first time, and this is a chance to take my time and read them both carefully. The only time I had an invalid split was about three years ago, when the sensors for the right hand gauge went bad and they gave me a reading of -10 degrees right and 1690 degrees left. I’ve also been told, although it hasn’t happened to me, that if one gauge goes bad while the tachometer starts flopping around like a fish on dry land it’s a sign that one of your igniters is going and needs to be replaced when you bring the car back in. In fact, just to be paranoid I would bring the car back in that event, unless it’s during the race itself.
Once I’m happy with the motor it’s time to make sure the motor is going to stay happy with me. And that is part of my third and final test. I’m looking at how various temperatures are looking to behave over time in the current conditions. Most important is to know with certainty if the oil and water temperatures are climbing, steady or declining. You may need more tape on the radiators in a cold morning than on a hot afternoon so this can change during the day but you don’t want to, under any circumstances, run the car with the oil below 180 or above 230. That nice fifty degree gap is not all that hard to hit by putting on, or taking off, some tape on the oil or water radiator and all of the cars are going to react the same, so once anybody gets the right amount of tape, everybody will have the right amount of tape. I just like getting there first. If the oil and water temperature split, and the oil is OK but the water is too hot for example, tell the crew… but generally the water is less important than the oil unless it’s about to start boiling (above 240). During the race if you can only get yourself to look at two gauges, pick the EGT and oil temperature gauges. To get the temperatures right you need, of course, to start to bring the car up closer to a race pace since if you run it too slow the temperature readings won’t match up later on. Which is why this is my last paranoid test before switching to seat time mode. A little over nine tenths of my race pace, with shift points at my race pace, to see what happens for a lap, two at most does the trick for me. During the race itself, if it is a hot day, keep a special eye on the oil temperature if you are right in trail with somebody. If the driver ahead is stealing your air you may need to duck out of his draft on the front straight to get the temperature back down, even if it costs you speed, but thankfully that can only happen on a really hot summer day when you’ve spent a few laps right on somebody’s bumper.
The final gauge to take a look at is fuel pressure. This is one I like to check during the little drag race, to see if it drops below 3 psi, and during the longest sweeping corner, again to see how far it drops or if I’m feeling particularly paranoid that day in the longest left and right hand corners. Generally this gauge isn’t very important unless your car starts to die lean for some odd reason, in which case it’s very important to be able to tell the crew if the fuel pressure dropped at the same time you lost power. I haven’t had this gauge drop below 3 pounds in years, but I like to check it anyway during my installation laps because otherwise I wouldn’t look at it the whole weekend and I don’t want it to start feeling neglected. Besides, the more you can tell Tom and his crew how the car is behaving the smarter you’ll look. Pull in and complain about the car, without being able to tell them what all the gauges are telling you, makes it look like you aren’t paying attention.
So, do you need to do installation laps in a Mazda GT or not? I didn’t do any, none at all for the first two years I drove the car. From my own observations I’m pretty much alone in doing so now, beyond the fact that most drivers pay a bit more attention to the gauges on their early hot laps. And I didn’t even formally think through what I was doing until I decided to write this post. Tom and his crew would doubtless tell me to just shut up and drive the damn thing, that I am over thinking it since once the car is warm you can just jump in and take off like there is no tomorrow. But for some reason doing this long paranoid routine at the start of the weekend makes me more comfortable than I would be otherwise. Part of it is about getting the driver warmed up. So the answer, I guess, is do it if it makes you happy and don’t do it if it doesn’t.
During a proper installation lap the driver is unconcerned with his speed and is going, at best, eight tenths of his normal pace or less. It’s not a time to be learning the track or picking out marks, nor is it a time to be analyzing any off line maneuvers (to pass or avoid being passed) that you might need later. No, a proper installation lap is all about the car and what it’s doing. It’s a chance to narrow your focus to the car itself. Now a lot of the other drivers will take off to learn the track or get some seat time in right off the bat which will work out just fine. But I’ve learned over time that there are some rewards to coming up to speed slower, especially since by concentrating your entire attention on the physical aspect of the car you can spot necessary adjustments to temperatures (more or less tape) and make sure the EGT’s are dialed in as well as get yourself into a good mindset before tearing off like you’re on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. But maybe that’s just me so in the end do what works for you.
In fact, some of the old shoes don’t bother with the practice session at all if they are already very familiar with the track, and the new to middling guys are looking to get some seat time in full tilt boogey mode and so they take off right away and are just fine as well. The Mazda GT is solid enough for you to do that. But it is a race car not some dainty little daily driver, and in some cases it may be a race car that hasn’t been driven in a month or three. So in my mind it’s worth taking at least a chunk of the first practice session and doing an installation lap or two, even if you don’t do the whole paranoid routine that I do.
This begs the question, with no new parts on the car exactly what are the particular goals for such laps? My first goal is pretty general. How does the car sound and feel as I pull it out onto the track. You might, for example, have taken a bit of an off track excursion last time out and have thankfully forgotten all about it. If you didn’t know you bent some little thing last time out, it would be hard to tell the crew to fix it, so it’s possible it’s still there. For me, even if the car was perfect last month, I like to concentrate, at a slower speed, on how the car is currently tracking under acceleration, neutral and braking. There should be no strange thumps or bangs. No odd sounds from the drive train. No unusual vibrations. The brake rotors should feel good, even if they are slippery because they are cold. Our brake rotors and pads will seemingly last forever unless you are unlucky and pick up a stone and it cracks one, which happened to me at Thunderhill three years ago. If you push the brake pedal it shouldn’t push back. Another thing I check right at first, and several more times on the first lap, is the oil pressure gauge. Just because it hasn’t changed in the last four years doesn’t mean it’s not going to change now and the first lap out is a very good time to look at it very closely. Mine will peg after the car is started and pretty much stay pegged as long as my RPM is near race levels.
If the car feels as good as it usually does after the first lap, and the oil temperature is still at least 180 then it’s time for a straight line acceleration test. Well after the apex leading onto the longest straight, once the car is pointed fully forward, I’m going to do a little drag race. I’m taking the engine up to where I plan to shift during the race, in each gear, while keeping my eye more on the EGT’s than the track. The Exhaust Gas Temperature can vary a bit depending on conditions (temperature, humidity, barometric pressure) and it can also vary seasonally based on fuel additives and the amount of Ethanol in the fuel mix. In my car there is about a fifty-fifty chance I’ll need to go up or down one size in the carburetor jetting at the start of the weekend. Rarely, I might need to make a change during the weekend if ambient conditions change radically. The drag race run is going to give me the opportunity to take my time and examine the EGT gauges closely. I already know I’m going to brake very early, I’ve already thrown away the exit, I’m only interested in the top end of third gear not my top end speed, and I’m driving in a straight line so I have plenty of time to look. When pushing the car, later on, it’s still important to have a particular spot to check the EGT’s once per lap, but I get so busy I tend to just glance at the left side and use it as a proxy for both. This is my one chance to concentrate all of my attention on what the motor is doing without any of the distractions you have on a lap where you are fully up to speed.
If the EGT’s are a bit below 1700, for both rotors, at the top end of third gear then I don’t need a change. And don’t over think what the gauges are telling you. After you let off the gas or as you are going up through the gears the readings aren’t that important, what the crew is really interested in is the top end of third gear, just before you let off the gas or shift. Higher than 1700 and it might be worthwhile to go one step richer, below 1700 and a step leaner. It’s important to remember that these temperatures are a bit fuzzy. The car is not going to suddenly blow up at 1701, you are looking for a range and the ability to tell the crew what the car is doing; too high, too low or right on while backing it up by telling them the peak number. If you go too rich, the EGT’s may stay low but the car will be hard to drive since you are flooding it at the bottom of the power band. Too lean and the EGT’s will spike which causes excessive wear on bearings and apex seals as the motor’s internals are getting too hot and are expanding to the limit of tolerance. In the last four years I’ve never had a large valid split between the two gauges, but there is always the first time, and this is a chance to take my time and read them both carefully. The only time I had an invalid split was about three years ago, when the sensors for the right hand gauge went bad and they gave me a reading of -10 degrees right and 1690 degrees left. I’ve also been told, although it hasn’t happened to me, that if one gauge goes bad while the tachometer starts flopping around like a fish on dry land it’s a sign that one of your igniters is going and needs to be replaced when you bring the car back in. In fact, just to be paranoid I would bring the car back in that event, unless it’s during the race itself.
Once I’m happy with the motor it’s time to make sure the motor is going to stay happy with me. And that is part of my third and final test. I’m looking at how various temperatures are looking to behave over time in the current conditions. Most important is to know with certainty if the oil and water temperatures are climbing, steady or declining. You may need more tape on the radiators in a cold morning than on a hot afternoon so this can change during the day but you don’t want to, under any circumstances, run the car with the oil below 180 or above 230. That nice fifty degree gap is not all that hard to hit by putting on, or taking off, some tape on the oil or water radiator and all of the cars are going to react the same, so once anybody gets the right amount of tape, everybody will have the right amount of tape. I just like getting there first. If the oil and water temperature split, and the oil is OK but the water is too hot for example, tell the crew… but generally the water is less important than the oil unless it’s about to start boiling (above 240). During the race if you can only get yourself to look at two gauges, pick the EGT and oil temperature gauges. To get the temperatures right you need, of course, to start to bring the car up closer to a race pace since if you run it too slow the temperature readings won’t match up later on. Which is why this is my last paranoid test before switching to seat time mode. A little over nine tenths of my race pace, with shift points at my race pace, to see what happens for a lap, two at most does the trick for me. During the race itself, if it is a hot day, keep a special eye on the oil temperature if you are right in trail with somebody. If the driver ahead is stealing your air you may need to duck out of his draft on the front straight to get the temperature back down, even if it costs you speed, but thankfully that can only happen on a really hot summer day when you’ve spent a few laps right on somebody’s bumper.
The final gauge to take a look at is fuel pressure. This is one I like to check during the little drag race, to see if it drops below 3 psi, and during the longest sweeping corner, again to see how far it drops or if I’m feeling particularly paranoid that day in the longest left and right hand corners. Generally this gauge isn’t very important unless your car starts to die lean for some odd reason, in which case it’s very important to be able to tell the crew if the fuel pressure dropped at the same time you lost power. I haven’t had this gauge drop below 3 pounds in years, but I like to check it anyway during my installation laps because otherwise I wouldn’t look at it the whole weekend and I don’t want it to start feeling neglected. Besides, the more you can tell Tom and his crew how the car is behaving the smarter you’ll look. Pull in and complain about the car, without being able to tell them what all the gauges are telling you, makes it look like you aren’t paying attention.
So, do you need to do installation laps in a Mazda GT or not? I didn’t do any, none at all for the first two years I drove the car. From my own observations I’m pretty much alone in doing so now, beyond the fact that most drivers pay a bit more attention to the gauges on their early hot laps. And I didn’t even formally think through what I was doing until I decided to write this post. Tom and his crew would doubtless tell me to just shut up and drive the damn thing, that I am over thinking it since once the car is warm you can just jump in and take off like there is no tomorrow. But for some reason doing this long paranoid routine at the start of the weekend makes me more comfortable than I would be otherwise. Part of it is about getting the driver warmed up. So the answer, I guess, is do it if it makes you happy and don’t do it if it doesn’t.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
With God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly...
Is probably the funniest one-liner ever developed in a sitcom. The old WKRP show had a narrative describing their Les Nesmith character tossing live turkeys out the side of a plane as a Thanksgiving Day promotion, all while the shocked announcer on the ground did a Hindenburg style, “Oh the humanity of it” running commentary describing the poor birds plummeting to the ground. When it was all over, all Les could do was swear he really thought that turkeys could fly. Anyway, flying turkeys is what came to mind when we were grouped with the little Legends cars. Here and I thought they’d be fun. It’s not my goal to badmouth other groups or cars or drivers or anything, and everybody knows that anybody can have a bad day, but thankfully we were moved by race time Saturday to group B with the Super Unlimited and Camaro-Mustang Challenge cars. Perhaps it was just the large field, or perhaps we just don’t mix well with the Legends cars, but I couldn’t get anything done when we were grouped with them. Of course it could also be that they were running 2:16-2:50’s and we were running two minutes flat.
The SU’s and CMC cars were a much better fit, with the CMC’s running 2:05-2:10.
No practice day, but despite not being able to do my routine during the morning practice in the sea of yellows, by race time I knew my car was good, maybe running a bit rich. I started toward the back with Aaron in the #5 car and Tom D. in the #77. It was a good start, although since we were taking the same green as the SU group we wound up a bit bunched up behind their trailers. That caused Tom, Aaron and I, as well as Josh in the #35 car, to get pinched off from the rest of our field behind a pair of Ferrari F355’s that were very fast in a straight line, but who were driving a bit daintily around the corners. At a hundred and fifty grand apiece I’d probably be a bit dainty with one myself. I remember thinking, “Whatever else you do, don’t dent the nice Ferrari.”
The SU’s and CMC cars were a much better fit, with the CMC’s running 2:05-2:10.
No practice day, but despite not being able to do my routine during the morning practice in the sea of yellows, by race time I knew my car was good, maybe running a bit rich. I started toward the back with Aaron in the #5 car and Tom D. in the #77. It was a good start, although since we were taking the same green as the SU group we wound up a bit bunched up behind their trailers. That caused Tom, Aaron and I, as well as Josh in the #35 car, to get pinched off from the rest of our field behind a pair of Ferrari F355’s that were very fast in a straight line, but who were driving a bit daintily around the corners. At a hundred and fifty grand apiece I’d probably be a bit dainty with one myself. I remember thinking, “Whatever else you do, don’t dent the nice Ferrari.”
Josh and Tom had no such issues with Josh getting a touch sideways at the top of nine, going for the Ferrari and me at the same time and managing to pull it off despite the drifting demo, which in turn left a door wide open for Tom to follow Josh and take me, but not the Ferrari.
Then Aaron got around me on the next lap, under braking into turn nine, so it was suddenly get with the program time for me. I realized I was just plain going too darn slow. Mentally I was still practicing and getting ready rather than racing. So I shook it off, picked up the pace and got back around Aaron the next time into turn nine and planned on catching up to the field. Problem is, our cars are so evenly matched that if you lose five seconds, behind somebody like that Ferrari, there is no way you’re going to see the rest of the field again. The other problem I had was while Aaron was still trying to learn the track, he wasn’t exactly leaving me alone in my futile attempt to pursue the field either. So we did have a lot of fun in the back, giving each other a race.
With about two-thirds of the race done, Aaron started dropping back, relieving the pressure while I had caught another Ferrari. He was probably two or three seconds off my pace, but I was just motoring around for some fun by then like a dog with his tongue hanging out, sticking his head out the window, so I wasn’t going to do anything heroic to get by him when the lead American Iron driver in his extreme Mustang slowly came up on both of us over the space of three or four laps. I let him by, staying a bit wide and braking a bit early going into nine, hoping that he might push the Ferrari out of the way so I could try a full tilt boogey lap or two at the end of the race, but no such luck. Just like me he caught the Ferrari but didn’t get by it. He did do an odd salute after the start finish, one finger on each hand, which was a bit uncalled for; even if the Ferrari was racing out of class and blocking a bit, the cars behind him weren’t racing with anybody in class either. To me, no harm… no foul.
Anyway, back up front the race went on, and went pretty well by most accounts. Thorpe is always in great form at Thunderhill, the track seems to suit him, and took the win over Bob, Josh, and then Jim. I’ll post something about the guys up front after I get a look at their video. Tom meanwhile didn’t read my track notes and so he didn’t know the finish line was all the way down past the pit wall. He thought he had enough time on me, after the white flag, to skip the cool down lap and cross the finish line in the pit lane. So the track elves plan worked and I picked up an undeserved spot since technically Tom never crossed the finish line and handed me and Aaron a full lap on a golden platter. I probably shouldn’t have broken the news to him since I might need a few more places when we go back up to Thunderhill in August.
As I understand it the same thing happened to Thorpe, who handed first place to Jim at the last second by lifting at the starters stand on Sunday, with Aaron filling out the last podium spot. It does pay to read my track notes now doesn’t it? To take a little extra credit you’ll notice that the second sentence of the third paragraph of my Thunderhill track notes goes, “The starters stand and start line are not in the same place as the finish line.”
Overall as a group we were really fast. Both Josh and Dave went under two minutes a lap averaging over ninety miles an hour, with the spread going from just under two minutes to the 2:05’s and a lot of cars bunched up at close to two minutes flat. Compared to the Super-Unlimited Ferrari’s which were running 2:10’s. There was a monster Trans-am car in our run group doing 1:50’s, but otherwise we were the fastest guys on the track.
I did spot one gaping hole in my track notes. For some reason I always see the 14-15 combo as being two right ninety degree corners, which is pretty far from the truth, 14 has a lot less angle to it than fifteen does and I was rudely reminded of that after sliding around after over-cooking it the first time around at speed. Our cars have a balance to them that requires at least some throttle, in fact you adjust how the car is tracking around the corner using the throttle as much as the wheel. Over-cook the corner like I did and you’ll get a lot of well deserved understeer since obviously you can’t get on the throttle while already cornering too fast...
I have the Willow-Springs movie night clip posted, and while I do need a lot more practice making movies and we need a lot more cameras, it still turned out Ok. I have some video from Thunderhill to get started on, which you’ll see on line next month after I show it at Sears Point (Infineon for those of you under thirty.) By the time we get to Sears I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to work with, and I’ll manage to increase the production value a bit, but meanwhile enjoy the Week One video.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Video is up at last
I just needed to keep trying until I found a format that worked well. I also put a permalink under the 2008 video for Josh's outstanding 1:59.693 at Thunderhill in qualifying. It turned out that was a qualifying race, but since most of us didn't know it we either went out late (yours truly) or came in early (Jim, Thorpe, etc). Anyway, Mark won but with the confusion we went to a random draw for Sunday's grid...
The Movie night video for week one is just like it was shown at T-Hill, an intro with a minute of Steel Monkey from Jethro Tull using some photo's as well as outside and inside camera shots. It's at a lower resolution (if anyone wants a full blown DVD they can talk to Tom & Bette). Then Josh Vs. The Venal Viper with our twelve hundred cc's of rotary muscle beating a up on a poor defenseless little ten cylinder viper. Followed by the points race and the awful oil dry. The whole thing is about forty minutes.
In the end I think I've found something that will work for a intro song. It's an electronic piece called "Come On" that, if I trim the first thirty seconds, can run a minute or so with the beats at the right spacing and then has a nice gap to end it early enough, sounding naturally without a fade. I'm going to try to dig around a bit in my video archive and see what other stuff I can do to create a more professional looking intro to use for all the movie night films.
In the end I think I've found something that will work for a intro song. It's an electronic piece called "Come On" that, if I trim the first thirty seconds, can run a minute or so with the beats at the right spacing and then has a nice gap to end it early enough, sounding naturally without a fade. I'm going to try to dig around a bit in my video archive and see what other stuff I can do to create a more professional looking intro to use for all the movie night films.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Here’s a bit of video footage from qualifying at Thunderhill on 3/9/08 to complement Paul's excellent track notes. It wasn't a perfect run but the 1:59.693 was good enough to put me on the pole... until we drew starting positions out of a hat, that is.
Nice Photoshop...
Helen took this and photo-shopped the colors into it. I'm hanging this one on my wall, it's turn one, right after the start, of Willow Springs.
Ten of us are about to enter turn one in a huge gaggle, we went three wide and Josh tried to make it four but dropped two tires, not that it slowed him much.
Anyway, I'm having some trouble with Google Video getting the movie night video uploaded, not Googles fault I'm sure it just seems that Adobe, who I swtiched to from Pinnacle to produce video, likes the idea of a flash video and Google takes eveything but a flash. The alternatives, so far, Google is unhappy with as well. As soon as I get it to work you'll see this entry from Josh's point of view, and I will spend the time to get it fixed up as soon as I can spare it from work, meanwhile enjoy Helen's photo.
Ten of us are about to enter turn one in a huge gaggle, we went three wide and Josh tried to make it four but dropped two tires, not that it slowed him much.
Anyway, I'm having some trouble with Google Video getting the movie night video uploaded, not Googles fault I'm sure it just seems that Adobe, who I swtiched to from Pinnacle to produce video, likes the idea of a flash video and Google takes eveything but a flash. The alternatives, so far, Google is unhappy with as well. As soon as I get it to work you'll see this entry from Josh's point of view, and I will spend the time to get it fixed up as soon as I can spare it from work, meanwhile enjoy Helen's photo.
Friday, March 14, 2008
I like to watch...
Sebring and F1 on Saturday, Bristol on Sunday. And of course I schedule a project to get in the way. Oh well.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Is the Toyo RA1 about to be phased out?
Checking my Email during lunch I got a promotion, through NASA, for Toyo's new R888 tire, along with the R1R and am wondering if the RA-1 we use is going to be phased out.
Checking Trackpedia I found a quote, apparently from Grassroots Motorsports, that the RA-1 is, in fact, being phased out of production in favor of the R888, shown to the right.
Toyo's ad for the 888 is here
A crew shout out
Before I write up the rest of Thunderhill I thought I'd take just a minute to put in a good word for Leroy, Jose, and John. 7's crew. I didn't feel like I needed to take the car out on Sunday qualifying, preferring to turn it over to them to deal with the starter not engaging, but they decided to tiger team it, swarmed the car, and busted their tails to get me out in time for qualifying anyway.Thanks guys. The car was perfect.
Monday, March 3, 2008
More Lunchtime Reading...
Is A.J Almendinger on his way out the door? From One Bad Wheel...
Audi means listen in latin? A history of car logos from neatorama.com
12 days to F1, suprising results from the Barcelona test from Blog F1
Mazda GT's Thunderhill is Saturday & Sunday, with no testing on Friday. We're the first race group of the weekend so we get to start driving back early on Sunday with the race ending at three. We're grouped with the Thunder roadsters and legends cars for the first time I'm aware of, rather than super unlimited and the stock cars, which should be fun.
Week one's Willow Springs video should be ready soon, I will probably post them to the blog sometime after the Thunderhill weekend. Stay tuned.
Correction: We're first on Saturday, we're the second race on Sunday afternoon finishing at three-thirty.
Audi means listen in latin? A history of car logos from neatorama.com
12 days to F1, suprising results from the Barcelona test from Blog F1
Mazda GT's Thunderhill is Saturday & Sunday, with no testing on Friday. We're the first race group of the weekend so we get to start driving back early on Sunday with the race ending at three. We're grouped with the Thunder roadsters and legends cars for the first time I'm aware of, rather than super unlimited and the stock cars, which should be fun.
Week one's Willow Springs video should be ready soon, I will probably post them to the blog sometime after the Thunderhill weekend. Stay tuned.
Correction: We're first on Saturday, we're the second race on Sunday afternoon finishing at three-thirty.
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