Barber Motorsports Park - July 10

[formulasuper]

I'm working as fast as I can, trying to make it a race car again by Friday. Anyone know if bare aluminum bodywork is ok, or does it have to be painted?

[Purple Frog]

Call Hyler Craft at 904-771-4208

He can probably give you an interpretation of the GCR on that point.

Also you could email Toni Creighton (look her up on the SEDIV website). She is the driver rep for the SEDIV. She could put you in touch with someone that could give you a ruling.

[rickjohnson356]

many formula cars have bare aluminum panels on the chassis, with fiberglass as the removeable pieces. Look at any Crossle 32, 35, 40 ,45 etc. For non-stressed panels, the rivets must be no less than 6 inches apart. I believe that the bottom panel (floorboard) on most formula cars is allowed to be a stressed member (rivets closer than 6") and/or bonded.

[Mark H]

So Rick you are saying that if I paint my side panles I am outside the rules?
Scott you can keep them with the ally finish just no primer - thats the way I read it?

[rickjohnson356]

No, the ones on most any Crossle are bare aluminum. Also, I had a FV, back in the day, where most of the body side panels were bare aluminum too, so the metal is a valid material for panels.

you can paint them if you want, just don't leave it in primer only. (or call the primer 'flat silver' for a color, or 'flat maroon'...)

I would suggest not painting because of the maintenance issue- you will have to paint them fairly often to get rid of scratches & flaking.

I thought the question was whether or not bare al was ok. it is.

sorry if i confused the issue.

[Purple Frog]

This from Mike Hearn (Treasurer of AL Region) :

"According to the website front page race announcement, track access will be thursday 7pm to 9pm and during regular bus hours friday until 9pm. There will be a $10/person overcrew charge for the weekend so use that for "visitors". The paddock chief listed in the supps is Fletcher Williams(ATL Region) and the assnt is John Redd (ALSCCA). Call John at home 205/981-0268 about your camper stagging. There are around 280 driver entries so I doubt that there will be room for campers next to racecars but see what John has
to say. Registrar contact would be Chuck Baader 205/655-4932 at home if you want to confirm the rules for the "cattle stampede" checkin."

IMHO the good news (?) is that Fletcher is in charge of the paddock. I say we get Tom Spreacher to perform some "Fletcher Magic Vodoo" and keep us all organized. Fletcher is a racer, so he thinks like us racers, and understands our issues...

I think the real good news is that it sounds like they will let us in on Friday during the day and not hold all of us at the gate until the end of the test day.

I talked to Rosella this morning. She's racing, and says Rob is planning on being there also. Chuck is staying in Columbia.

[Tom Sprecher]

I don’t practice santeria
I ain’t got no crystal ball.
I had a million dollars but i’d,
I’d spend it all.

- from Santeria by Sublime

Although I do use it as need dictates I do not believe voodoo is required in this case. What is normally required is someone get at the track a couple or three hours before it opens to lay out the grid and help park rigs. I can not get there until about 7. Do we have any volunteers? Otherwise, let me see what I can do.

Oh yeah, and if you stop by our pit and see what looks like a model of your car with pins stuck in it, just ignore it, it's nothing. [img]graemlins/skull.gif[/img]

[Mark H]

Locked & Loaded hope the 20 things we changed don't fall off? [img]redface.gif[/img]
Hittin the road now so we will see yall where the rubber hits the road or back here on Mon! All in one piece and with no grass in the side pods.
Good Luck Everyone

[Mark C. Ritter]

Ya'll have fun thi weekend and stay safe. Bit too much work for the time alloted, so I won't be there. Gonna take the 2 wheel Beemer up to Cherahola Skyway and escape the heat for a few hours. See you at Road Atlanta.

[Purple Frog]

The weather seemed like the big news event... It was miserably hot.

The facility is beyond belief. One must see it to really take in all it's splendor. And with 340+ entries the paved paddock had room for many more. This track should not have been skipped for choice for the Runoffs. And, oh by the way it's also a very fun track to drive.

Saturday:
FC 1. O'Connell 2. Poma 3. Rosella 4. Eakin
CFC 1. Hatheway 2. Klutsenbaker

Sunday
FC 1. Poma 2. O'Connell 3. Rosella 4. Eakin 5. Woodruff
CFC 1. Hatheway 2. Klutsenbaker

More story later... after I cool off.

[size="1"][ July 12, 2004, 03:44 PM: Message edited by: Purple Frog ][/size]

[carnut169]

Great weekend indeed... and super hot.
Now it was a bit hotter and more fun for some:


Really, Rob was very very fast this weekend. Had we raced 15 laps on Saturday he might have caught me. Now, had the FSCCA car not spun directly in front of me on Sunday, I might have also caught him!

PF did some fancy driving (I'm sure he will give you the details) since his throttle was stuck wide open he would hit the kill switch going into a turn then re-start after the apex... how he did it I don't know.
Here are a few shots of PF with his new ride. His crew seems to be getting younger!


Here is Andy helping him strap in.

Mark put the SuperTech Reynard up on the platform to see how his home built platform (of sorts) was working out and the numbers came out quite good!


We had no problems with the car all weekend... I did forget to bring my card to registration then after sitting in the car for over an hour to be the first on the track for qualifying we (well, the marshall) noticed that we had no tech stickers on the car and we ended up hitting the track dead last!


Barber is a place you should experience. Simply amazing...

[size="1"][ July 12, 2004, 06:53 PM: Message edited by: carnut169 ][/size]

[Purple Frog]

That is not a pile of popcorn laying in the paddock behind my front wheel. That is the crushed limerock ballast I was carrying in the right sidepod. There was even more in the left sidepod. I have to do these things to make sure those young whipper-snappers can stay ahead.

My main crew guy was Joey Hatheway. JC and I had a long conversation on the trip back about how neat a guy master Joey is. That kid is sooo cool. Mark should be very proud. Joey is not only well mannered, but also extremely intellegent with a sharp memory. He is such a joy to have around the paddock. I rolled in from plowing the lower forty Sunday morning and Joey immediately started carefully cleaning out rocks and neatly scoping them into a Corona box. I didn't ask him, and he did it willingly. And not like the average kid who would have thrown them all about, or got distracted and wandered off. He is absorbing all this open wheel stuff. Wisdom beyond his age. I think before long Mark will be giving up his seat to the next generation.

Speaking of young whipper-snappers... Carnut169's 35th birthday was Sunday. Rob wasn't about to give him any free gifts. [img]smile.gif[/img] But... holy moly you should have seen the bevy of umbrella girls that O'Connell Motorsports had all dressed up in matching halter-tops for Sunday's race! Did I mention how hot it was?

This is what GT1Vette had to say about Barber in his press release this morning... (remember GT1Vette drives a rather large high powered vehicle, his viewpoint is bias in that direction. )

"My first reaction is that I'm glad I ran Barber but I have no desire to ever go back and race there again. The facility is magnificent beyond description - manicured lawns and landscaping, automatic flush toilets in the bathrooms (and the ones in the tower are air conditioned according to Harriett and Annette), great spectator areas, plenty of track personnel with complimentary "coasters" to keep one from inadvertently placing an exposed awning support post on the paddock asphalt, excellent concession stands with good food, and the list goes on. Joe Hooker heard they use 1 million gallons of water a week (or is it a month?) to keep everything so green, to which Pete replied, "Just like a golf course". I didn't make it over to the museum, but Bob Monette said THAT is the place to watch a race from - A/C, best view of all the important turns. The track is George Barber's personal playpen and it's very, VERY nice! "
"All that said, racing there simply wasn't a lot of fun, at least in a big car. As Mike Hearn said, we're about 2100# too heavy and have two too many wheels. It was designed first and foremost as a motorcycle track and Mr. Barber "allows" cars to race there on occasion."

Now personally from my perspective, if they held 6 events a year there, Mrs. Frog and I would probably just do those six events. The facilities are great, and the track is a nice scale for small bore formula cars.

In the picture of Andy (Bre86) strapping me in is a view of the spider in the infield (above Andy's back.) It's a steel sculpture about 100' in diameter. One of dozens of sculptures around the park. (e.g. dragon flys with 16' leaded glass wings, giant ants, bronze indians peeking around trees up in the woods off the back straight, etc. etc.)

I was hoping it would be a low effort weekend so I'd have some time to visit with other F2000.com members. I only briefly got to see Charles Warner and his fat cat Lola CSR, and also only briefly got to speak with Klutsenbaker with his new to him Reynard. It was so hot there wasn't the usuall SEDIV paddock party atmosphere.

[size="1"][ July 12, 2004, 03:55 PM: Message edited by: Purple Frog ][/size]

[RussMcB]

Originally posted by Purple Frog:
My main crew guy was Joey Hatheway.

We were wondering why joey was so tuckered out Saturday evening.

[RussMcB]

[RussMcB]

My impressions:

It's a great place and a fun track, but there sure were a lot of hassles and heat. The AL Region did a great good job considering everything. I really appreciate all of the workers and everything they did to prepare and run the event. Let's hope they get more help for registration windows next time, though. That was a nightmare.

The track management, however, doesn't seem to care a flip about SCCA club racers. I guess that's understandable if you've got pro teams, series and manufacturers knocking down your door to use your facilities. Examples of less than racer friendly actions: For the test day you had to bring your race car to be teched. You could not, during the entire 3.5 days we were there, walk the track. No pit crew members could be on pit road during the test day (Oh, you want to take your tire temperatures? Too bad.). They charged $5 to let you drive around the track at lunch time on the last day.

I really enjoyed the racing part. It took a while for everyone to get comfortable on the track, but by Sunday it was a fun, fast and flowing experience.

[RussMcB]

My last post on this topic, I promise. At least for a while.

See http://www.mylaps.com/for some good stuff. I always enjoy looking at people's progress (and regress?) in the lap charts.

[Mark H]

HOT is the word!!
With the sun, the fast cars and the chix in 'Bama I,m still woosey, not to mention the pace the FM pro SW tour guys put up.
BUT our local guys in FC Rob P. and Sean O. got down with the best of em'!
Mark my words you will see one or both of these guys at the run-offs sooner then later, with the will to win and a level playing field at Topeka coming soon speed won't be a problem.
P-Frog had a very tough time this weekend getting run off in race 1 and using the power switch to stop the car in race 2 with a stuck foot feed (man that guy is nuts)! [img]graemlins/skull.gif[/img]
All I can do is thank my guys, Russ and many others for helping me out all weekend in almost stupid conditions!
Russ McB had the overall in race 1 until he had a LR hime give way after being popped by one of the pro FM's going for the win in T1 on lap 1?

There were no less than 6 FM' and FSCCA cars littering the sand traps in each race.
Hmm not bashing anyone but it looked like a NAZCAR race but we were racin for a $10 chunk of wood not 40k?
This was a put up or shut up weekend ,with the 100 deg. temps. and all the racers put up!!

See Yall at RA in 2 weeks for more blisterin FUN.

Oh and Joey said I don't pay him enough so he is up for hire, he needs 2! turkey subs and a go-cart ride for next season - all I will go is one sub and a 3 race deal?

[Charles Warner]

Originally posted by Mark H:
There were no less than 6 FM' and FSCCA cars littering the sand traps in each race.
Hmm not bashing anyone but it looked like a NAZCAR race but we were racin for a $10 chunk of wood not 40k?
[/QB]

While I too was taken aback by some of the antics displayed, we should realize they (Mazdas) were actually racing for money. This weekend counted towards their pro series standings and means reasonably serious money and contingiencies to the winners. (Even so, it doesn'y justify some of the things I saw - merely explains them.) I am not sure how I feel about the combination of club racers and pro groups just to kep the entry numbers up.