Marc wrote:Spinnetti wrote: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.
if you look at the top teams, they don't pit often and when they do, it's a 6-7 minute pit at most.
compared to the more average 9-10 minute pit, they are getting at least two extra laps in even if they pit as often.
the race had 14:45 of hot track time. if you're running a 4 cylinder car you're using about 5 gallons of fuel per hour. that means you should only need to pit once in the first day and once in the 2nd day. giving you 14hours and 30minutes of racing.
the winners had 416laps, if you had the above pit strategy you could have been turning an average lap time of 2:05.48 and matched that number of laps.
the only team that wasn't able to get a best lap time that low was team police brutality. probably because they simply did not have any good laps in.
if you're in it to win it, you need the following:
-24gallon fuel cell
-ability to not need to pee for about 5 hours
-only pit twice and do it under a full course yellow if possible.
-fast pit strategy
-4 cylinder lightweight fuel efficient car.
It's amazing how the 200 treadwear requirement levels the field.
personally I liked how clueless racing was able to win the race without being aggressive drivers on the track. they just kept turning laps without irritating anyone (at least not anyone on our team).
Well, while I understand, this is way over the top for Lemons... if its gonna take that, I'm going back to club racing where I already have all that, and a car I'm proud of too.
Your math is good for fuel consumption, and we were right on top of that
We were about 8min for a gas stop with a first time as a team together, so not bad, and easy to improve a bit.
We had a light 4cyl car, fuel efficient, stock tank, with about 2:20 fuel endurance. Good for safety, driver fatigue and making sure everybody gets a good chance to drive.
We also only had one penalty, and that a surprise. We ran 1:52-1:54's. Not that fast, but we banged those out lap after lap. We figure we might have got as high as 3rd without the brake problems.
Latchkey guys run really well overall too. That was my performance bogey. I think they have the twin cam and that extra 12hp sure made a difference. If not, their motor was just stronger than ours. They just had the brakes sorted and we didn't. Once we do, I think we can give them a good run 
The CRX was driven well, but has gotta have a cams or other tricks like a LSD. They weren't really much faster in the corners, but just walked away from us at will, that with 400 less cc's. Our motor is dead stock, but still strong. I road race with those, so have a pretty good idea how fast they should be....
Like I said, prior to this race we would have finished pretty darn good. Nature of racing to get out of hand I guess. We'll come back for a couple more to see how it goes. I'm trying to talk the team in running my Lexus. Should have a bit more endurance, easier to drive (definitely better handling), and its probably 2-3 sec a lap faster than the neon somewhere like Gingerman (at least it was on a test day at Putnam)...
When am I brining it over to do the cage? Can you do the "tiptronic" shift programming for me? <Grin>
"Don't mess with Lexas!" LS400. We survived another one! See website link for build details.
Maker of the "unofficial Lemons fish!" - If you ask nice, I'll likely give you one at the track.
