Howl-o-Ween (10/27/2019) - 7 hours - Portland International Raceway:
Today is a 7 hour race, which bring strategy into play again. Yesterday we just had to try make it 2 hours each time, today we have anywhere from 1 hour to 2 hours per stint where we can try to jump on a full track yellow situation for a pit. If you can pit while the rest of the field is going slow, obviously that is an advantage if they don't do the same. We swap onto a fresh set of the familiar Hankook RS4s, as our Bridgestone RE-71Rs are dead. If we had dialed in a bunch more camber they might have made it two days, but too late for that! As Hankook is coming on board as a sponsor of the series, we also got some fancy Hankook tire stickers. Maybe it's my inner ricer, but I think the tire stickers make it look nice and racey!
The morning is crisp and the tires are brand new and cold. On the warm up laps they spin up like we have 400 horsepower. The green flag drops and grip is not much better. In the chicane I have to take a fairly tight line, and trying to accelerate away the rear tires light up and I am countersteering while I get passed and lose a position dropping me to 5th. These tires will never hit the ultimate grip of the Bridgestones, but I just need to get some heat in them and they will get better. A few corners later I make it up into 3rd place, chasing the #333 silver E36 of Blue Bulls Racing and the familiar Ecotec-powered #13 Miata of Race Invaders. Once we get around to the back of the pack and start lapping traffic, the real chess game comes into play. Each car is an opportunity to hold them up, or hold me up, depending on who does a better job of managing when and where to pass.
I had looked at data from the day before, and my goal for the day is to be more crisp on my transfer from gas to brake at the beginning of the braking zones. I'm really focusing on staying full throttle right up until the instant I am needing to brake. The Hankooks feel like they are fully up to temp now, and I'm exploring the edges of where I can brake and still make the corner. I am trying to reel in Race Invaders, and each lap I'm trying to inch up my speed in turn 10. It's kind of a gut-check corner, as especially with aero you can go faster than it seems like you should be able to. Well, that is until you find that limit, and the car just won't turn in.
Turn 10 is a long left, followed quickly by the right hander of turn 11. I can't get the car down to the apex of 10, which means I'm now completely misaligned for turn 11. Very quickly I get the sinking feeling that I am going to be going off track, and I start trying to scrub speed before going off straight in turn 11! I get onto an escape road, but then have to bump my way across the grass to get back to the track. Argh! That was dumb.. so much for shaving tenths.. I just lost 16 seconds going off course! Ok, reminder.. these tires do not have the grip of the Bridgestones! Maybe we should have ran those the second day instead!
Finally on lap 58 I catch up to and pass Race Invaders to put us in 2nd place, and Blue Bulls pits so we are up into first place. My fastest lap was a 1:28.1, nearly a second slower than the Bridgestone time yesterday. I pit on lap 70 and Dave jumps in the car for the second stint.
While Dave is out there, he gets passed by Blue Bulls and we are running in 2nd place. He is running 1-2 seconds per lap quicker than Race Invaders in 3rd, and manages to pass them and put them a lap down! On lap 125 a fully course yellow comes out, and this is our chance! We dive into the pits to take advantage of the slow lapping field.
I get back into the car and after our pit stop we are in 2nd place, but as pit stops shuffle through, we are back into 1st! We have a slim lead though, with 2nd and 3rd only 9 and 18 seconds behind. I try to stay consistent and not get held up by cars, and run a long string of 1:29s and 1:30s. I need to try build a bit of a cushion for my dad. I get a lap on Race Invaders, then catch up to Blue Bulls. They are fighting like heck to keep me behind them, and they have the horsepower to make it real difficult. I keep pressure on for multiple laps and fill his mirrors. Eventually I sneak by in turn 7 so we have a lap on both cars. I get a hesitation from the car running out of fuel and pit on lap 195 with a fastest lap of 1:28.7.
Dave gets in the car with roughly 1.5 hours left, so fuel should not be a concern at all. Blue Bulls and Race Invaders are duking it out behind Dave, but both still down a lap. They both have fast drivers in and are pushing hard. Many laps later they unlap themselves, but there is too big of a gap to make up with the time left, and we finish in 1st place! Dave reports the exhaust sounds even louder.. and we see that the bottom of the muffler has completely blown out! Time for a new muffler..
Here is some data for tire comparison: the top graph is lateral G, and the bottom is speed. Red is the Bridgestone, blue is the Hankook. You can see ultimate grip is not drastically different, but the minimum speeds are up in most corners. While the lap times ended up within a second, in the right hands there is more than a second gap.
Tire comparison video:
Race Highlights video: