No update from Kevin on the 6 hour race
Sorry about that.
We finished in 9th place. Were running in 4th when I got out of the car after first stint. 2 big issues cost us roughly 5 laps and 2 positions. 3rd driver hit the tire wall exiting turn 4 and had to get towed from the gravel. 4th driver and car owner spun twice on one lap and had a 2 minute stop and hold black flag.
Onto my perspective.
I asked about gauges on Friday afternoon when I arrived at the track for tech. Standard question when you are getting in a new car for the first time, basically, "What am I looking out for?".
Temp is apparently the main thing on the rotaries, and low and behold, while the fancy numbered temp gauge was still reading 190, the dash gauge spiked to max temp on my second out lap. I immediately steered off the racing line and shut the car off. They towed me in, nice thing that happened with the tow. The brake pads were brand new, a flat tow is a great way to bed in new pads!
Turned out a hose was loose and had sprayed coolant all over the engine compartment. But fortunately I had shut it down in time, and the motor was fine. Car owner was very appreciative and complimentary for that.
The car was first gen, has a Holley Carb, no injection. First time I drove a carbureted car on the race track, I have driven them plenty of times on the street. The car would backfire when I let off the throttle from high RPM, and would stumble if you went from half throttle or less right to full throttle. So I had to grow accustomed to steady, even throttle application in a 150 HP Chumpcar.
The gearing in the car was not optimum for Laguna Seca, the final ratio was over 4.00:1. As a result, 2nd gear was simply not useable, while 3rd was often a compromise in the lowest speed turns, while 4th was a compromise in most of the high speed sections. Really, I was taking the vast majority of the track in 4th gear, shifting to 4th at the T1 bridge between 3 and 4, shifting to 4th on the exit of turn 5 on the way up the hill, and shifting to 4th on the way out of the cork before the T3 bridge, and taking turns 9 and 10 in 4th.
Anyhow, a picture is worth 1,000 words, so here's a graph of how I stacked up. These guys know the car forward and backward, while I know Laguna pretty well. I had to just choose an arbitrary cutoff of high laptimes to remove to have the graph make sense. That basically removes pit laps, and very slow caution laps. Other slow laps you see are normally due to local yellows, emergency vehicles, etc.
I had fast lap of the day, and generally the fastest stint.
My fast in this car was about 4 seconds slower than in the MR2. Gearing and fuel injection make most of the difference. I can push harder with confidence with the fuel injected car, knowing I will have power at my disposal to correct slides. That's important, especially in some of the banked turns, where you can go in a bit hot and correct the car. Gearing, having to use 4th all the way up the hill and then again in 9 and 10 is not optimum. You'd really like to be able to keep the car in higher revs in all of those areas.
This YouTube is not published, and is actually my second fastest lap of the race. Unfortunately, the forward facing GoPro turned off before the end of my stint.
Anyhow, this lap is only 3 tenths off of my fast, I imagine I picked some time up in the turn 2 hairpin, or maybe with smoother throttle application in turn 11, and no resulting stumble. One of those is likely.
I can say that, my family has owned plenty of Fords. All of 'em sucked, from the '78 Granada to the '80 Econoline van to the '95 Towncar (still a Ford). OK, their trucks are maybe...OK...
