The last Party Race of the year took place on Sunday. I competed in the Emblem 1 hour endurance race with a fantastic co-driver who goes by the name Kanepee. Kanepee-san wrote up a nice race report in Japanese on
his blog.
Kanepee-san's first taste of Tweety was about two weeks ago when I picked him up after work and let him drive home. The next time he sat in the car was on Saturday when he drove it around Tsukuba at speed for the first time. On a light fuel load, he managed to get a 1'10.2 which beats my best time so far around Tsukuba! You are awesome Kanepee! I drove the second session after putting some more fuel in but could only get a 1'10.6. Turns out we'd only about 1.5mm of pad left on the left side pads so the brakes were a little hard to use.
After swapping the pads and washing the car, we were ready for Sunday's battle.
Sunday morning was wet but the rain fall had actually stopped by the time it came to qualification. It was very slippery and I the car was moving around a lot even when I wasn't making too many mistakes or being overly harsh. 80R saw a couple of cars spin and I can understand that as I went sideways there more than once. It was hard to string a lap together and I was pretty satisfied when I got a best of 1'18.2 on my last lap. It was only enough to get me 14th on the grid out of 17 cars though. I'm not quite sure how anyone pulled a 1'15 in those conditions. I guess I need to work on my wet lines to find more traction or something.
The race start was Le Mons style except that the driver got to belt up and wait in the car while the second driver waited across the track for the sprint to the driver. Kanepee-san outperformed my wildest hopes as he dashed towards me, touched my raised right hand which I dropped to the key to start the car and I was off. A great start too as I passed 3 cars before the first corner and grabbed the inside line. I got a 4th car down into the 1st hairpin and did my best to maintain control of my still cold tires.
As the laps rolled by 2 cars were all over me, but I was determined to not let them pass down my inside, as anyone I could delay (without blocking) might mean a better position later on. If they got along side me on the straight I'd do my best to out brake them but I'd hold my lines. I was pretty relaxed but then on the exit of the 2nd hairpin, I missed 3rd and by the time I'd grabbed it, I'd lost 1 position as one guy easily passed me with the loss of speed. The other guy was right on my ass now too. I put up a pretty good fight for another two laps or so and then I found myself on the exit of the 1st corner in 3rd gear with no torque instead of 2nd. Flustered I grabbed 2nd as the guy went past on my outside. Drat. Momentary loss of concentration I guess due to the added confusion of talking to the pits on the phone at the same time. Well that was 2 quick and harsh lessons learned. When I looked at the video later, I basically seem to just drop from 4th to 3rd and didn't even go for 2nd.
Car was handling excellently though and I was quite happy with my driving. During the first stint I actually managed to nail a 1'10.9 line and that was with a full tank of gas. The car was slow on the straights though and I don't know but that might also be my chosen line through the 2nd hairpin or it could be just that some of the other cars are faster or have lighter fuel loads and drivers.
After 20 laps, the car was still great but it was time to come in and hand Tweety over to the very capable Kanepee-san. The pit stop involved an enforced speed limit in the pit lane of 40kmph and a completely stopped car for the duration of 1 minute. This kept things safe as it gave the drivers lots of time to change, belt up, do seat adjustments etc. We had fantastic team support in the pits with the guys from D-Technique helping out on stop watch and tire pressure duty. Kanepee-san took off a minute later to start his 20 lap stint.
It's funny but I didn't think about Tweety's well being for one second while in another drivers hands. I have complete faith in his skill so that was very relaxing. I only wanted to do our best and to get back out there myself for more laps. I took the time also to grab some fluids and relax before I'd head back out. 5 laps before Kanepee-san came in I focused myself again by kitting up and preparing for action. Kanepee-san pitted coming in from 5th place.
Getting back in the car again was easy. Kanepee-san reported back that the brake feeling was bad so I was wondering how bad exactly as the minute was up and I shot out of the pit lane in front of another car. Brakes were very squishy which made them hard to read and meant that I had to brake earlier than usual and hope for the best each time. The guy behind me got by 2 laps later on the entrance to the last corner. Drat. 1 lap later, a car spun on the exit of turn 1 as I exited but I was able to maintain speed and hop down the outside without much thought. I managed to keep the white car in my sights for the remainder of the race but he was always pulling away from me.
We finished the race in 10th position but 1 car was demoted because one of the drivers did too many laps and we were promoted to a very well deserved 9th place, 5 places up from our 14th place start. At the end I was hyper and would have loved to gone on for another hour or so. I learned a lot for having so many clear laps and so many faster cars around me. I can't wait for more :-)
The other D-Technique team - Kato-san and Izumi-san drove a great race in car #123 and finished a spectacular 3rd place. Well done guys! You did a great job. RTE Team Ranman also did a great job to finish in 6th place. Well done to you too. Major thanks to all the guys at D-Technique for their support and guidance and to my awesome co-driver Kanepee for being such a hero in Tweety.
The
Race Results are finally up also so be sure to check them out also.
