Atlanta weekend blog/picture album

[vern smith]

The usual start, I'm sitting in the back of the big pickup around ten PM 150 miles South of Atlanta. If all goes well I should make the track a little before noon tomorrow, Atlanta traffic is world class. We have a pretty good entry list with the majority of the current V8RRS members registered. The weather looks good  so it should be a good weekend. I usually make the test day but these Major events are three days in themselves so when you tack on the test day and two plus travel days it becomes a real time eater.   

Pictures tomorrow night.

[Butch Kummer]

Allan & I went up yesterday afternoon and sat in line while the parking staff directed the region's efforts to fit 250+ cars plus support equipment into the Club paddock. Even though it will mean driving further to get to Grid, Monette Racing & I have set up in the Pro paddock where there's more space while Ricky Sanders, Randy Walker, and others are in the V8RRS Compound on the Club side. Vern was concerned about my plan to split up our group, but we'll see how much room is left when he gets there later today (Thursday).

And I'm not doing the test day either because the Majors format starts out with a 25-minute practice session on Friday. I'm pretty sure I haven't forgotten which way the track goes so that 25-minute session should be enough for me to verify I've now got the shifter adjusted correctly, then we've got our first (20-minute) qualifier Friday afternoon.

For those that want to follow along at home, links to Live Timing and Live Audio (Atlanta Region uses track announcers) should be available on SCCA.com, but RaceMonitor will have Live Timing as well.

More later...

[vern smith]

Arrived at eleven with no intention of running in the test day but found out they sell half days. Since the repairs from NOLA were extensive I figured it would not be a bad idea to see if I got everything back where it belonged. The car worked fine and I got some great video from my new fifty buck mini video camera of the LF suspension doing its thing. When I find some software to edit short clips from the five minute long files it crates I'll put some up on the video topic.
I met one of our contributors (Food Man) Craig Maluff who was there with his brand new GTA car prepared by B J Holly. It looked to me like the car was doing fine and Craig was getting some seat time during the test day. Below is a picture of Craig and his new car.



Hiding behind the car below is Ricky Sanders with the GT-1 Corvette he purchased a couple of weeks ago. It's a great looking car. After the first test session of the afternoon he climbed out of the car and proclaimed "this thing is fast" which has to be a positive sign.



Here is Ricky Sanders crew chief John Egbert asking me not to take his picture.



And finally, B J with the car that lost the rear end at Sebring. He spent today working with Craig Maluff's car ironing out the little gremlins that always come with a new car.



Tomorrow is practice in the morning and qualifying in the afternoon. The weather today was perfect but from tomorrow through the weekend it is forecast to get colder with increasing chances of rain.  More tomorrow night.

[millstreet]

thanks for the update Vern 
you'll have a lot of time on your hands at a Majors event,
we'll be expecting a detailed report 

Andy

[vern smith]

Andy, boy are you ever right on, too much time between on track opportunities. It's necessary for them to get all the classes they have accumulated on to the track in any given weekend but it makes the events ,can we say, tedious?

Perfect weather again today, forecast not good for Saturday and Sunday but then they were not good for today. Ricky Sanders is getting his new GT-1 Vette dialed in with a 1:30 in qualifying.  There are some very fast GT-2 machines here the best of which can easily match times with the TA2 pro class so if we eliminate them and look at the cars that are GTA compliant Randy Walker kicked everyone's butt by three seconds turning a 1:32. Last fall he ran a 1:30 here so short of him breaking or something like that he will be very hard to keep up with.

Here are the qualifying results;



Since the internet gods refused to accept my link to the picture of Ricky Sander's new GT1 Corvette so I will try again today.



B J Holly is snake bit lately, more trouble with the rear end, traced to the yoke on the pinion shaft. Should get repaired tomorrow before the race. As you can see there are plenty of willing spectators.



V8RRS newest member Phillip Smith with his very fast A Sedan.

[millstreet]

Vern said;
"Randy Walker kicked everyone's butt by three seconds turning a 1:32. Last fall he ran a 1:30 here so short of him breaking or something like that he will be very hard to keep up with."

Butch knows his way around Road Atlanta.
when I was down there in 2013, he was running 1:32s,
should be enough to give Randy a run??

I didn't see Butch or Craig Maluff in the results, are they broken?

Andy

[millstreet]

Some #s to shoot for (current RA track records);

GT1   Mike Skeen                      1.21.131   November 2nd, 2013  (in a Monette Jag??)
GT2   Pete Peterson                      1.27.876   March 16th, 2013
GT3   Chad Bacon   Toyota Celica   1.31.242   March 2011
GTA   Bob Stretch   Monte Carlo   1.28.444   November 2009

Andy

[moespeeds]

Keep us updated! You guys are killing me, I should be down there! Vern are you coming to Summit in 2 weeks? I won't be driving but I'll be down hanging out.

[Foodman30]

Hey guys BJ Holley just finished my car and I picked it up on Wed and drove the test day on Thursday, first time in the car . I didn't race this weekend as the car I bought had no log book issued , the car now has a log book and was teched and approved for GTA . I just want to say I met a lot of guys from the v8RRS group and all are great bunch guys ! Had a blast so far this weekend and have learned a lot from Vern , Butch , BJ , Ricky Sanders to name a few not trying to leave anybody out . I would like to also thank BJ Holley for the outstanding job he did with my car , I highly recommend BJ for any thing concerning these race cars , he goes the extra mile .

[vern smith]

This was an interesting day to say the least; the race was supposed to start at 3:30 and actually started at 5:20, got something to eat at nine. I should have today's results to post up tomorrow night from the back seat of the truck... In short, for those on this forum with your basic GTA car, Randy Walker smoked all the other GTA cars including me. He was consistently two plus seconds a lap faster than I. I put on quite a show going from 6th overall in the GT2 class (Randy finished 4th overall) to last and back to 6th three times due to three off track excursions. One all driver error, the other two I will blame on the well oiled track. By my count there were nine non running cars sitting around the track on the cool down lap and we started 34 cars. This does not include any that may have made it to the pits rather than expiring on the track.

The pace lap involved a guy having to chose between nailing the car in front of him (Randy Walker) or driving off the track and hitting the wall as a result in one of those check up accordion situations. IMO this was due to a very poor job by the pace car driver. It's really a shame to be put out of a race before it even starts. I was right next to the whole crappy situation so I have confidence in my view of it.

Craig (Food Man) was at the track Friday and today picking up pointers and having fun with us other deranged individuals.

I imagine Butch will have some comments to post this evening as well concerning his problems.

Below is the grid for today's race:

[vern smith]

I spent today pounding interstate 75 south rather than racing. I've replaced the rear main seal three times and it's pouring oil again. Rather than oil up the track as well as my rear tires I decided to forget todays race. Whatever drama occurred today could only have affected one V8RRS GTA member, Randy Walker. He was the only GTA driver from Saturdays festivities still standing Sunday and after a phone conversation with his wife ( he was busy dealing with Atlanta traffic on the way home) he finished todays (Sunday) race. This means he is now in first place in the GTA points. I mention this because the points sheet below was from Saturday and does not reflect todays race.

I'm sure Dinah will put the current points sheet on the web site tomorrow and I'll get up here as soon as I have time.

[Butch Kummer]

Sorry not to give daily updates, but there was a lot of drinking to do each evening! 

I'll have a longer BK Racing Update of the weekend later, but:

The good news - (1) the shifter worked perfectly all weekend, (2) we got more laps in Saturday's race than we did all weekend at NOLA, and (3) we found out what caused the stuck throttle at the 2015 Runoffs.

The bad news - we only found the throttle problem because it stuck again in the Esses during the practice session on Friday (video will be available eventually). We did get everything back together and put a spacer under the air cleaner to eliminate the binding on the linkage, but Saturday's race ended early due to an oil leak (which appears to be emanating from the fuel pump area) and also blowing half the water out the radiator (which appears to be unrelated to the oil problem). Thus I'll not be bringing Cuervo to Summit Point in three weeks but still plan to attend to promote the series.

GT1:
. Ricky Sanders, Corvette - 1st, 1st
. Zach Monette, Jaguar - 2nd, DNF (not sure what happened)

GT2:
. Pete Peterson, Toyota Celica - 1st, 1st

GTA:
. Randy Walker, Camaro - 1st, 1st
. Vern Smith, Impala - 2nd, DNS (rear seal leaking)
. Jim Matheson, Monte Carlo - 3rd, DNS (illness)
. Butch Kummer, Monte Cuervo - 4th, DNS (fluid retention issues)
. Randy Haney, Camaro - DNF, DNS (wreck on pace lap)
. BJ Holley, Monte Carlo - DNS, DNS (differential issues)

SPO:
. Paige Monette Alexander, Corvette - 1st, 1st
. Bob Monette, Jaguar - 2nd, 2nd

More later...

[vern smith]

OK guys, here are the final points listings for the weekend. I forgot you get a point for every entrant you finish ahead of so I'm still one point ahead of Randy, only because 5 of the six GTA entrants were unable to start Sunday. The way he drives and his car performs he will pass me in short order. At the bottom is an .xls file if preferable. The Sunday race results are at the bottom.



http://whiteroseeng.com/Av8rrs/316/2016 V8RRS points 3-20.xls

[millstreet]

video from the Sunbeam Tiger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lywc3JlIWFU

Andy

[Butch Kummer]

Couple of videos. First one is from my practice session on Friday morning (and my first experiment with Microsoft MovieMaker):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-S6lcV0ByA&feature=youtu.be

Second one is the first two laps on Saturday from Jorge Nazario's GT2 Corvette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1EsjUKZ1dM

More comments on both later, but right now I need to tend to my day job...