Thunderhill speeds (Page 2 of 4)

Lets see... V-12, 4 speed auto,265 diff gearing and 4800 lbs. I am thinking medium to scary speeds with a high chance of exiting T-1 into the grass and up the hill and over the top Dukes of Hazard style with brakes on fire. OK! i am in for sure!

The Flying Pendejo

[sarcasm]

I'm on edge awaiting his response!

[/sarcasm]

John Gottes,

I gotta agree with Jeff that Chicanes cause more trouble than they save.  Granted, I have never been at Thunderhill but the races I have been in without chicanes seemed to go better than the races with them.

At the October race at MSR we had the largest field to date for a Lemons race and had less contact without the chicane than we did with one.  The most significant contact before happened going into the chicane.

If most of your drivers have been in Lemons since the first Altamont races, they should have experience.  If they've never driven over 100 MPH, they must be a bunch of choir boys.

Additionally, Chumpcar's first event seemed to go better once the cars blew away the chicane.

Like Jeff said, no one is forcing your foot on the gas pedal and no one is forcing you to race.

I think you will be pleasantly surprised how well the race goes without chicanes.

I Object!! I move for dismissal. 

Here are a few unsolicited points.
1. You threw the lawyer card- admitting your a lawyer and trying to scare organizers is an automatic 200 penalty laps off the bat.
2. I could not think of a better event for a lawyer to be driving over 100mph in a crap car.... (What car will you be in??? I think everyone wants to know now )
3. You are a Veteran Lemon Driver- You know the rules -No Whining.
4. Buttonwillow was fast, and no one was whining
5. If your two driver short team is scared that your "Unrestricted Safety Equipment Budget" to make your car safe is not up to task- you should stick to Miniature Golf Go Karts...... This is a Lemons race- It's not supposed to make sense. The safety equipment should trump the crappy cars- to make them "Safe" crappy cars in the event of an accident.

Remember this is all in fun.  No one is MAKING you race.

Awwwwww Sh*t he said the L word...

Most people have conscious control of their right foot, exercise that control and you'll be OK.   Watch your mirrors and drive at your own pace.

    As Dean and I have already pointed out, the speeds at BW were higher.
  Now, if your right foot is possessed by an evil spirit, and it is therefore beyond your control..  Please, for the sake of all racing, have an exorcism performed. You only have two days left, not much time to find the correct Shaman to rid you of that demon!

Those people usually end up in the dirt off T1 anyways at Thill..  pucker factor is pretty high

100 mph keeps being mentioned.    Most of the cars in the race will not reach that speed,  It takes a decent HP, good tires (for corner exit speeds), a clean track (not bloody likely with 160 cars) and good driver to reach those kind of speeds.  Yes, there are probably 20ish cars racing that can hit that speed with ease, and most of those are piloted by experienced drivers..    Just like at Buttonwillow.  The car tossed off at BW was such a car, driven by an experienced driver.  The outcome was a smashed car and no injuries...  at high speed.

Easy on the lawyers. I'm a product of two of them, including a CA deputy attorney general. So for starters, don't mess with me or I'll turn you over to Jerry Brown. He's hella crazy.

John's concerns are valid--as an amateur driver myself, Thunderhill is an intimidating place. But, as far as the chicane- or not-to-chicane debate, there are more variables at work than speed alone. If high speed automatically equaled unnecessary danger, we'd use chicanes every time--maximizing safety is out #1 priority. But, as mentioned, there are more variables, including:

1. Bottlenecks. Do you want to crash cars into each other at 80 mph or have them run more safely at 100?

2. Flow. At most tracks (including Thunderhill), the main straight runs alongside a hard pit wall. Depending on the width of the track, installing a chicane can force drivers to make a turn VERY close to the wall. Given the option between running cars in a straight line next to a wall and forcing them to make a turn, we decided it made more sense to keep things straight.

3. Cross traffic. At Thunderhill, the pit exit blends in at the most logical place for a chicane. Again, we decided to keep things moving in a straight line to prevent complication in the pit merge.

4. Speed. We ran a private test in our Lemons car with no chicanes, and the entry speed into Turn 1 was no different than it was at the last Thunderhill race with the chicane.

5. Visibility. You can see better without chicanes.

6. The damn lawyers. If there is an incident related to a chicane, then we're in hot water because we artificially created a situation that didn't exist in the basic layout of the track. If there's a compelling safety reason to run a chicane, that concern would be trumped--we felt that wasn't the case at Thunderhill.

Ultimately, the best we can do is consider all of those variables and make an honest assessment as to what's the most safe, based on my input (as an amateur driver), event manager Jeff's input (as a pro driver), and Jay's input (as the guy who's gonna get sued).

As you've noticed, this process resulted in: Full track, no chicanes. If you're not comfortable with the speeds, that's totally fine and understandable--go as fast as you feel safe doing.

I was regularly bonking the Cav off the 106-ish mph speed limiter going into 1 back in '07 after the chicane had been neutralized.

Now we don't have a speed limiter anymore, but I think that not having a chicane on the front straight is a definite plus. The crowding and last minute chicane dives were imo more hairball then the potential for screwing up 1.

No one has to 'see what this baby'll do' right from the off, and there are enough cars at the beginning that speeds will be moderate for a while. I guess I'd be most worried about a newbie team member going out in the afternoon when things have thinned out and thinking 'yeah, I can DO this!' and then cartwheeling off of 1/8. Hopefully those people will be at the Friday night meeting and get some useful hints.

With our V6 torque and new found manual gearbox I expect mostly 4th gear, since the torque is pretty much the same from 2200-6600. It should be good. That will let us not beat the car up as well... smooth is good!