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Team WTF?! has SHORT race at MARRS 5 |
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Written by Pinecone
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Wednesday, 09 August 2006 |
A belated report on the Team WTF?! showing (if you can call it that) at MARRS 5 race weekend. MARRS 4 was missed due to family issues. The weekend started the prior week in typical WTF fashion. With the Team WTF?! SRF on tires with about 20 heat cycles, it turned out that NO new tires were available. Bummer. A post on the Spec Racer forum scored 1 set of unmounted new tires and an offer of a set of mounted tires from a local racer who had not turned a lap this year. So, with that hurdle over, on to the weekend.
The practice day went well with finding some lost time as the recent shock rebuild seemed to cure the final handling weirdness. Had a chance to have a former National Champion run the car to see things are. The good news is the car has good power. Running the heat cycled out tires there was no grip of course, but with the lack of grip he was only running about 1 second quicker than my laps.
Last session scrubbed the new tires and was set for the weekend. First qualifying session was OK, but the speed wasn’t there. The second qualifying session had everyone running 1.5 to 2 seconds slower than the morning session, but I managed to only slow down by about 0.7 seconds, so it seemed that I was running about 0.8 faster than the morning. And the session felt good. So even with a final qualifying position of 14th, things were looking up.
Race day and WTF?! struck HARD at the start. What can I say? It was horrible. Got shoved wide in Turn 1 and lost 5 places. OK, that sucked. Second lap, turn 1, a car spun, and boom, my race was over. Radiator was gone, more nose damage, race over. So quick I got to see most of the race from pit wall, in street clothes
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