The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Our Crappy Race → Detroit Irony drivers less terrible than most!
Sure, we got pretty close to 200 overall black flags and we had to trailer-ize a couple of teams, but most drivers at Gingerman seemed reasonably sane. Did the consumption of cheese curds have a calming effect?
I think the icy wind possibly paralyzed the crazier bits of our brains, I know I was nearly silent most of Saturday to conserve body heat. Really had a great time despite the weather though, everyone seemed to be in good moods and made the best of the 40 degree days and 20 mph winds off Lake Michigan.
ya but wasn't there only 75 cars......or 2.7 each....sure its better than CA...but not by much
I was dissapointed Murilee....not all the curds got eaten out of the cooler!
I agree. Although the last 30 minutes were pretty nuts.
Wait just a damn minute!
There were cheese curds at the track and nobody brought us any?! I'm shocked - SHOCKED!
Wait just a damn minute!
There were cheese curds at the track and nobody brought us any?! I'm shocked - SHOCKED!
Sorry! If you do Joliet I'll make sure to bring some for ya.
I saw the cheese curds. I heard a poutine crack and almost went out for fries.
I think the no-so-crowded track worked in the drivers' favor as there seemed to be way fewer collisions than typical.
I will be in Joliet barring any extinuating circumstances and will hold you to it!
The only place to get curds in FL is at an A&W restaurant...
I really thought it was the many many number of corners that threatened to really screw up your crap can if you suddenly decided your balls were bigger than peas going into them. the downhill run after T3 suddenly gets a HELL of a lot scarier when your transmission decides to kick down and go balls-out right after the kink!
I really thought it was the many many number of corners that threatened to really screw up your crap can if you suddenly decided your balls were bigger than peas going into them. the downhill run after T3 suddenly gets a HELL of a lot scarier when your transmission decides to kick down and go balls-out right after the kink!
See I thought the risk of going off here was far lower than at Nelsons... at Nelsons there was the feeling that you were taking turns a little faster and that the penalty for going off was tires and/or tress being picked out of the front end and cabin 
The issue with Nelsons (not sure about gingerman) is that there are sections that can potentially send your car airborne. Most of the runoffs are pretty rough.
There is only one turn at GingerMan that is remotely dangerous - 11. The rest of it is great - plenty of run-off room, lots of sand and grass, all good. It is a well-designed track.
Just to set the record a bit straighter, we only recorded 139 black flags. And three teams accounted for 17% of that total.
:whistle:
Nothing to see here......
we had 6 flags i think.....
4 on Sat and 2 on Sun...
I would have to say that having us go fishing in the pond was a good one....
Though we had a few BFs, I would say that was not too bad coming from a team of 2 circle-trackers, 2 dirt bikers and 2 with absolutely NO TRACK Experience.... 1 of the dirt-bikers also has experience racing busses on the oval...haha..
We finished 14th and would have easily been top 10 without the penalties.
overall, we were very happy with the outcome as well as the clean driving by most everyone.
I think we will be back to either GMan or Joliet (maybe both).
Craig
(AKA Right-turn challenged)
The issue with Nelsons (not sure about gingerman) is that there are sections that can potentially send your car airborne. Most of the runoffs are pretty rough.
Especially the section on the main straight right before the bridge, and contact is made at a high ROS into the tires. You of course need to be driving a really heavy pink Cadillac and not paying attention to the line-up of cars which are getting bigger in your front-view.
As for flags at Gingerman, I received a BF for waiving BY cars under the yellow (as opposed to passing under yellow). As it was my 2nd lap out with the Thunderbird, I got a slap on the wrist and sent on my way.
rpone605 wrote:The issue with Nelsons (not sure about gingerman) is that there are sections that can potentially send your car airborne. Most of the runoffs are pretty rough.
Especially the section on the main straight right before the bridge, and contact is made at a high ROS into the tires. You of course need to be driving a really heavy pink Cadillac and not paying attention to the line-up of cars which are getting bigger in your front-view.
As for flags at Gingerman, I received a BF for waiving BY cars under the yellow (as opposed to passing under yellow). As it was my 2nd lap out with the Thunderbird, I got a slap on the wrist and sent on my way.
I think I was out when you were waving people by...I thought for sure I was about to get a flag for that.
There seemed to be a lot of waving people by - in trying to save the tbird for the other 2 members of the team, Speedycop actually came across the radio and told me to speed up...
In regards to the penalty, as I tried to explain it to Jay and the judges, there was a difference in my hand-gestures with a clear "left hand wave out the side to pass" and a "hey you coming onto my bumper fast, right hand slow-down" movement. Then again, I had wrist restraints, so I could have just be trying to get comfortable and those gestures could have been misinterpreted. Either way - glad nobody was fooled at my ill-attempt to misguide:)
we had 6 flags i think.....
4 on Sat and 2 on Sun...
I would have to say that having us go fishing in the pond was a good one....
Though we had a few BFs, I would say that was not too bad coming from a team of 2 circle-trackers, 2 dirt bikers and 2 with absolutely NO TRACK Experience.... 1 of the dirt-bikers also has experience racing busses on the oval...haha..
We finished 14th and would have easily been top 10 without the penalties.
overall, we were very happy with the outcome as well as the clean driving by most everyone.I think we will be back to either GMan or Joliet (maybe both).
Craig
(AKA Right-turn challenged)
I'm beginning to think our transponder was jacked. We had 4 drivers, only pitted for gas/brake change and had one flag. We were among the fastest cars and banged out fast laps one after the other, yet we ended up 22nd (were 9th on Sat)... I can't figure this out!
shrttrackr wrote:we had 6 flags i think.....
4 on Sat and 2 on Sun...
I would have to say that having us go fishing in the pond was a good one....
Though we had a few BFs, I would say that was not too bad coming from a team of 2 circle-trackers, 2 dirt bikers and 2 with absolutely NO TRACK Experience.... 1 of the dirt-bikers also has experience racing busses on the oval...haha..
We finished 14th and would have easily been top 10 without the penalties.
overall, we were very happy with the outcome as well as the clean driving by most everyone.I think we will be back to either GMan or Joliet (maybe both).
Craig
(AKA Right-turn challenged)I'm beginning to think our transponder was jacked. We had 4 drivers, only pitted for gas/brake change and had one flag. We were among the fastest cars and banged out fast laps one after the other, yet we ended up 22nd (were 9th on Sat)... I can't figure this out!
I wonder about the reliability of those transponders. Maybe having someone on the team score the laps would be good insurance just in case.
The transponders are pretty reliable. How many times did you pit and when?
Pitting is a killer, especially under green. Our car was a POS slow dog at Toledo '08 and we finished sixth despite a long stop when we got one black flag and then a major 90 min. failure when our engine & trans. mounts all broke and sent the engine forward, cutting the cooling system. Patched up the engine mounts and proceeeded to diddle with teh cooling system three times before finally purging air and stopping the overheating. Nonetheless, we STILL finished sixth. And there were some fast cars there.
I wonder about the reliability of those transponders. Maybe having someone on the team score the laps would be good insurance just in case.
You'll still get your laps if your transponder doesn't work. If a car passes the transponder loop without its signal getting picked up, an alarm goes off and the Timing & Scoring crew counts its laps by hand. That's how they know when they need to black-flag a car with a bad transponder signal.
That, and if you really think it's messed up, just look at your mylaps results.
Yeah, we analyzed our numbers and the transponder was fine.... it was those stinking caliper failures. That and this race was much faster than the others. Had this been my last CMP race, we would have been much better in the standings.... The competition just keeps ramping up at this stuff, and every little outage beats you down quite a bit.
The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Our Crappy Race → Detroit Irony drivers less terrible than most!