Fun-run: Elise Challenge

That was my first race - cant stop grinning!
Great fun. I apologize for any mishaps i may have
caused but i tried to stay out of peoples way.
I cant believe my Comadore 64 was able to keep up

thanks guys

Shooo whee! Had me a race with JT Edwards nearly the whole time. I capitalized on a couple tiny advantages I had, and even fewer mistakes he made to take his spot a few times. Of course, I wholly managed to fubar myself with serious mental lapses... a couple turn overshoots, a couple solo spins... and voila, he kept taking it back and finally held on for the lap that matters. Good job. Great battle! Wish it had been a few laps more.

Though JT, I think the real advantage was that it appeared I had more throttle than you did, especially in the S/F straight. Your brake lights were on the whole time, so I have to assume your brake pedal (or more accurately the pot) has gone south (you using a Logitech setup?). Check your calibration and see if it's registering as always partly pressed. If so, I bet you would have held me off a lot easier.

To everyone else... from my starting spot in the back half, it looked like a really clean start. Nicely done everyone. Saw a few spun cars the first lap, and got turned around myself by a tiny tap in spun traffic, but nothing like the chaos that has stirred folks up lately. That's 2 races I've seen lately that were good clean starts.

Great race everybody.

Oh, and Tommy... you're now officially an alien in my book! Too fast for me. ;)

Yes, Tommy is at least a semi-alien. Hey, I didn't punt you when you lapped me. Now, I may have finished a few spots higher if I did not take four or five walk-abouts. Fastest lap a second better than Q but still the slowest of the race.

I felt I knew the track and knew what the limits of my car were going into this race tonight. I was in a bit of a sweet spot for several laps in the middle of the race. No one behind me was catching up, and I was slowly gaining on a group of 4 or 5 cars in front of me. Eventually the racers up front started making mistakes and I moved from 9th to 5th. With 3 laps to go I could tell my front soft tires were beginning to lose grip. I couldn't keep my speed up and Gary and Greg were able to pass me.

This race was hands down my best performance ever! Qualifying 11th was nice, moving to 5th place was awesome, and finishing 7th real nice.

Negatives for me would be that I broke the white line rule in the slow chicane at least three times. I was trying to get right on it. I don't think it gave me any advantage over anyone though.

Good fun! Don't think I had a straight body panel left at the end... Elises aren't very fast, but they do make for great racing.

Got a decent grid spot using race setup, but went back in and changed to softs and low fuel to try for a 26. Too late, as I ran out of time before I could get a flyer in.

Wouldn't have been bad had I not committed my usual pit-related act of self immolation (in a non-stop race, no less). I let myself get caught up in the warmup chat about running meds on both ends, when I'd been using soft/med with no real issues and good balance. So right before the start I went into the garage and put meds on the front, too. Thought maybe I should do some other tweaks to get the balance back since that should've made it more pushy, but was afraid of mucking it up and being stuck with a bad car.

DOH! BAD idea, which became apparent as soon as I turned into T1 on the start. Car pushed straight off and I dropped from 4th to 7th, but got back on without incident and back into 6th a couple of corners later. Was really having a time getting the thing to turn in on cold tires, so my apex speeds were well off, and Ryan whacked me from behind two turns in a row. I got it collected the 1st time, but spun the second time and was in 17th when I finally got it going again.

Was pretty riled up about getting spun, but not really mad - I've done it to others in similar lap one excitement, so I figured it was just my turn (pun intended). Kind of laughed and hoped it was Greg getting some payback... ;-) Besides, I thought it would be a lot of fun to see how far up the field I could get in 13.5 laps. Took a while for the fronts to come in and I never did get the balance back so my laptimes were off, but it didn't matter since I was having too much fun racing to care. Had some good close dices all event long, with plenty of door-to-door action but no punts or spins on anyones' part that I saw.

Plugged away into 3rd, which was all I could ask for given the first lap, and by then the fronts were shot since it was pushing so bad all race.

All races should be that much fun.

Congrats leaders.
Yes I have 2 appologies.

Steve B I spun you, sorry. I guess I was thinking that your turn in wouldn't be so sharp and I expected to have my right-front bumper a foot or 2 away from your left-rear bumper by the time I slowed down, and your turn in was complete. Bad decision, too reckless on lap 1 especially. Glad to see your race ended up well.

Don H I re-entered the track and it would have been ok but I spun the tires and ended up sideways infront of you. So I'm sorry, I should have played it safe and let the field pass.

Can a steward please comment on how reckless that would have been if I had not spun?? I would have been 2-3 car lengths ahead if I had entered smoothly. Is that uncalled for, or up to the drivers discretion?Thanks

So good race other than that, very happy with top 10 after my wild beginning. This was my most reckless race at r2p , I'll try not to get so wild at others' expense ever again.

well darn. i took my pedal apart this weekend and tried to fix them, but it looks like no such luck.

that was some great racing tonite, i had a blast. door to door the whole way. if you hadn't spun near the end,. i doubt i could have caught you.

I was just using this as practice for the gtc race, but i have to say, this was a lot more fun!

thanks for the great racing to everyone.

NP Ryan - like I say, I've done it myself. 1st laps in heavy traffic are just sketchy, with everyone dicing in close quarter on heavy fuel and cold tires.

Happens to real pro's all the time. Just ask Tony Kanaan! ;-)

The Elise setup I had was a little twitchy around here, but driven right was fast. It was enough for pole and I made a good start to lead into turn 1. I went for medium fronts as softs were getting just a bit too hot. They took a lap our two to heat up but after that I was consistent in the low 27 high 26 lap times and pulled away lap after lap. When you have no one to chase it can be hard to concentrate and I always find I have to push to keep me thinking, otherwise my mind drifts and I make mistakes. Was being careful not to cut in the twisty national section (which is messy). Didnt make any mistakes and brought the car home for the win.

Congrats to Tommy and Steve for the podium spots.

Some debate about whether soft or med fronts were the ones to use. It was 50/50 for me but I decided to go for med fronts because I wanted the grip all the way to the end of the race. One thing about using medium fronts is that you had to push on them right away to get the temps up. If you were timid or gentle on them, they would not get up to temp and you might be in trouble.

Great job, John. Maybe one of these days I can find that extra bit of pace to keep you from daydreaming... LOL!

Guess I tend not to push the tires that hard, since the meds were definitely not the right choice for me, at least not on a setup that was optimized for soft/med. Looking at my motec data, it took all of 4 laps to get them up to temp and even then they never really were hot enough - heck, end of L1 they were still in the 55-65 range despite getting a 10 degree bump from my midlap spin. Looked at my data from the Barcelona Elise race, and the soft fronts were OK there; got up to temp about a lap and a half quicker and stabilized nicely till the end.

Unfortunately, I had soft rears on at Barca, which didn't work out so good. I think I should be banned from the pits completely... ;-)