With a dramatically different weather forecast for this race compared to the last, it represented my first chance to really push myself and the car, and generally to see “what’s what.” As well, Pacific is a more technical track than PIR and thus harder to get right, so this week-end was also going to highlight my current deficiencies with the car; i.e., how well the times from my shakedown day and the “race mode” times I extrapolated from there match up to reality.
Friday
In the past, I’d drive down to Pacific late Friday afternoon, set things up, get tech’d and registered, and then drive home. Of course, the Friday afternoon traffic means the 52-minute drive is 90+ minutes, but that’s as expected and nothing new. It’d been a while since I’d had both an annual tech on the car and my gear, so I could, as Eric pointed out, simply get to the track Saturday morning. We were first group out, though, so that would mean getting there pretty early and, since you can’t technically start a race engine until just before the first group needed to go to pregrid, that made things a little awkward. Not to mention that most of the entrants for the week-end seemed to have signed up for the Friday Test & Tune (what, again?), which potentially meant that paddock space would once again be at a premium. (See what happens when you have too much time to think? Ugh.)
In the end, I decided that I’d just drive down once traffic had cleared up, hopefully find a decent spot both for myself and for Eric (he was leaning toward coming down in the morning), set things up, and then plan for registration in the morning. Of course, Pacific’s paddock shape and size meant there was LOADS of unexpected space (most of my muscle memory of setting up in race paddocks is pre-COVID) and so, as in Portland, I was able to take my time getting settled in.
Saturday
My morning at home went more quickly and smoothly than I thought, so I ended up arriving at the track quite a bit earlier than I’d intended, which was already probably quite a bit earlier than necessary. By 8:10 for a 9 am engine start, I was done with the day’s preparations, including the five minutes it took to go through registration. May all things this week-end be so painless!
Qualifying
Other than the two 20-minute sessions I’d done at the shakedown, this was my first session in this car with dry tires on a completely dry circuit and, with 12 other cars in the class plus several very fast ITE and GT1/GT2 cars, relative lap times similar to those in Portland would put me right at the back of the whole group. On the other hand, my times from the shakedown, extrapolated out to pushing harder and for an entire lap, could see me right in the thick of the SE46 times.
My first hot lap was only a 1’39.451″ which is a brutally slow time no matter how you look at it, but I was purposely taking it easy and wondering what was up with some odd engine stumbles I was getting in every gear. The stumbles went away on the next lap, but then I came across yellow flags on the back side of the course for Mike McAleenan’s SLC (basically an LMP3 prototype) having locked up and spun heading toward Turn 5A. He’d clearly hit and displaced some tire bundles, so it wasn’t a surprise that a “black flag all” was issued. Several cars including a number of SE46s exited to the paddock, but maybe half of us went to the hot pits to wait for a green flag or, the longer we sat there, a signal the session was ended and to head back to the paddock. I really wasn’t interested in sitting in the sun for as long as we did to end the session there (and with such a terrible time!), but we eventually got going again after the time our session should’ve ended.
With no idea how many laps we’d be granted, considering that every minute pushed the whole day’s schedule further behind and heading toward our 4 pm hard stop, that first lap out of the hot pits looked a little like the start of a race with everyone jockeying for clear track to set a decent time. I managed to get four more “good” laps, in the sense that I wasn’t balked by traffic or faster cars coming from behind, but they were all in the 1’37” range, which is simply not good enough. My extrapolations indicated that I needed to be somewhere around 1’35” to 1’35.5″ if I wanted to be able to hold my head up, but even times in the 1’34.xx” range would only put me in the fat part of the class’ lap-time bell curve. For context, compare my best of 1’37.021″ with the class polesitter’s 1’31.6xx”!! (Not to mention, my best time at the shakedown was only two-tenths slower and I never felt like I was really pushing.)
So not literally dead last in the field, but only because I’m pretty sure the two who qualified behind me had pulled off after the black flag. Even so, my poor qualifying time would represent the first of three “suboptimal results” on Saturday…
Race
At the day’s drivers meeting, I was surprised to find out that the SpecE46 drivers “had asked for” and been granted permission for a split start in our group. That was news to me and a couple other drivers I talked to, but okay, I guess.
Except:
- Despite my group being the first race after the one-hour lunch break, a couple of the faster SE46s managed to be late to pregrid, which means they got put to the back of the pack.
- Typically, when we have a split start, the green flag is waved once for the leading group, pulled, and then waved again for the group getting the split.
- For whatever reason, and I’m pretty sure none of the cars in front of me did this, but once the green was waved for the front group, the cars at the back just came storming through the STILL SIDE-BY-SIDE rows of cars in front of them, and at full-on race speeds compared to the 60-ish MPH we were (still) doing for the pace lap. Stupid.
Once the initial chaos sorted itself out and the rest of us concluded “okay, so we’re racing now,” I had managed to move up six spots overall to 16th. I quickly fell back to 17th overall before a full-course caution regrouped the field, but not before I’d taken advantage of SE46-classed Greg Holz pointing several people by as we exited Turn 2. I bring this up because I made sure to make the pass before we passed the double yellow flags at the 3A flag station, only to then watch a novice running in a GT2 car blow by Greg, me, and a few other cars as we went through turns 3A, 3B, and 4. Very, very oddly, this sequence would come up later and constitute my second “suboptimal result” of the day. The full-course caution only lasted a couple laps and after the green I was able to hold up three other SE46s for a few laps until two of them got back past me. Not that I made it very difficult for them… nor, realistically, could I. 😀
Toward the end of the race, and after I’d cooked my tires (especially the rears) and my driving abilty had departed for somewhere less stressful, the final car would eventually pass me. I finished 12th of 13 SE46s and 18th of 23 cars overall with a fast lap virtually identical to my qualifying time. Really not great, especially in context of both my finishing progress in Portland and my expectations for this track, but I had still managed to meet my minimum bar of not finishing last in class and without any major mistakes… or had I?
You see, later that afternoon, while at home mowing the lawn (chores wait for no one, not even “hotshoe racers”), I’d thought to check the results for some of the other races and noticed that I was listed as finishing my race two laps down. Odd, as I was fairly certain I’d only been lapped once, but no matter. Back to work. I didn’t think I was still thinking about it, but a few minutes later I stopped to look again and saw that I was also listed as finishing 19th overall. I had checked RaceHero right after the race and I KNOW I finished 18th overall, so what was going on?!
Well: remember back when I passed Greg exiting Turn 2 but before the waving yellow flags at Turn 3A? And me watching the novice GT2 driver blow by several cars under yellow? In fact, if you’d been in the car with me, you would’ve heard me remarking out loud how he was making multiple passes-under-yellow and how that was probably going to bite him after the race. (He’d end up getting marked down for so many violations he would actually get disqualified.) Ironically, and I have NO IDEA how this could’ve happened, but I apparently also passed someone as we went by the Turn 4 flag station (middle of the back “straight” at Pacific) which, if you’ve been paying attention, is AFTER I became aware of the full-course caution as we approached Turn 3A. Uh, wut?! Hell, I don’t even remember passing anyone, but I know I had checked up and wasn’t racing anyone, so …? The phrase “I’m at a loss to explain” was invented for situations like this, I’m sure. Literally the only penalty I’ve had in 20+ years of racing and I can’t even remember what happened, much less explain the why.
Why is my memory so important here? Aside from the obvious, it’s because I didn’t have my camera footage to fall back on as, in the third of three “suboptimal results” on the day, someone with a striking resemblance to me neglected to return the memory card to the camera after qualifying. 🙁
Sunday
Saturday evening I’d watched a few videos from last year of some guys who are faster that me to check out their lines through a few corners. I was able to confirm a couple things I’d suspected when thinking back to earlier in the day, including a reminder that the line I was taking into Turn 8 was the old race line, from before that part of the track had been repaved, and no longer necessary. If nothing else, I had some concrete things to work on for qualifying and the race that should help with my lap times.
In the morning, I was also able to talk with the Steward (who had watched video from another car to confirm) and learned the full story of my pass under yellow. I also got my handy ticket for the $100 fine that comes with my loss-of-lap penalty. Ugh.
Qualifying
With some new plans for the session, on the out-lap I let by another SE46 I knew was going to be faster than me so I could just settle down and engage my plans. Got an okay first lap, if slow, but that’s okay because I was focusing on new lines in a couple corners and some different brake points, so overall time was not (yet) a consideration. Pushing a little more in the second hot lap, only to find that I’m already getting caught by the GT cars that were at the front of the group leaving pregrid and in an inconvenient place. Okay, so that lap’s ruined, but I’ve got time. (With a bit more flexibility in the day’s schedule, we have an additional five minutes to qualify than on Saturday.)
This happened a few more times, but eventually all the GT cars were past… but then I started getting caught by a few SE46s from the pointy end of the grid. Still okay, as I can stay close enough to eyeball their brake points and corner entries, but I find myself unable to maintain their speed through Turns 2 and 8 before the back starts coming around, and I’m understeering like mad through the 3B hairpin. All things being even roughly equal, I should be able to maintain pretty much the same speed through the middle of those corners (even if I comparatively overslow on corner entry) as even the faster GT cars, so that’s something to think about after the session.
Which comes shortly after, as I start getting an engine stumble leading onto the front straight. I’d been carrying a lot of fuel for the sessions on Saturday, so I reduced the amount for what I’d planned as a 15-minute session, but I noticed my fuel alarm (~1.5 gallons) come on a few corners later and concluded that my terrible lap times weren’t likely to get any better with occasional engine cut-outs.
I qualified last in class and last-but-one overall with a time that was TWO SECONDS slower than the day before, so that’s not great. On the other hand, qualifying at the back with a terrible time puts me in the same position as qualifying at the back with a not-quite-good-enough time, so it’s a wash? Maybe?
I bypassed the scales when I returned to the paddock because only the top three in class are required to be weighed, but then I circled back to do what I forgot to in Portland: get weighed with super-low fuel. The result was 2851 pounds, so that’s pretty much perfect. Just gotta make sure the race is over before my fuel alarm comes on or I’m not going to make weight! 😀
Race
My frustration in those corners during qualifying got me to thinking out loud that my well-used tires could be what were causing most of my issues, so Eric convinced me to swap to the new tires I’ve been carting around since I bought them last fall. Also, just to spice up my day a little, one of the plastic pieces that make up the distinctive BMW kidney grille broke a couple of its mounting tabs. After much fiddling about, and irritation once it was clear I wasn’t going to be able to fix it, I just zip-tied it to the front of the hood so that when it inevitably fell out, at least I wouldn’t lose it on track.
Arriving at pregrid and expecting to be at the very back of the group (another split start meant that the non-SE46 that had qualified behind me would start at the back of the front group), I was surprised to find Stefan Tomalik and his ST car arrive late to pregrid and, therefore, get sent to the back of the group to start behind me (actually next to me in the pace formation). I’d’ve thought they’d send him to the back of the non-split group, but they didn’t, and this would create a small issue for me at the start.
With Stefan to my left as we took the green flag, he had the advantage going into the left-hand Turn 2 and we stayed mostly side-by-side going downhill to the first hairpin at 3A and then through the second at 3B. Once we got to the back straight, his power-to-weight advantage (his car looks like an E46 325, but underneath it’s all E46 M3; even stock, his engine has more than 100 more horsepower at about the same weight) let him finally get away from me, but by then the remainder of the SE46 field had gapped me. Catching them was shaping up to be a bit of a challenge until Wes Griffith got loose in Turn 8. Mike Ramberg was right on his bumper and was forced to check up dramatically, leaving a huge gap for Stefan and me to shoot through on the inside. Okay! So I was way far back from the rest of the class, but I now had a pretty significant gap to the two guys behind me. It might make for a lonely race, but I was going to be free to just do my own thing and see about lowering my lap times with my new tires.
I glanced back a few times to see how close Ramberg was, but I didn’t see anything to be concerned about over the next lap. At the start of just the second lap, though, the overall-leading GT car caught up to me and compromised my entry and the mid-corner of Turn 2; a quick check on Ramberg showed he’d made up a good chunk of the gap. Later that same lap, two more GTs caught me going up the hill through Turn 6 and then forced me a little wide to pass on the inside of Turn 8. I could’ve probably been more aggressive about regaining my line and momentum but didn’t, and Ramberg cleverly tucked himself onto the back of the second car and forced his way through. With Griffith pretty far behind and Ramberg only about four car-lengths in front (soon to be probably three times that), it was time to put my head down and go get “my” spot back!
I chased after him for another nine or ten laps, getting close to him on a few occasions but frequently losing out as GT cars would come through to lap us. That worked both ways, though, and I would eventually get within a few car-lengths of him when he got balked by a couple cars going throught Turns 8 and 9. Being that much closer than I’d been, I was able to tell that he was getting through Turn 8 a little better than me, growing the gap by the time we got to the end of the straight in Turn 2 (he was able to build more top speed because of the better exit from 8). Despite that, and whether this was due to running those new tires or just a new-found confidence in managing the car, I was able to close up dramatically each time we went through Turn 2 and be tight to his bumper going downhill to the 3A/3B hairpins.
A couple laps of that and Ramberg not closing the door in pursuit of a better corner exit, I committed to diving to the inside of 3B for the pass on lap 14. Now that I was the one being hunted, I knew I wasn’t likely to draw away from him, and sure enough he was filling my mirrors for the next couple laps until, you guessed it, the overall-leading GT car passed us going into Turn 1 (it’s flat out in top gear, so not much of a corner) and Mike was able to get to my left, putting him on the inside for Turn 2. Back to being the hunter!
After another couple laps of following, but able to do it more closely than I had before and knowing we were close to the end of the race, I made the snap decision (you can see it in the video) to make an almost-too-late dive-bomb to the inside of 3B. Unlike the first time, I hadn’t planned for it, so my turn entry was off to the point that I had to go down an extra gear to account for basically “parking it” at the apex. I carried too much speed into Turn 8 later in the lap, giving him another opportunity to outrun me through Turn 1 and back to the inside of Turn 2. Why I didn’t block off that line I don’t know, but he was once again in front of me.
He sort of “stalled out” as we exited Turn 2 after the pass, which let me stay right with him through the back side of the course and then get a good run on him exiting Turn 8 (also a sweeping left-hander like 2). We ran side-by-side from Turn 9 all the way down (past the “last lap” sign at start/finish) to Turn 2, where I took a wider entry to the corner and then crossed underneath him on exit and back into the lead. Again, he lost all kinds of momentum exiting the corner.
He’d find me after the race and explain that he’d started experiencing fuel starvation issues near the end of the race, which definitely fits the behavior I was seeing.
A combination of what I suspect were fresher tires (I noticed for several laps I seemed to be getting through 5B and up the hill through 6 much better than he could) and a couple more GT cars lapping us kept him behind for the rest of that final lap. Okay, so not a class win and for what was almost last place, but still, exactly the kind of experience I was hoping for when I committed to SE46!