UTCC and NASA TT2 VIR 07-18,19-2014

The UTCC event was another classic and this year the weather was AWESOME! The 1st session was a warm up (that's right I said WARM UP session) and we had a red flag fly before any of us reached t4. Apparently there was a spacing issue under passing into t1 and a car was pushed off track and ran straight into the tire barrier flipping over the armco tail first. I have it on vid from distance and it was a scary sight to see. Thankfully the driver was not injured but the car is not doing well. There were nose and or tail pieces in the brake zone which can only mean there was some contact as well. Likely some details about the incident will pop up on the net.

After the scrapped warm up session we go straight to our timed session and it's also full of excitement. A car hits the barrier out wide of t17and starts smoking so the driver decides to bail out and runs to the flag station. I know this because he ran right in front of me as I was going into t17 at 90mph. Thankfully he didn't trip but probably ruined the best lap time of my life, HEHE . The good news is my car stayed together and I was able to get an official time of 2.03 in the books and didn’t have a mechanical failure like in 2011 when the trans blew up.

Now onto the 2nd timed session and I set a new personal best lap time of 2.028 and also have fun chasing down a super cool heavily modded well driven BMW M 135i. It gets even better; as I pull into the paddock Morgen and Erin are there to greet me with a frozen wash cloth that feels incredible wrapped around my neck and they top that off with some REALLY COLD cut up water melon. Nothing beats running your best lap time and then climbing out of your hot FD and eating super cold fresh water melon. LOVE MY WIFE!!!!!

The final session a GTR blows a turbo and then parks it at the T3 track out, ON THE TRACK. You seriously couldn't write this stuff any better So most of the session there is a yellow flag violently waving (that poor dudes arm is probably still sore) so you can't track out of t3 and then the next few laps there’s a white flag because the tow truck is there to bring him in.

Despite the chaos it was a super fun event with some incredible cars running silly fast lap times. The best time this year was a professionally driven Viper (easily a 200k plus race car) at 1.45. The awards ceremony was fun with lots of awards along with a nice BBQ meal and some great cookies (Erin ate 4). Unofficially I finished 12th out of 40 or so cars.

Now onto NASA TT2 and again the weather is fabulous for July with temps in the 80s and some cloud cover. 1st session I run another personal best of 2.025 and later surpass that with a 2.024 in the last session and finish in 2nd place behind.......... you guessed it a corvette (nemisis....LOL). The corvette was driven by Brian Bowers and he also ran his personal best and cracked the 2 minute barrier at 1.59 (the bastard).

I feel really privileged and fortunate that I'm able to track this car as much as I do and would like to say thanks to my lovely wife for all her support, PF Supercars for always being there to patch up my baby and keep her in race shape and to all you guys on the forum who buy my parts which keeps the racing bug from eating too far into my bank account. The car should be faster at the next TT because I plan to swap the turbo to a t04e BB and run some fresh rubber.

PS I may also have a little transmission trick up my sleeve

 

Lookin' smooth, Fritz. That guy in the BMW looked like he was giving it all he had. VIR looks like so much fun! Someday...


The REW is music enough.

 

Thanks!

Yep VIR is special indeed

I agree the turbo blown 13b sings a sweet song and my new TI magnaflow really adds a sick raspy, nasty sound and I mean that in the best possible way

 

THAT IS JUST AWESOME FRITZ! GREAT WEEKEND INDEED! And congrats! on the second place!

 

Nice Job Fritz!

You should stop playin around and go 315's all around now . When you really think about it your FD isn't all that modified compared to some of those cars out there and is still woopin but. Go for broke and start breaking records and feelings. You've got the chassis to do it!

What did that guy have in that GTR by the way? He was looking quick.

 

No doubt the car can be a hell of lot faster but everything is give and take. Add 315s and you need body work, brake work, susp work etc...etc... and it's harder on every part of the car. Add a big *** airplane wing and you need a front splitter and I already run at about 26 inches and even at that height the front is fairly low because of the GTC bumper. So now with 18 inch wheels and 315 rubber I'd be about 1 inch lower at approx 25 inches. Put the splitter on and the nose is around 1/2 inch off the ground. Been there and done that and it sucks because you tear up the splitter every time you hit a curb (and you better keep it on the pavement at all times or you just ran up a 2k bill for bumper splitter etc...oh and your day is done) and good luck loading that thing unto your trailer.

I think the biggest reason I leave it alone though is because I LOVE IT just the way it is AND when I go faster I know it's more me than the car. It's really easy to have a FAST car and be a slow driver you just have to spend lots of money. It comes at a big cost though because you are running down your bank account and not challenging yourself to go faster or improving as a driver which is my main focus.

If I was racing for something other than a wooden plague I'd obviously have to keep up with the corvettes etc.... but as it stands I like keeping her pretty much the way she is although I do have some plans:

APR wing (not airplane style but bigger)
17 x 10.5 wheels to take full advantage of my 275 40 tire
Just bought Rich's trans with the race ratio gear set
A less laggy turbo so back to a t04e but this time BB
FRESH c71 rubber

I think the above changes will move my times down some which I will have to do because everyone else is getting faster and faster every damn weekend. It's like the X games these days in amatuer racing. About 10 years ago NOBODY was running sub 2s on a regular basis at VIR and now you better be sub 2 or go home LOL.



YEP great weekend of racing and family time Erin and I even tossed the lacrosse ball around. You don't see that every day at the track.

Thanks man!

 

Record lap video is up. 2.024

 

Flynn! Damn, that's Awesome.

 

Congrats dude! Awesome time! Wish I could have made it this year, but hopefully next year if work allows. In October weather with some fresh rubber I think you'll be sub 2 for sure.

 

Thanks man

Thanks bro! You, me and Pete should plan to do this event sometime soon. That would be a killer FD line up

I'm going to shoot for the oct event with a new turbo setup and some fresh C71s (or splurge again on the As if I can't find any hankooks) and possibly a race geared trans. If not that at least a trans with the shorter .8 ratio 5th. May not be a sub 2 but should absolutely get me to the 2 mins flat area which has been my goal this year.

 

Nice, Fritz!

Sorry I couldn't come up and hang out - I was out at NCCAR running with the Merc Benz club. $99 for the day, 8 cars in my run group with a 2 mile track. :-)

But between your stories about "car parked on T3 track-out" and "guy running across a hot track" I really gotta wonder about the sanity, not to mention the basic intelligence, of some of your competitors at that event.

Glad to hear it went well.

-b

 

Bill,
You missed a great show for sure but it sounds like you had a good time elsewhere

People are so hyped up at these events that sound judgement just flies right out the window. In the morning TT meeting the chief mentioned several times to take it easy blah blah but it just goes right over everyones head which is somewhat understandable because it's really hard to maintain a level attitude when you are dropped into the pit of car enthusiast heaven and then let loose and asked to run your fastest possible lap that you can. BUT keeping your wits is mandatory especially in the warm up session. So far both UTCC events I've attended had the warm up cut short because of contact.

 

^^ Yep, there were at least 2 metal on metal incidents on the first couple of laps in the warm up session when we did it in 2011. After that session though, everything was smooth sailing and everyone played by the rules.

 

Here's a vid of some heavy hardware passing me like I'm standing still along with the dude running across the track and finally the warm up session incident. Really hard to see and I wish my vid cam worked better but as mentioned it was a pretty hard hit. Note the debri on track in the brake zone indicating contact.

 

Saw that Jon just posted the video of the 1:45 Viper lap. 160mph into the esses, 150mph out. Geez!

 

YEP, ridiculous speeds EVERYWHERE!!!!!

 

Very true. Pulling more G's in a corner could lead to faster wheel bearing wear, and do a number on ball joints, a-arm attachment bolts, etc.

When I first brought my 93-T down to Summit, with bars, INT & EXH bolt ons, stock seq turbos with custom boost control, upgraded pads and sticky tires, there was a fully tricked out FD that I gawked at, and he said "you'll do the same thing eventually", and I thought no I won't. Although I had a chipped ecu at home, I had heard from enough people that if you want to get some life from the engine "road racing" go easy on the boost.

I suppose if enough people passed me, I'd be more tempted to tweak, but it was typically just a viper or 2. There is satisfaction in building up to a limit, and seeing if you can get faster with skill, as you had said. Even though I was a full 10 sec slower than you there, I was solo qualified, and Summit had invited me to be an instructer based on how I drove. ( I declined as I had seen them exiting a car that crashed, too many times, rubbing the back of their necks ).

You look very fast to me, as is!

.

 

I wonder what RE-Amemiyas FD could do at VIR. It's currently doing work at the World Time Attack series, representing the FD very well.

 

If I had to guess I'd say a mid 50 or 1.55 but if you give me the #s I'll bench mark it

The viper would wipe the floor with it: SRT releases $460,000 Viper GT3-R race car This is before you mod it LOL

 

Yep the faster you go the faster you empty your bank account etc.....

I hear what you are saying about the instructing thing but it's also really cool to see the students improvement and the free track time isn't bad either

 

You're probably right, but a bridgeported turbo 20B should put up a good fight .

RE Amemiya to return in a much faster Hurricane RX7 | World Time Attack Challenge

Japanese testing at Fuji Speedway | World Time Attack Challenge

EDIT: 750HP!!

 

Impressive HP but the rest of that car is WEAK!

I say about 2 mins if he's lucky with those tires. VIR has some long straights but also some really fast turns and those tires will be SLOW!

He would need to be on some 315 rear slicks and redesign the whole car to begin to compete with any serious hardware like GT3 and Viper Rs etc....

 

Being passed in a corner by a Viper with 2 ft wide rear tires is a bit humbling. With me they could pick any line through the corner. There were just the older Vetts there, at the time.

.

 

^^^ People don't realize that there is a BIG difference between the time attack cars and the real professional race series cars. The Viper that ran the 1:45 can do that all day long. They also have a huge budget every year with factory backing.

As Fritz mentioned immediately, we all know that rule #1 is the car is only as fast as the tires allow it to be(acceleration, braking and corning all limited by this). As I look at a lot of the TA cars, I see some things that really perturb me. I haven't read the rules to know, but I assume they are constraints from the rules. I know when I ran a RTA event five or so years ago, tires were the one major thing that separated classes, not hp. I'm assuming it's the same for above.

I would put Fritz and some of our fellow grassroots racers up against almost any of those guys. That is what has always interested me, the guy that can hit those lap times in a car that is a fraction of the price. For example, Brian Bowers who Fritz mentioned above, has roughly $20k in his car counting purchase price and he is running 1:59's now. He is one of the cheapest bastards I've ever met though. Super fun car, reliable as race cars go, and very competitive. Fritz is the same. He got a smoking deal on Ol' Red and has done little things here and there over many years. Same with Pete. Only Pete can still enjoy his car on the street.

 

Fritz, curious as to why you are going with 17" wheels vs 18s? I'm in decision mode and like the price (and weight) of 17s, but thought the 18s give better handling

Scary fast vids BTW. Believe they reconfiged VIR for NASCAR. Has that had any effect on lap times