Fish wrote:yamato wrote:You have to drive the Z hard to do match lap times of a 302 'stang that is being run gently,.....
What were some of the lap times for the stangs? I did a 2:05.335 in our Z driving it at about 80% of its "good" running capacity.
I know the stangs are fast as hell on the straights because I was wide open down the back straight and the black stang came flying by me like I was standing still!!
I was in the Property Devaluation pink stang and really taking it pretty easy. We should have bled the brakes after the first day, becuase any time you really tried to use them the rears would lock.
My best was a 2:04.955, but when I think about how little that I pushed the car in the turns (not to mention that the box had no fifth in it,... so I would top out on the back straight at about 110 about 100 yards before the flag stand and then just have to go neutral throttle the rest of the way), I think that there was easily a couple of more seconds in the car,..... hell, if the brakes were working right it might have been a lot faster!
The problem that you will begin to encounter is that even though you can do a good lap time in something that does not have the big V8 straight speed, you will always be doomed by the traffic. There were a couple of cars that got by me during my 4 or so hours in the car, but I always repassed them. They get held up by some traffic and then I walk by on the straight.
I started to feel bad, because I could not get the car to slow down the way I wanted, nor could I get it to go through the turns as fast as I would have liked. I had some great battles with some cars, everyone was very courteous (except the guy that moved over on me on the front straight on the way to the carousel and put me into a 100mph grassy spin). I remember battling with the dragon Z,.... he would eat me up through the turns, but just could not get around. I finally made a mistake by not braking enough through the diamond's edge complex, and slid wide. He got underneath me, but as we entered the straight to the carousel, I just had too much power. We looked over at eachother as I went by, and I gave him the big "thumbs up" to say "great racing", but still; I felt a little bad that he really had no chance to stay in front of me. We were both busting our asses in our own way behind the wheel, but heavy traffic plus long straights is going to equal a big advantage for the top speed gurus.
oh, BTW - big thanks to the cornerworkers and whoever decides on black flags, both of the 2009 Houston races have been great in that if they see you get forced off, or you go off to avoid someone else who is out of control and about to hit you, they would let you go. Thus, a 100mph grass cutting experiment went w/o consequence on my end other than a few dropped spots.