Party Race 09/09/05 - First Contact

Yesterday was the 3rd Party Race of the year. As you may have noticed from the lack of blog entries I had not practiced at all for this race since my last effort in late July. I had of course driven in the 12 hour race in a FF Honda Prelude but that hardly counts as its a very different beast.

As always the most difficult 10 minutes are first. Qualification. How do you hop into the car after not driving it since July and pull off the lap of your life in an allotted 10 minute time frame. I guess in my you don't :-) I got close at a 1'10'4 but nowhere good enough. The qualification session actually saw quite a lot of action as different people went off the track. I ended up 11th out of 15 cars with 1 car failing to mark a time as he ended up off the track on the last corner on his out lap. This is the Emblem class right???

I was in for my own surprise in qualifying. Dunlop corner was not what I remembered it to be. The tires screamed more than usual and I under-steered off nearly every lap. I pondered over my tires and my turn in points etc and it basically pre-occupied my 10 minutes. Still, I did the best I could on the day. When I came in, I found out that it had been resurfaced and it was written in notices all over the toilet walls etc... Hmmm. Never noticed that. After studying the new surface map on the walls and again on the parade lap before the race, I felt I knew how to attack it.

On with the race. I got a bad start and let the revs slip up a little high and suffered too much wheel spin. Still, I had the inside line into the first corner and managed to only 2 spots. I got 1 back on the outside of the first hairpin but lost it again the next lap when I miss shifted after taking a tight line out of the first corner.

I found myself behind a car that was pretty unsettled in a lot of corners and I found that its very hard to not copy someone else's mistakes when you are so close behind them. The get the back and it happens to you too, so its impossible to pass where as it should be possible if you just do your own thing. It was copying one of those mistakes that I lost back a little too much out of the 1st hairpin and gave up one more spot. Drat!

Still. Nothing like a good fight with my team mate number 62 who was now in front of me. I noticed he was having a lot of trouble on Dunlop so I managed to get passed on around lap 10 when I went up the outside on the exit of dunlop, 2 abreast into the 2nd hairpin, 2 abreast up the back straight and 2 abreast into the last corner where I finally pulled ahead and into the first corner alone. I sure made work of that! One more lap to catch the guys ahead and then disaster!

Around Dunlop hot on the heels of the cars ahead. The 2 cars were in tight battle and one of them drove clean off the course around right hand side of the 80R. He was probably doing around 120kmph across the grass and not slowing. As I passed him, he was coming back off the grass and just when I thought I was clear, bang. I got on my rear right corner and it sent me into a half spin where I ended up on the green space that makes up the inside of the 2nd hairpin. I was pretty angry as the guy had obviously tried to accelerate off the grass so he wouldn't lose too many spots. You can't accelerate off grass onto the circuit... you spin... everyone knows that. Well one would thing they would anyway. Looking at my mates on-board camera you can see that he is coming off the grass straight when he just spins into me and we both go flying. Oh well. That's racing...

Anyway, I came off the grass mere seconds later and tried to chase down the pack but I'd lost around 10 seconds that lap due to spinning out so it wasn't to be. I got back safe but all I could think of was where had he hit me. The car seemed to handle fine so hopefully it sounded worse than it was.

As I parked all I could think of was the damage as I hoped out. Lucky me... no gaping holes in the bodywork but there were big chunks missing from my RAYS... I guess I'll need a new one of those. What a great wheel to take such a beating and still get me home safe!!! Rear wing and bumper has some minor scratches but its no where near as bad as it could have been. I got away from it all very lightly. Whew!

I did have words with the guy after. I basically told him what I thought of him coming back on the circuit like he did without taking off some speed. He argued that he was still out of control... Whatever. I guess he learned his lesson as his car is worse off than mine. I shook hands and walked away to cool down.

After it was all over, there was the 4 hour media race to enjoy. That turned out to be a great race. Oi-san and the Engine team did a great job to come home first and Kato-san did a fine job for the REVSpeed team who came home 3rd. What a great long day!

Next on the list is an alignment and a new wheel...