Kermit Busts his Rear (aka. Terry's race report)

Well, the first race weekend of the year is in the books. The best part of the weekend was the weather (Mid-70's, nice breeze and clear blue skies) and the friends who came over to the track to root for us. Pam did a great job in her crew chief roll and only missed a couple of laps on the stop watch and proved to be very accurate on recording tire pressures. I think she is ready to hand back the crew chief role to my neighbor Bill who usually fills that role.

I towed the car over to Roebling late Friday afternoon in order to get through registration and the annual tech inspection. There were no problems and I headed home anticipating a fun weekend and hopefully some improved lap times over last year. We were running the new Toyo R-888 spec tire for the first time. Input suggested that others had found that the tire need to be run in the area of 35 lbs. hot. The previous spec RA-1 tire had a target hot pressure of 38-40, so this was a fairly significant change. I also made no camber change from last year even though others had suggested that these tires needed less camber than RA-1's. Here are the pressure numbers from the practice session.

LF RF
28/38 28/36

LR RR
28/37 29/34

After around 4-5 laps it felt like the tires got a bit greasy and the handling became a bit loose. It was still controllable, but did not have the grip level I had experienced with the RA-1. Since the pressures were higher than target, they may have caused the condition. Anyway, I had pretty open space and gradually pushed a little harder each lap. Our fast lap was a 1:27 flat, which was 4/10 quicker than our previous best I did not feel that I had pushed the car anywhere near the limit, so I was optimistic about more improvement in qualifying.

I dropped the tire pressure a bit more for qualifying with the exception of the RR which I increased to 30 lbs cold. During qualifying I found myself stuck behind a car that I have previously had trouble with. That particular car is very slow in the corners, but has always had me on straight line speed. To make matters worse, the car now has a brand new RE bullet with even more straight line speed. Anyway, I made the classic mistake of getting behind him and try very hard to get around by setting up a pass. After all these years, I know better than to waste those laps. I finally eased off for a lap and dropped back around 15 car lengths. Well, I still caught up to his rear bumper and lost any hope for a clean lap. I know, I should have pulled down pit lane and waited for a clear spot on the track for re entry. Qualifying was pretty much a disaster and my best lap was only a 1:28.7. I was disappointed, but still optimistic that Sunday would be quicker and I had a good shot at breaking in to the 1:26 range. I think there is a 1:25 in the car even without the pro motor. Top Cars are turning in the 1:22-1:23 area, but I had no illusions for being anywhere close to them with my current package.

Sunday was another beautiful day and hope again sprung eternal. The officials decided on a split start and moved the T-3, SSB and SSC classes to the front of the field. That took away the two SSC cars that would have been between me and the car/driver that I have had the previous problems with. Sure enough I got beat in to the first turn at the end of the straight on the start. Once again I was stuck behind the same car that messed up my qualifying. After a dozen laps of trying everything short of tapping him out of the way, I was able to get him to mess up his entry on to the straight while I got a really nice run that permitted me to get side by side with him into the braking zone of turn 1. I had inside position and this time I was through. Once past him I was able to open up some distance and began gaining on the next Miata. I was closing at around a second lap and felt that another position was within my grasp. However, for some time I had been feeling and hearing an ominous noise in the rear of the car. At first I thought I might have a wheel bearing problem as the noise and vibration was more prominent in right hand turns. Well on lap 17 it became obvious that the famous 1.6 diff failure had struck Kermit. Our race was done, but on the bright side we at least got credit for a finish since it was a 23 lap race. We dropped from what I believe could have been an 11th place finish to 14th. There were 16 Spec Miata class cars that started the race.

I had no tire pressures from the qualifying session as we were all impounded and the national SM compliance tech people conducted an extensive examination of all cars. They checked rim size, track, camber and were looking under the dash for electrical connection (piggy back wiring?) issues. All cars were also weighed. It was a little extreme as they were getting in to checking panel fit gaps/seams. I'm not sure but I thought we did this for fun. I know compliance is important in a spec class, but we may not have gone to the opposite extreme. At least I did not see any heads being pulled between qualifying and the race. I did not see the post race tech, but assume the whistlers were in play and restrictor plates were being measured.

For those trying to figure out the new tire equation, here were my post race numbers for reference:

LF RF
27/36 27/38

LR RR
27/35.5 30/37

I did not have the courage to start with any lower pressure, but if 35 is the right target, its pretty clear that I should have taken the cold pressures a bit lower. I have not had a chance to take the tires off of the car yet, but at first glance the wear seems pretty even and not as excessive as others have reported. Of course that could be because I am running so slow. My best race lap was also a flat 1:27, so I was inches away from getting in to my 1:26 weekend target. If the driver could get his act together, I still think there is a 1:25 in the car. Still a long way from the front, but probably realistic for the current equipment. I have a spare differential in the garage, so we should be getting things back together in plenty of time to enter the end of April double regional races at Roebling.

Congratulations to our Panic leader Steve Bertok on his win at VIR this past weekend. Nice start to the defense of your endurance series championship. Sorry I did not hold up my end, but we did give it a good go. Most importantly I managed to have fun.

Terry Whitlock