Zargani Crystal Palace Vintage GT

Well, I'm certainly comfortable in this car now. Very pleased to make it through without touching a single wall. Pit stop was a little clumsy and cost me a couple of spots, but fortunately I eventually got them back. Had great battles with Colin, Pete, John, and Ray. Not everybody got so lucky with the walls, was a tough track as we figured. Grats podium, well done!

Gah. Despite the quicker laptimes, a nimble car (if I'm driving) is no match for a V8 monster here. There's just no room to make a pass in the corners. If you *can* make one, you just get eaten alive again in the straight. The only way to pass here is to capitalize on someones horrible mistake. Little mistakes aren't enough of an opening to gain advantage over.

Managed best time in practice, but in Q I made a last ditch change to final gear to hopefully optimize in corners a bit better. Didn't work. Ended up with 6th on grid. Not bad considering I had pace to compete. However, with no room, I'd be dependant on other's mistakes for me to move up. Sadly, I made too many of my own and kept dropping positions, or undoing all the work I'd done to catch up to cars ahead. Stupid stupid stupid. And when I was with traffic... well... like I said, there's too little room to make a clean pass here (at least in my hands).

I was last to pit, and only took fuel (tires barely got worn in). I made sure to calculate fuel load myself this time, and by race end, I saw I nailed it. Wasn't good enough, though. I challenged for 3rd for many laps, but still no good. Solid 4th finish. Could have done much better if I hadn't screwed myself up several times.

Seeing the lap times being turned in practice, I knew the old girl was gonna have a tuff run of it. The Daytona just couldn't get herself slowed down quickly enough to be competitive. Qual was hectic, I got disco'd with about 1 min left. Scrambled to get reconnected.

Race start was from the cheap seats. Stayed near the rear of the pack passing folks making mistakes. Plenty of them. Problem was that when I passed them, they where still running 2-3 sec quicker a lap than I and they would run me down 2-3 laps later. Saw Mr. Miller bite it about 5 times and Miguel about 4 times. Off days for both for sure. After about mid way, I noticed I might be able to make the full 50 min run without a pit. I was shuffled all the way up to 2nd during pits and held my ground till Barrett came up in the nimble Lotus. I held him off for 4-5 laps until I tanked slap one of the walls. Was cruising around in 4th. Noticed I was going to need about 4 laps of fuel to finish. Went into pits to just take fuel and forgot to change the tire and damge fix. 118 seconds later I came out in 9th. Oh well. I think if I had really tried to make the fuel last, it would of been very close....

See you guys in two races. I'll be at The Mitty at Road Atlanta with a Few Yenko Stingers.

Disaster for me. My head really wasn't in it and I didn't get near enough practice to push hard during the race. I took a few laps early in the week and even though I was online more than an hour before quali, I spent most of the time dealing with frame rate issues.

I was very pleased with my quali performance. I'm surprised I got on the front row. The start was good. I could see either Miguel or Ray in my rear view barreling down the into the brake zone for turn 2. After hitting the wall, I think the car barrel rolled too. At that point, I thought I would be in good shape with a 3 second lead early.

Next lap, I threw it away in terrible turn two. As soon as I touched the wall it kicked the car around the opposite direction. I didn't hit hard so I thought I could continue and scrape up some points. Shortly thereafterwards, I t-bone Miguel hard in the high speed section after he tangled with a Lotus.

From there I battled with Bryce for a number of laps. I felt like Lewis Hamilton getting by Kimmi numerous times during Malaysia. It wasn't easy to pass. Like someone said earlier, it required a mistake from someone else to get by.

I continued to get caught up in other peoples incidents. Miguel and I made contact no less than 4 times. In the end, my suspension was so tweaked the car wouldn't drive straight. I asked my crew to fix it twice, but they must have been on strike.

Curse this track. I hope it has been bull dozed.

LOL! It's still sorta there, you can make out the old layout in google maps.

Qualified far better than I thought I would. Thought I hada solid start but Mike flew past me towards T1. Miguel really went in hot and I was by him when he kissed the wall. After Mike bobbled I was running fisrt until my pitstop. I grabbed front tires and came out in 7th.

Extricating myself from the inside fence near the end of the long backstretch I backed onto the track and possibly ruined someone's race - if so I need to be penalized. Went from 4th to 7th and stayed there as I lost focus and was sloppy the rest of the way.

On to Dijon.

Sorry guys i couldn't race. My front USB port must be getting worn out my wheel lost its connection and when i plugged it into another port i had no gas pedal unless i exited but with 40 seconds to go before race start it wasn't going to happen.
Congrats Barrett on your win.

I'm not sure what to say about this week's race -- going in I felt about as prepared as I could be, but I was concerned about how treacherous and unforgiving the track is just during practice conditions. I figured that the race itself would be frightful.

Given that, I knew that attrition would be high this week so I dialed it back to about "8" and decided to go for consistency rather than aggression, with the hope that I could stay out of trouble and put in a solid run, and that's exactly what I accomplished.

I put in a solid qualifying run with a speed close to my personal best in practice, which was good enough for an 8th-place mid-pack start on the grid . . . which was about what I was expecting.

The start was clean enough off the line, but the chaos that erupted at T1 confirmed my fears about this track's unforgiving nature and the potential for high attrition, so I settled in to try for an uneventful, consistent run.

I was fairly shocked to see fellow snake charmer Mike Miller retire early -- that shook me up a bit because Mike's been so darn consistent, which further underscored dangerous things were on-track.

Despite my cautious approach I settled in to a fairly fast pace and I spent most of the first half of the race chasing Hutch. I don't think there was any way I could have overtaken him, but I made sure he got plenty of opportunities to see my little 289 coupe in his rearview mirrors.

Hutch and I ran consistently in 5th and 6th place respectively until people started cycling in for their pit stops. Hutch ducked in for fuel before I did but I could tell that I still had several laps of fuel left so I kept on, and I was shocked to see that I had somehow managed to pick up 1st place in the running order while everyone else was taking on fuel! I managed to lead my first-ever laps in a NASRL event, and I held the first-place spot for about three laps, only giving it up when I had to stop for fuel.

The pit stop seemed to run long for me -- right around one minute or so, despite the fact that I hit my marks right-on and killed the ignition promptly. I think what slowed me down in the pits (potentially costing me a position or two in the final order) was the fact that I took on a full fuel load. I'm going to have to study my fuel burn rate and look at how much fuel to take on when I pit in the future. I pitted on Lap 39, so I really only needed enough fuel for 10 more laps or so, but I had dialed-in my pit strategy to include a full fuel load at my first pit stop and I didn't bother to tweak that setting when my pit board came up. I hadn't really considered pit strategy at this level of detail, but it was fairly painful sitting there in the pits waiting for the fuelling to end so the crew could work on changing my tyres.

Still, that was a minor glitch and overall I think I managed to pull off a very good finish at a tricky and treacherous venue. I kept out of trouble on-track, didn't cause any problems for anybody else, only had a few small bobbles that didn't really affect the outcome in any major way, and I managed one of my best finishes yet, so I've got nothing to complain about.

You can't ask for much more than that!