O'Fest at Barber Motor Sports Park

[jlevie]

While I try to do a good job of getting lapping traffic past as quickly as possible, there are times when I may hold a car off for a corner or short sequence (like the Esses at RA) providing that a) the overtaking car doesn't have a competitor right behind them, b) that there is a good passing opportunity just past that point, c) that I don't have a competitor close enough to take advantage. That won't slow either of us down as I may be nearly as fast (or sometimes faster) there. If the overtaking car has a close competitor I'll let both (or all) by all at once so nobody gets to use me as pick. I try not to interfere with faster car's races, but at the same time I'm also racing and I have my competitors to think about.

I give a lot of point by's, partly to let the faster car know that I know they are there and partly to "seal the contract" and let the other driver know that I will give them room and facilitate the pass if necessary. That, and maintaining situational awareness goes a long way towards preventing speed difference incidents.

In the Roebling Feature race I fell back from the cars I'd been chasing in the last five minutes or so of the race to make it easier for the lapping traffic to get by. I had my race won at that point and passing one car and then the pair was going to be easier for the lapping traffic than having to get around all three in twisty back side of Roebling.

We do stress the situational awareness issue and the need to be predictable in CRS. We also emphasize the need to know who you are racing and not to race out of class. In the heat of the moment rookies (especially) tend to forget those concepts.

[makard]

Perhaps you're right about it being a "dive bomb" in a SpecE30 compared to an easy pass in a wide body Mod class e30 that weighs less and has a ton more grip...that is typically my perspective. You are spot-on about mixed class racing as many times the Mod guys have to attempt to work lapped traffic as quickly as possible since our in-class competitors can close on us very rapidly if we have to slow significantly to avoid cars that might be so caught -up in their own battles that they are unaware that we have caught them since they last checked mirror(s). Some of the worst carnage I've seen in club racing resulted from the vastly different closing speeds and folks not being fully aware of their surroundings to leave room for faster cars to pass without greatly disrupting any of the parties involved's race. It's always a concern when one sees that rookie x since we typically haven't driven in close proximity with those drivers enough to have a feeling for what they might do next. Thankfully, the CR school is now strongly cautioning these new racers to watch their mirrors and give racing room for faster cars rather than always pushing to maintain the "Driver School Line" no matter the circumstances.

[jlevie]

A good racer tries to keep track of enough information to able to make considered and rational decisions. Obviously your first priority is to keep track of where your competition is. But when racing in a mixed group you should know how many other cars there are in other classes that you might tangle with and as much as possible know where those cars are. You don't want an out of class car to mess up your race, nor do you want to mess up an out of class car's race. And you certainly never want to "red mist" as that frequently causes bad things to happen.

The Club Racing school does not require that students have full race gear or a race car. So yes, there were cars in the mock race that did not have cages.

[priapism]

Man, you're one levelheaded racer. I had the same issue with some guy that showed up to a Chumpcar race with an E36 M3 He would absolutely leave me on the straights and block as hard as he could when I tried to pass (he was braking about 100 feet before me lulz). On top of that, they had a ton of penalty laps and were in the pits for 30 minutes with a noise violation (Laguna Seca has DB limits). The only way I could find to deal with him was to use traffic as a pick, then block the everloving crap out of him when he tried to get back around.

And that "mock race"...is it me or do I see road cars with no roll cages in there?

[jlevie]

Nope, not this time. You can see the video in the first post in http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=230884
If it had been a similar situation with a certain blue JS car, I think he would have let me by and tried to pick up corner tips.
[quote]PS: I am going to use your turn 14 trick the next time we are at Barber....So Look out [/quote
Okay, but wait until you see what I do from the inside line there...

[makard]

Hopefully the problem in the feature race at Roebling wasn't with the same blue e46?

[Don Stevens]

From my perspective in the car it looked like I would have to divebomb to make a pass. I won't intentionally do that to another driver and especially not to an out of class car. The JS car makes a lot more low end torque than my Spec E30 and it would pull me coming out of the corners. So I just didn't see any places where I could out brake Dave and get a legal overlap by turn-in. And I needed to get it done before the hair pin to pull enough lead to be able to stay in front on the straights.

Because I was pretty hot about it Friday I waited until Saturday morning to talk to Dave. I might have said something on Friday that I'd later regret. We had a nice civilized talk Saturday morning and have been on friendly terms ever since. I believe I was able to help him at Hutchinson and at Roebling after seeing what he was doing on track. So it is all good.

The same sort of thing happened in the Feature race at Roebling. I guess it comes with territory when one drives a Spec E30 in those sorts of fields. I'm a little more blasé about it now than I was at Barber. I suppose I could be a bit more aggressive, but when it is an out of class car I'm not inclined to put both of us at risk just to get around.

That is what makes you a "gentleman racer" Jim. It is a pleasure to race with you.

Don

PS: I am going to use your turn 14 trick the next time we are at Barber....So Look out ;)

[jlevie]

From my perspective in the car it looked like I would have to divebomb to make a pass. I won't intentionally do that to another driver and especially not to an out of class car. The JS car makes a lot more low end torque than my Spec E30 and it would pull me coming out of the corners. So I just didn't see any places where I could out brake Dave and get a legal overlap by turn-in. And I needed to get it done before the hair pin to pull enough lead to be able to stay in front on the straights.

Because I was pretty hot about it Friday I waited until Saturday morning to talk to Dave. I might have said something on Friday that I'd later regret. We had a nice civilized talk Saturday morning and have been on friendly terms ever since. I believe I was able to help him at Hutchinson and at Roebling after seeing what he was doing on track. So it is all good.

The same sort of thing happened in the Feature race at Roebling. I guess it comes with territory when one drives a Spec E30 in those sorts of fields. I'm a little more blasé about it now than I was at Barber. I suppose I could be a bit more aggressive, but when it is an out of class car I'm not inclined to put both of us at risk just to get around.

[makard]

In all fairness, the JS car was piloted by a rookie driver in his first day at this track. He started at the rear and made some passes early in the race (including Jim) and put some distance on those cars. As the race goes on, clearly the heavier e46 328's tires are fading in addition to some driving mistakes that allowed Jim to catch him again. There appears to be several times that Jim could have initiated a pass on the rookie driver (that has typically been told to hold his line in the curves), yet the heavier car seems to have better exit speed after over slowing for the corners to overcome what appears to be loose handling at turn-in. Thankfully, there were no changes in finishing positions associated with the inability to pass the JS car and after installing fresh rubber & learning the track a bit better the rookie driver was able to improve lap times enough to never be in Jim's way again at this event. He's obviously learning new tracks as well as race craft as a rookie as the season progressed.

[triggergt]

Here is the race from sat!! Same car diff driver!!

http://vimeo.com/30902471

[jlevie]

It was pretty packed at the start.
However, nothing compares with fighting for burgers with Levie in the late night hours ;)

Yeah right, at least I left your beer alone! Good video and a good job of driving in the race. Get the rest of your gear and come out and play with us.

[jlevie]

nice driving man. Suprised out how congested the race started. Normal for spec series? and I thought 285 in Atlanta was bad. lol

If anything, the Mock race start was less congested than a real race start. I've seen starts at Road Atlanta where pretty much the whole field was three-four wide all the way to T3. And then two wide from there for a while.

[Skafrog]

It was pretty packed at the start.
However, nothing compares with fighting for burgers with Levie in the late night hours ;)

[samiam3356]

Here is my in-car from the mock race:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvPUJXzKk9U

nice driving man. Suprised out how congested the race started. Normal for spec series? and I thought 285 in Atlanta was bad. lol

[jlevie]

Attendance at a BMW CCA Club race school does not require a race car or personal race gear. Ordinary DE rules apply. I think that is a better way of doing things. The other organizations require one to have full gear and be in a full up race car. Unless you can borrow all or part of that there is a sizable expenditure required. A person might attend race school and find out that they aren't comfortable going wheel to wheel. I've seen that happen several times. Racing gets pretty intense and we try to give the students a good feel for what it is like in comp school.