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Open Test Day -
Spring Mountain Raceway (Pahrump, NV)
"A Tale of Two
Wheels"
After getting into
Pahrump at 3:00am on Friday night, we decided to forgo some of our practice time and
sleep in. We arrived at the track around 11:00am and went to
work unloading the car and preparing our pit. It was fairly
cool (around 55 degrees) and windy. I drove for the first
practice session with Dave as a passenger. We were off to a
bad start when we neglected to remove the wheel chocks before we
strapped into the car. A helpful competitor pulled them out
and we were on our way. After getting in the way of a few of
the Unlimited One cars, we had a pretty open track and could really
exercise the car. The car felt pretty good but had quite a bit
of oversteer and had a moment of wobble before setting in for a
turn. On our second to last lap, I hit the curb
hard in turn nine and put the car up on the two outside wheels.
Even though the car has a motorcycle engine, we decided not to do
that again. The car was fine and the maneuver was a real crowd
pleaser so nothing was lost.
Dave took the car out
alone for the second session. He was able to get more in sync
with the car and track and his final lap time of 1:57.4 was a tenth
of a second faster than mine.
A few teams had
technical problems... a second generation Touring RX-7 blew a line on
their oil cooler and were still trying to find parts when we left
the track. A team running a '89 BMW M3 had their driveshaft on
the ground and were working away on the car. Hayashi and
company were plenty fast, as were the Radicals and the Mosler
Photon. The Competition Coupe hadn't shown up yet but neither
had bunch of the other teams.
After dinner and a
stop for fuel and food, it was back to the hotel for some much
needed rest. Tomorrow is just the beginning and we're already
tired!
Video:
Testing at Spring Mountain
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