This very cool car was out there for the weekend. If I remember correctly it was a Porsche 914 converted to single seat.. I believe it may have been a single rotor RX7 engine. While I was very intimidated by how awesome the car looked, but it turned out to be a little slow with a fastest lap of 2:22.
LDRL Racecapturing The Ridge (4/24/16) - 7 hours - Ridge Motorsports Park:
Sunday morning we are still wearing Saturday's shoes (Direzza ZII) and haven't touched anything else on the car. It's so nice to not have to mess with the brakes! I start the race in 19th place on a dry track. I'm again frustrated by seemingly every car's ability to disappear from us on the straights, but we can make up enough time in the corners that our lap times are competitive (well, if ~3 seconds off of the fastest lap of the day is competitive). With a very busy track I get us up to 6th place with a fastest of 2:03.5 and turn the car over to my dad.
Dave gets ready to go out on track, and *just* misses getting out before the pace truck and a very slow lap. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. And here we basically just lost a lap. This knocks us all the way back to 25th place. It's a long race.. we can make it up. Dave continues through the dry track, eventually getting us back up to 6th with a fastest lap of 2:06.4.
Nathan Feigion is in the car next, and after a couple days of hard driving on them.. the Direzzas are getting greasy. Nathan is really trying to manage the traction, but these tires are pretty toast. Nathan has made his way all the way up to 2nd place with a 2:01.3, it's looking like we may be able to get another podium! Nathan has caught up quickly to the #3 Rainbow Unicorn E30 BMW, and they recognize us as a faster car. They point Nathan by on the straight.. but stay in the throttle. And they start slowly walking away. We really need some horsepower here! Rainbow Unicorn is now entering the fastest corner of the track (corner 1) while watching his mirrors to see if Nathan is going to come by him. Rainbow Unicorn brakes for the corner and Nathan looks to the inside to pass in the corner, just as Rainbow Unicorn locks up the rear brakes and spins directly in front of Nathan!
With the spin happening directly in front of Nathan, he is unable to avoid and contacts the BMW. The right front tire gets cut and goes flat, and Nathan pulls into the pits. We swap the tire to a Hankook RS3, and I get in the car to head out on track. As soon as I move forward, I hear something strange. It sounds like something is grinding, so my assumption is something is bent and rubbing in the right front. We can't see anything, so I head out on track.
We are in 6th place with a little under two hours remaining. I can still hear some kind of rubbing happening, but the car is still fast and nothing feels wrong. I'm trying to make up places when I get hit with The Meatball. The Meatball is a black flag with an orange circle, which means something is wrong with the car. They tell us there is a brake problem of some sort. Back in the pits, we find that the left rear brake caliper had come loose, and was dragging on the wheel. It was still gripping on the rotor, just partially off of it. While we are in the pits we swap out the rest of our mismatched tires, so I am now running on the Hankook RS3s. I get back out on track in a disappointing 17th, and now my goal is to see what kind of lap time I can pull off with the used RS3s. We finish the race in 13th, and I get my lap time down to a 2:01.8. Still not quite enough to beat Nathan! I'll blame it on the RS3s being old and the bad aerodynamics from the smashed bumper, it can't be my driving!
This was the race that fully finalized in our minds.. we needed more horsepower. There's a lot of options out there to gain horsepower though... decisions, decisions!
Video Overview: