VTA points week #7

Week #7 was the penultimate week for the current points series and going into it, I was tied for fourth with Bob running his XRay 007 Mustang.

Having raced the previous Friday with freshly cleaned off tires, I was still worried about traction rolling. I moved the lead weight that was outboard of the motor to the center of the chassis directly below the antenna to get it more centered as I tipped the car going both right AND left. I also added crazy camber to the car to try and get a bit more slide in the corners.

I banged out a pretty good qualifier in round #1. I had just one incident, but was it a doozy - I flipped in the middle of the track, and watched as the marshall waddled over to the car, bent as little as he good, and flipped the car over byt he end of the body (ya, it was the big guy) - for a stunning lap of ~20 seconds. My lap times for most of my laps were high 10's to low 11's, so that was nearly a full ap lost, and I still finished with a 27/5:05 if I remember correctly, still not making the 28 laps, but damn close. Fast lap for me - 10.5.

The Second qualifier was really strange, the car was back to traction rolling! I did that once or twice and the car started to feel strange to me. I heard Mark tell me to pull my car off the track as it had ripped the new carpet - DOH! Sure enough, right in the middle of the sweeper, the carpet had a small square standing straight up. He said something about my body posts, but they were rounded on the top (thanks to Kevin breaking both of them when hitting me in qualifier #2 the Friday before), and to this day I don't recall rolling the car in that turn when he called it, and have no idea how it happened, or if it was even me. Regardless, I felt bad about it.

In the pits before the main, I went over everything on my car - the body posts, the chassis screws, and the lower part of the body and couldn't find any answers. I did find just a bit of rubber on the left side of the chassis, so I gave all the shock collars a tweak to stiffen them up a bit. I cranked in additional negative camber on all the wheels and superglued the outside bead of every tire.

I made the A-main based on my 1st round qualifier and was even starting fifth. Both Bob's made the A this week, first time Bob Z. made the A ever in VTA. It was an interesting race - the tone went off and we all went through turn one and two and a giant pile up in turn three found everyone in front of me on their lid or against a board or facing the wrong way as I drove through them all! I lead that lap and the next and was over-adrenalized and tapped an inside board, sending the car onto its lid (god I hate that about these bodies) letting three by me in the process. Running in fourth is a much easier experience and the rest of my race was uneventful. I think John won just ahead of either Mike or Greg and I finished fourth, ahead of Bob, which broke our tie for fourth in the points.