Photos of my bum

Ok... not my bum exactly but my cars bum. If you have read the previous post, you'll have noted that Tweety got hit in the back on the first corner of the first lap. I was actually watching it from the outside as I was the third driver for this particular endurance race. Anyway, its not major damage but the car is still being repaired. Here are some photos of the carnage after I got back to Tokyo.

Right hand rear corner. Bumper is pushed in. Looks like the tow-hook saved it from more damage.


Closer view over the exhaust. It's all cracked up.


Top view showing the indentation.

Party Race - 2009/11/15

Party Race 1 hour endurance race was held yesterday. Deki-san qualified in my car and did a 1'09.6 to take 6th on the grid. Kato-san got pole with a 1'09.1.

Driver order for the race was Deki - 21 laps, Fujitomo - 9 laps and Tom the remaining 18 laps. Race start was delayed nearly an hour so my stint was going to be rather dark. Not dark again!!! I was excited to try Tsukuba in the dark though as I knew it was mostly decently lit.

For the race start, the cars were lined up against the pit wall. Starting driver was in the car
and I had to run from the opposite side and touch right hands before he could lower his right hand to start the car and go. while thinking about this, I forgot to start TraqMate!!! Damn.

Deki got a good enough start but not good enough to pass another car. I watched as he went into the first corner and saw another car try to go up his inside. It didn't seem possible from where I was standing and I heard a bang. Deki didn't come around with the leaders as he had been hit from behind and spun out on the first corner.

He finally appeared quite a bit back from the group but he rounded the last corner at full speed so I knew the car was mostly ok. Another car pitted. It was a fellow DTR team mates and the right front was bent in.

Meanwhile Deki drove like a man inspired and lapped mostly doing 1'10s and had a best of a 1'09. What a driver! When he pitted we were about 6th but he did a long stint so our real position was further back as other teams had likely already stopped for their required 1 minute pit stop.

Fujitomo was quick into the car as Deki got out. Both needed cushions as my seat is setup quite low. As Fujitomo was belted in I remembered TraqMate and reached over to press it on. Meanwhile the 1 minute pit stop had only seconds remaining. I pushed select 3 times instead of 2 and that's all I could do as I got out of the way as she wheel spun down the pit lane and out onto the course. Unfortunately, We'd get no data again as TraqMate was now asking if we wanted a "new start/finish line" instead of recording data.

Fujitomo did a great job and was very fast considering it was her first time driving the car. Deki was on the phone giving her support for the full number of laps. I had complete confidence in her as she has done a lot of formulae driving and has also won a Clubman 1 party race a year before I did in a Mazda Press car. Watching from the outside she was very smooth both out of the last corner and braking into the first corner. She scored a few 1'11s to put me to shame :-) Well done Fujitomo!!! Great driving!

As she pitted, it was my turn. I hopped in fixed the harness and seat. Got TraqMate started and was off on time. I came out of the pits right in front of car number 8 in 6th position. Wow! Great job team! I was confident that we could hold onto 6th and I wasn't going to let anyone past.

I drove steady the first lap to check the car while keeping the car behind me. Brakes felt better than I expected, but the overall balance of the car was a little weird compared to normal. I put it down to strange tire pressures. It was more than manageable though.

Braking into the 2nd hairpin, something hard came flying into the footwell. I tried to kick it out of the way with my foot but for the rest of the race it would come play with my peddles and me under braking. Quite dangerous but not much I could do except keep going. I found out at the end of the race that it was the official time sensor. The pin holding it to its base where it was taped on the door had somehow worked its way loose and it had fallen down.

On the 2nd lap before Dunlop, I noticed the clutch slipping for the first time. It was the first time, I'd ever felt a clutch slip and I had no idea how best to handle it. After Dunlop and into the second hairpin it went again and such was my puzzlement that I got the car a little sideways on the exit onto the back straight and two cars got past. The clutch made it very hard to pass the cars back again as I would just lose them on the back straight.

Another car came out of the pits in front of me and stayed there for the rest of the race. One more car would get by on the back straight as I fought the clutch for more speed. I tried to up my lap times with more speed around the last corner but I wasn't entirely happy with the cars handling to push more. I was lapped by a very fast car 50 who went around the outside on the last corner with some fantastic late braking. He was unbelievable fast and amazing to watch as he also easily past the two cars infront of me like they were standing still. Maybe a slightly lighter car than ours considering our fuel load where we went a little over board. I managed to score mostly 1'11s which is not bad I think on a bad clutch and handling I wasn't entirely happy with.

We would finish 10th in the dark. I'm quite proud of our team "T3" for getting up as far as 10th considering the clutch and the accident at the start of the race. "What if?" does spring to mind though and leaves me wanting more next year!

After the race when the car was being checked, the officials noticed some oil around the diff. Driving home also felt very weird as the rear end of the car seemed to float around behind me. I wonder if the diff is gone or going too? Perhaps the last accident when my wheel was hit in the last race may have weakened the diff a little? There is definitely a smell of oil if I accelerate around a corner also. I will get that checked.

So! What an exciting weekend I had. Car got another battle scar. I got to race with 2 wonderful team mates. Thank you Deki and Fujitomo! Kato was also in action for DTR in car 27 and they managed to get 4th place. Congratulations guys! Congrats too to all of the other DTR members who finished their races. As for car 100 - I can't believe you had the nerve to hit Deki in the back! I hope the car is not too bad and doesn't cost so much to repair.

I'll try to post some photos later when I check my camera etc. I still haven't taken any photos of the damage of the rear nor seen it in day light. Maybe I'll get up early tomorrow morning to have a look at it.

Imobilizer woes

2 weeks ago, I climbed in after the car had been idle for about 3 days and the car wouldn't start. It was as if I wasn't pressing the clutch. Noticed the imobilizer light was flashing. Oh dear. Called JAF who poked around in the bonnet, checking fuses etc and as if by some magic, the car started albeit with an engine check lamp.

Off to Mazda who confirmed there HAD been an issue but all was looking ok now. They said the error was that the dash couldn't talk to the ABS sensor briefly. Hmmm. But they assured me all was well.

A week later, I was driving down road and the gauges shut down briefly. Speedo and revs just turned to zero but then came back on again almost instantly. Another check lamp. The next race was in a week so I was a little worried and drove down to D-Technique.

I was pretty sure it was the HKS speed limit remover wiring. I've had the device removed since May (because of the Party Race) but the wiring is basically joined using some plastic connectors that they provide. Traced the problem down to a loose wire on one of the connectors. Yikes. After checking all the others, we were back in one piece again and the engine started fine. Lets hope it keeps that way. That was a good find a week before the next race! I've been having issues like this on and off with the gauge and check lamps for about a year so it will be great it this resolves it. Would be cool if it improved performance too. lol.

Party Race 09/09/05 - Video

After much thought, I decided to put up a short video of the incident from the last race.

Quick updates

Just an update to say that I finally got the car back yesterday after quite an eventful end of September and beginning of October. I went to Australia for 10 days and also headed off to California to watch the season finale of the StarMazda series which my friend Deki-san over at D-Technique was racing in. Fantastic race. Fellow countryman Peter Dempsey unfortunately lost out with a very harsh DNF after some superb racing that weekend. It was awe inspiring. Laguna Seca was an amazing track to go and watch motorsport at. Fantastic stuff.

Anyway finally back in Japan and a week later I have my car back again. I ended up getting a new wheel and believe it or not the alignment was perfect so no changes required there. Perhaps it got banged back into place. lol. Anyway, all parts checked out fine and the body cleaned up nicely too. Will have to look at it more closely in daylight.

Had a great drive home from D-Tech with the top down. How I missed this little car.

Back racing this weekend with TGR. Have a look at our car prep over on our TGR blog. This time, we've a 6 hour endurance race at East Course Ebisu. TraqMate Japan have again very kindly provided a unit for the race for us. Thank you TraqMate!!!

Who ate my RAYS?

I guess a few photos are due of the damage.

Could have been a lot worse me thinks!

Still I guess a bang on the wheel like that will mean that I should check some other things like the wheel bearings perhaps? No noise as it is right now and the car drives perfectly, so will have to see what is under there.

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...