Daytona picture/blog

[vern smith]

Tomorrow morning is departure time for the 5-6 hour drive to Daytona. When you reside a couple of miles from the Everglades it's a long way to anywhere. This is the first trip for the FL 70 with the trailer in tow so caution will be the name of the game. The entire train is 63 feet long which is not all that impressive. The problem is the wheelbase of the truck, 27 feet, which is about eight feet longer than  most tandem axle tractors. Any restricted area maneuvering is challenging. I'll report damage tomorrow 

I expect to post the usual amount of pictures and on the fly narration, some from local watering holes. Hopefully, other forum members  will comment or request silence   

[millstreet]

Tomorrow morning is departure time for the 5-6 hour drive to Daytona. When you reside a couple of miles from the Everglades it's a long way to anywhere. This is the first trip for the FL 70 with the trailer in tow so caution will be the name of the game. The entire train is 63 feet long which is not all that impressive. The problem is the wheelbase of the truck, 27 feet, which is about eight feet longer than  most tandem axle tractors. Any restricted area maneuvering is challenging. I'll report damage tomorrow 

I expect to post the usual amount of pictures and on the fly narration, some from local watering holes. Hopefully, other forum members  will comment or request silence   

watch the height too 

Andy

[millstreet]

News Flash;

Vern's new rig, spotted in an Orlando truck stop;




OK, back to your regularly scheduled programming,

Andy

[vern smith]

It was another beautiful day in Florida, perfect racing weather.  It's another strange format with a single qualifying session (no practice) on Saturday morning and two races on Sunday. They are running an enduro series as well this weekend and they are popular with lots of seat time and reasonable expenses.  V8RRS member Carl Wingo brought his beautify Mustang and ran well on Friday but had little oil pressure on Saturday so he is on the way home early.
We had a fun group at the social in the Daytona Ale House. Below are some pictures with the names as best as I can remember them which is not too well. I appear to have had a brain fart last night. I had all the names written down on a napkin and did one of these when I got back to my motel. Problem is after hitting the "preview" button multiple times it appears I forgot to hit "post" or the site was down. Whatever, here is a rerun without the aid of the napkin.



Carl with is Mustang



Carl's mug shot



From the left Mark Strong, Carl Bussard (gray hair)



Andy, too many axles on the trailer, sorry your spy got the wrong rig   

[vern smith]

Great weather again. I do not have access to the SCCA's internal communications as Jim Creighton has so the best I can do is a picture of the printed qualifying results.

I signed up two new members today, Larry Hoopauge (who is scary fast) and Raymond Web. I'll try to get pictures of these guys tomorrow if the opportunity presents itself.  Fortunately, the big bore session was not black flagged as is often the case due to on track carnage. We were off the track by 11:00 AM so most guys cleared out by early afternoon.






Carl Bussard and his very red race car which had a lot of teething problems today, it's a new car.





Carl's mug shot





Mark Strong's GT2 Panoz





Gene Paul and his Kodiak SPO car which also had mechanical problems and had to go home today.





Gene's mug shot.

[vern smith]

Here are the Sunday morning race results, I never got the afternoon results due to a windshield thickness cluster F in impound.

[millstreet]

Hey Vern,
seems you had the fastest lap in GTA, yet finished back 23 seconds from the class leader?
Enquiring minds want to know.....

Andy

[vern smith]

The usual stupid excuses. Poor qualifying effort put me behind a lot of cars that I should not have been behind. It took me 4 laps to get clear and Rodger Reuse was a couple hundred yards ahead by then. I got to him on lap seven over cooked it into one on lap nine, chose discretion and went straight into the run off area. By the time I got restarted, turned around and back on the track the twenty plus seconds had elapsed.

[millstreet]

I kinda figured there was some landscaping involved 
any more details on how the off season changes have panned out?

Andy

[vern smith]

Hard to judge, I'm no longer consistent enough to make good comparison data. I went as fast at Daytona with a legal LS2 as I did two years ago with an LS3. Same thing at Atlanta a month or so ago. All that being said, my driving could be a bigger factor than the car. I didn't make the body changes for more speed, rather because the old one was trashed   

[vern smith]

Daytona afternoon race results. Sorry for the quality, we are working on a better format to post race results.