TARP Blog

Our Northern Division team competed at the American Irony Detroit-ish LeMons race last weekend and had a marvelous and successful time. Here’s a photo of what the car looked like as it was going out on the track on Saturday:

(click the photo for a bigger version)

And here’s one of Doug on the track:

They rebuilt the motor that we blew up (and by we I mean me) at Nelson Ledges last fall. Apparently Stevo got a penalty on Sunday (he claims it was the other guy’s fault, LOL) and the judges made him dress up in drag, including 3″ stilettos, and engage in a footrace versus the other driver to see who got to go out on track and who had to serve the penalty. The other guy was in flats and won, but I’m surprised after the Pinewood Derby at Infineon that Stevo didn’t think of just knocking him over and then cruising to the win. Here’s a cellphone photo that one of the guys took of Mark in his Sunday best, reclining on the hood of the car:

Stevo wrote the following report and sent it out via email last night, and I’m republishing it in its entirety below, without his permission. That’s what he gets for taunting me about not sending me the swirl pot. I haven’t read it all the way through, so I hope that it’s not too blue:

American Irony is done.  We placed 19th, but more importantly, we finished a race and learned a lot of valuable lessons.   Little things like transponder placement and big things like the new fender rule. The new motor ran flawlessly.  The oil cooling, swirlpot-ing, dethermostating cooling combination is POTENT.  A huge big thanks to Bender and Stick Figure Racing.  Murl, I don’t hardly want to give that can up.  I’ll ask Big Pete if he wants to copy it before we send or if we can wait to get it back.  At the least I’ll draw a plan of it.  Our short race summary:  the car was fabulous, black flag disease owned us.  I myself racked up 2.  I’ll say I deserved them at Infineon.  I cooked into a chicane x2 and got my just desserts. Gingerman was me driving good clean stints and getting hit by cars trying dumb passes.

Wow, what fun.  Big Pete said he reached to shift gears driving into work this morning.  Little Pete says he’s feeling it today where the car beat up on him all over.  My shifting arm is a bit sore from the seat support on that side.  I can’t complain though.  The seat is comfy for this frame as long as the belts are good’n'tight.  Wow, I picked some sucky restaurant food up there.  Mega thanks to Dusty for riding up and supporting the team in a whole lot of different ways on the weekend.

Ginger Man rocked.  Not bumpy as advertised.  Did I have that mixed up with Gratten?  Some complained of the surface nuking their tires. We had no tire or brake issues. Still need to look over the brakes postrace.  It looks like we used up most of that set that is on the car.  We could go back there.

MyLaps has the race data but we can’t log in and we don’t have our transponder number.  Even if we get the # it may be hard to log in with it depending on its status.  I have an email in with Nick at Lemons and a post on the forum trying to get some help.

I haven’t had enough time to go thru films yet.  Day one there is just one film about 25 minutes long.  It is yellow pace laps, then 4 jackasses trying to move a transponder around on the car.  Right at the end Pete is driving his fisrt green lap and the video stops at turn 7.  Thanks to PK hooking up some juice for us, we have most of day 2.  Dusty, Doug and I watched some of Big Pete’s runs from day 2 over dinner on the way home.  Big Pete is superbly competent at many things.  Driving tops that list.  I have watched my vid. Unfortunately stops before I get pegged in turn 10 by the #11 car, it may very well be JUST before and the camera shuts down from the knock.  Anyway, you wouldn’t be able to see a shot from behind given the current camera position which brings me to another idea.

If you think of ideas to do things differently next go, let me know. Try to jot them down now while its fresh.  A few of mine:  More mirrors.  A camera bracket that runs way out back behind the spoiler at the driver’s eye level.  We should get a wider view forward, a look at the steering wheel, tach,  AND rearview if we find the sweet spot. Sweet Jesus, you have no idea what I plan to write on the back of the car for the next race.  Also, we need a new theme idea.  Bonus points if it includes a lot of Kubota Orange rattle can.

Ok, I gotta go to bed and do more work and Dad stuff tomorrow.  The whole set of films is 8.5GBish, LMK if you want the whole set.  How hard is it to host ginormous files for free on the internets?  Or if you are local go buy a keychain flash drive if you don’t already have one.  I’ll try to edit things down but it will be SEVERAL days for that finished product.  That will prolly hit YouTube for your ease of consumption.

Misty Watercolored Memories of the Way We Were, Race Analysis Author: Pat