What a long weekend this turned out to be. Rob and I went up to Summit Point for a friday practice and did three sessions on some old tires and things went the normal way things go for racing. A few problems but nothing spectacular. Rob had an opportunity to test out the new track and its faster. In fact about 1/2 second faster in the T2 camaro we run. Mostly due to slight changes in turn six, new pavement exiting turn 1 and the turn ten work and I don't mean the gravel trap. Saturday was a different story. We had two sessions to qualify with no initial practice session. We were trying some new brakes and had high hopes that they would solve our brake problem. Instead they created another problem....they delaminated and it happened in a bad spot. Rob was coming down the chute into turn five when one of the pads departed the caliper and suddenly no brakes. At about 75 to 80 mph thats a real bad spot to have it happen. Rob took the straight line across all the bumps and while the car was airborn you couldn't see the underside of the car. We bent a suspension member slightly but no other real damage except to the confidence Rob needed in the brakes to go fast. Three of the four front pads had delaminated and I won't mention who the manufacturer is until I have a phone conversation with the company. It was obvious on inspection that there is no adhesive material between the pad and the backing plate. The only thing holding the pad on was the material that went thru the four holes in the backing plate. Those holes are about 3/8" in diameter. We were second on the grid in our class and running under the lap record so the car and the track were fast.
The next session we put another set of those same pads in and tried again. Rob took about 7 laps and set a slightly better time, but so did our competition so we were still second. We had 7 T2 cars in the race so competition was going to be better than usual. The fastest car was a '99 Z28 camaro with Tom Oates aboard. We also had a '99 Mustang Cobra and everone was anxious to see how it went. The 'Cobra times were ok for a guy who had never raced in this class before, but did have lots of summit experience. After the second qualifying we looked again at the pads and it was obvious that these were also starting to delaminate. Rob borrowed a set of used pads from Seg Quinoness for the race and we put them in with high hopes.
Sunday Rob did some hardship laps in the early morning and tried his best to fit the used pad to our equipment. Our race was last so we spectated all day and actually saw some racing. On the grid we were in second in class and third overall with a Viper on the pole. The Viper took off and Rob tried his bet to get to turn one ahead of Tom Oates, but that didn't work.....the new aluminum motor Z28 just has more power, about 25 horses, that we have and he led us every lap. But we did have some excitement. Rob was running as fast as he could and using all of the turn ten berm and rumble strips and even some of the new pavement strip outside of the rumblers. About half way Rob started losing the brakes and had to pump the pedal before the faster turns and was loing a second a lap. Since we were about 12 second ahead of the third place car we felt we could hold our position. That was before Rob put the brake pedal to the floor entering turn ten and went off the track and thru the gravel trap at high speed, all I could see was hands and elbows as he tried to keep from hitting the dirt bank. He made it thru and kept his lead but lost a lot of time. Three laps later he did the same thing in turn one and had to go all the way around the skid pad and lost second place in the process. With no brakes and only 5 laps left he made up 11 seconds and passed Seg on the last lap and got second place points back. The kid is an even better driver than I though he was.
Highlight of the race was that 13 cars bettered the lap record in T1, T2, SSB and SC. Neil Sapp brought out his new SSC Honda which didn't even have the truck kit installed yet and won barely over Ken Payson. Was he sandbagging....I don't know, but he qualified 1 1/2 seconds over second place and they both ran with the middle of the SSB cars. Another highlight was Jerry Alaimo Jr. who is about 17 years old and running his first year of nationals in a new SSB Miata which is a twin to National Champion Jerry Alaimo Sr. car. Jr. ran a better race lap than dad did and that may have been due to the boost Ken Payson gave Jr. down the straight one lap. Anyway Jr is going to be one great driver in showroom cars, especially with a teacher like his dad. I thought that bump drafting was over.
Saw W2W guys Dave Gomberg, Chuck McAbee (formula 500, Bill Hunter (HP), and finally met Harold Fletcher. In fact Harold did the big spin in turn ten right in front of me. Good recovery and he went on to pass a few more cars to win his class and 7th overall.
The overall track record also fell to an Atlantic car driven by Paul LeCain who lowered it to 1:09.471 so look for all the IT records to also fall in the first race they get to run next month. Lime Rock is next.