Texas Region #6 – Dallas Raceway
What an event! We made the trek up to Dallas Raceway on Sunday for Texas Region’s 1st event there. Quite a number of fast guys were going to be there and it was concrete, so how could we not?
The lot was pretty sizeable and basically spotless concrete.
Click through for more! It was hot, about 105 at the peak of the day. We worked 1st heat and ran 2nd.
The course made really good use of the lot. I’m looking forward to running here again to see what else they can do with it! The surface rewarded smoothness, something that took us a few runs to figure out!
Todd’s first run was much like mine, sliding all over the place along with a spin towards the end! The course was tight and there were tons of DNFs and cones throughout the day.
My best run of the day, though I managed to snag a cone in the final slalom (my only cone for the day for once!). This run was a low 56, about 1 second off Todd’s final run.
Todd’s final run which was flying! We ended up doing pretty well. Texas Region scores their “Pro” class a little different than other regions, only counting your first 3 runs. I really liked this concept since it made it very similar to a Nationals style event. Of course I wish they counted my 4th run since it would have put me 2nd in PAX! I’ll take 5th place overall though considering the result of the guys we were racing against. Todd took the top spot with a great 3rd run. Kurt Janish, Drew Vanderploeg, Mark Madarash, Casey Weiss, Steve Hudson, and Jim Kritzler all put in some good runs too.
One of the really cool things about the Video4 is all the analysis you can run. I didn’t look at data run to run at this event, but I sure wish I had. The data really showed why Todd’s run was so fast.
I’ve got 4 plots shown here. Todd’s fastest run is in black and is the baseline for the Timeslip. Red is my fastest run (mind you it was +1), Orange is Todd’s 4th run (effectively the same time as my fastest), and Blue is Drew Vanderploeg’s best run in Steve Hudson’s DP Miata. The this point in the course the 4 runs are effectively tied with minimal difference between them. The gains and losses up to this point have all been wiped out.
The run down towards grid into the showcase sweeper was all Todd. At this point on course I’m 0.75s behind, he’s 0.5s ahead of Drew and 0.33 ahead of his 4th run.
Thanks to picking a good line and maintaining a lot more speed than any of Todd or my runs, Drew has basically caught back up to Todd here. Had Drew done the previous segment as well as Todd, he’d be 0.5s faster than him right now.
Uncharacteristically I lose big time through the slalom (this is where I hit the cone, getting out of rhythm). Todd and Drew and basically even from the exit of the sweeper to the finish.
I thought this was an interesting comparison. Black is Todd’s 5th run and Red is Drew’s 5th run. This is a ~535HP CP Camaro against a ~200HP Miata. Think David and Goliath, especially when you consider the Camaro is ~1000lb heavier than the Miata! Lateral grip is about the same, but the longitudinal acceleration is much higher in the Camaro. It was surprising how close the two cars were on final time considering the course was relatively narrow which should have favored the Miata, but there was room to put the pedal down and use the Camaro’s power. Have to say this is the mark of a pretty good course design though when two dissimilar cars can be that close.
Next week is off, but the week following is our last practice before Nationals!
GoPro
Red Line Oil
Oversteer Garage 
Stroh – this looked like a very well designed course – do you know who the designer was?
Roger
Roger, I believe it was Jarret Jan out of Texas Region. Only probably was the slalom out of the last turnaround was a little too tight. Otherwise was well done!