USA FT-A: Laguna Seca

This race was sort of a last-minute entry for me and I am really glad I got into it. I don't have a GTPC race this weekend, and I don't really do more than 1 event per week, so I decided to check the upcoming schedule on Sunday night and saw trainers at Laguna Seca. I just finished doing tons of practice for this circuit a few weeks ago for a GTPC event, so I still had the track pretty fresh in my mind, so I signed up, hoping that one good solid practice session on Monday night would be good enough.

I haven't raced in the trainers before, but attending a recent HPDT course by Tim, I got a good hour and a half of wheel time in them and found that I got fairly comfortable pretty quickly.

Race comments, not much to say. I was running second in qualifying after Scott, but my final lap in qualifying (qualifying actually ended during that lap) gave me the edge with what I am fairly certain is my personal best for this track and car. Getting pole was the only reason I was able to pull off the win. I managed to get some distance on the pack fairly quickly (not lots, but enough that I wasn't being heavily pressured), and eventually I stopped gaining space but I wasn't losing it either. If I had not started in front, I don't think I would have been fast enough to overtake the guys who were (fortunately) behind me. I had a few scares coming upon lappers. I have mostly only done 90m races, so I didn't think to expect backmarkers in a short sprint, but fortunately nothing went awry and I held things steady for the most part and had a nice gentle entry into the corkscrew on my final lap to take the checkers.

This was my second official event and my first non-exhibition open-wheel event, so I am pretty stoked about it. Thanks to everyone for showing up to practice and stuff. Had fun.

I ruined my own race running over the inside curb at the corner before the corkscrew trying to keep up with Dennis...it put me back in 15th...and I was facing backwards in the sand. It was fun while it lasted. At least I can chaulk it up to a learning experience...it might have been better for me to back off slightly and get a better run on Dennis elsewhere than try to go side-by-side on the inside of corners that have curbs which will throw you sideways.

Mid Ohio should be a blast...I hope we get a full field there too!

Well I choked during qual. I was well over .5s my PB.
Steve was faster also during practice, suprised me he wasn't up further also.
Had a relativly good start, Scott N had an excellent start
and it opened a door for me to go outside Kevin R. He was having none of that and raced me clean thru T1.He had the line and I conceeded. Was trying to fill his mirrors into a mistake, and then I see a Mr. Steve Wood filling mine. He was definitly faster and I would of given in, but not just yet Steve. Wanted to take Kevin first. Sorry bout that.
From that minor incident Bill G capitalized and took P6 exiting the corkscrew. I didn't want to finish 7th, and I also saw past race winner Greg M. getting bigger in my mirrors, Im thinking I wanted a top 5 so I pushed hard and finally took Bill into T1 on the following lap. I slowly inched away and chased Kevin the rest of the race, but I didn't have enough for him. I Happily settled for 5th.
Great Clean racing by everyone, I had a blast and amazed myself I didnt make a major mistake. Didn't think I would do well here looking at the times posted earlier.
Once again, great battle Steve and Bill, Can't wait till next race.
DC
Great Drive Justin, and Podium......
Hope theres a GTPC race in two weeks

good race, almost lost it in the corkscrew about half way. lost a few postitions but was able to game them back and almost catch back up to 10th. able to pull out 11th

Y'know... you guys aren't really all that slow compared to the regular Formula Trainer event laptimes.

This single open wheel race put my ranking too high to come back to this series, so I am going to have to drive in standard FT at mid-ohio if I decide to enter the last race of the series. I'll be considerably off the pace, there, as I've never driven that course before. My experience at Laguna Seca was the key to the win here. Note that my only other R2P win (which was from pole as well) was at Laguna Seca in GTR2. :)

I'll get pulverized at the standard FT to bring my ranking back down and then come back next season unless there's an FBMW series going for North Americans next season.

Had a great setup that just got faster as the laps clicked off. But not so much when your front wing is in the grass. lol This is the type of track where you really have to watch when you get back into the throttle I made one mistake just getting into the gas too early. Bout an inch. Then hit the white curbs on the outside of one of the right handers near the end of the first sector. Sent me around and wall bound. Crappy mistake. My only bad race here so far and of course it comes when i needed the points very badly. But hey.... Guess thats racing. Wipe myself get up again!!! lol Great win Justin. That pole lap was super important eh? Great job to the podium and my teammates as well.

Ray...there were some new drivers here that are much better than the average rookie open wheeler like Justin and Bob Fay who are skewing the results...1:36's are actually quite hard to come by. The top 4 in the FT series were posting 1:34's for gosh sakes...even Justin couldn't dip into the 35's.

The 39's you are seeing in the regular event is probably drivers who didn't practice...this is not a track to jump right into...there's corners where you shouldn't brake at all only let up and perhaps downshift...there's corners where you can let off just enough to pop the rear out a bit and get right back on the power...and there's corners where nothing but threshhold braking and late turn-in works best. It takes a dozen laps or so to figure out which ones these are.

Sorry Justin, but for your first time you were really flying...the amateur events are for drivers that are still trying to learn how to find the fastest line. If you've been competitive in any other sim race car then you won't find the amateur events much of a challenge. But, I think next season there will just be the novice events for formula trainer due to the lack of interest in an alien event in these cars. You might want to step up to rFactor IS, Champcar, or CDTP Formula 1 2005. In a little less than two weeks VindexWorksFormula 1 will be racing at Fuji and it looks like it will be a total blast...hope you join us.

Steve, I apologize if you feel I was hunting slower drivers by joining this event. I've never driven an open wheel event before, aside from a fun run in FBMW, and when I looked at the huge signup list and saw the likes of Bob, Scott, Dennis and yourself, I assumed that it wasn't closed to all but the greenest drivers. I read the pre-race comments which said people were doing 36s and some 35s and felt that I would simply be on the level with the faster guys. Your race pace lap was only .5 seconds slower than me, btw.

I appreciate that you think I'm faster than I may let on, but I assure you that the track played all the part in that. I would _love_ to get into F1 and/or CCWS here, but honestly, I can't even drive a couple laps at an even reasonable speed in those cars yet without wrecking. I am still very new with open wheel and sim racing in general, I just have find the trainers and fBMW cars (being so slow) are much easier to drive to their limits.

Either way, I am done with rtrainers for this season because I have a GTPC sports car event next Sunday, so we will see how the next season's schedule looks.

I would also suggest to anyone who had a hard time getting into the 36s with this event, more practice is the key. I would recommend driving fewer events and concentrating more on each event to really memorize the track inside and out. This is why I only drive one event per week. I will generally spend a good 8 hours or so on the track preparing for a 90m race on Sunday. I'd rather do this and drive a solid race than do 3 or more events per week and get less practice time at the wheel which would mean less consistent driving in each event. Other people's mileage may very, however.

Fun, fun, fun.

I normally don't like Laguna Seca. The penalty for off-track excursions is *really* big. Somehow it came together for me here, though.

Qualy:

Somehow I ended up with a lap over a second faster than practice... I think it was due to changing my line into the corkscrew.

Race:

I got a good jump and moved up a position or two. However, that all disappeared in turn three where I dropped my outside wheels off the curbing and into the sand, I fell back to ninth. On lap two I managed to get by Dennis on the entry to the Corkscrew, but I wasn't able to to hold on to the position for much over a lap. Dennis got by going into the Andretti hairpin and started checking out. Then I noticed someone closing, which turned out to be Gregg. Gregg got by on T11 and I set about chasing him. And that how things stayed, me chasing but not close enough to threaten, until the last lap when Jeremy spun in T4 from P4 and I *just* got by for my finish in P7.

It was a fun race with quite a bit of close racing. Good times, guys.

I think I screwed up my setup. I noticed while chasing Gregg that I could stay with him for most of the track, but he just drove away from me in the Rainey Curve (the left after the Corkscrew). I was running a "4" rear wing, what were you running Gregg?