And by "shaker rig", I mean "Reno-Fernley Raceway". That place is bumpy. After many, many years away from the FA fray, I finally ventured out timidly to the track and attempted to shake the cobwebs out - having been since the '03 Runoffs that I've driven this car as an FA (and only once with bodywork as a CSR), there were lots and lots of cobwebs. Needless to say, no new track records were set, at least by me.
Anyway, we got two races out of the way, and two finishes along with it. The first race had a bit of drama involved - qualified 7th with an unknown setup, having to tiptoe my way through the rain in my debut session with the car bottoming everywhere and on springs more suited to a locomotive - we slapped a more appropriate setup on the car for the race. Got an outstanding start to slingshot into 4th by the first corner, and battled a bit with Vince Gaddini in his FA / Pro Formula Mazda before settling on the gearbox of a Stohr WF-1 DSR. Just after crossing the start / finish line of my 10th (and race-finish-criteria-meeting-) lap, the left front pushrod adjuster decided it'd had enough, and all of a sudden there I was weaving my way through the esses on three wheels. Race, and day, finished. Got some video of the race for your viewing pleasure:
Disclaimer for dialup users: 70mb file
http://www.dauntlessracing.com/video...Race-Hires.wmv
Race two had a better ending, but was just as dramatic in its own way - got my head screwed on a bit straighter and qualified off pole, still ~3ish seconds off the track record pace set by Dan Selznik last year. Still not getting through the esses flat, not carrying enough speed through the corner coming off the back straight, or onto the front straight... in short, still too many cobwebs. I was 1.2 seconds slower than the pole time, and didn't expect to sniff much in the way of a win. So about this time, we decided it might be appropriate to put the car up on the scales to see where we were - not far off, but we made a few changes anyway just to pass the time. Although I made kind of a noob mistake in that I did not disconnect the bars before adjusting the ride heights & corner weights - oopsie!
What I ended up doing was making the car much worse for the race, having the bars very oddly preloaded - the car was pulling in one direction down the straights, would dart all around under braking and was extremely uncooperative in slow lefthand corners, of which there are 3 critical ones leading onto (and out of) long straights at Reno-Fernley. I had to pull a Mansell to get the car to rotate even a little bit - BANG BANG BANG BANG on the throttle to load / unload the front and get it to grip ever so slightly and not just plow into oblivion and tumbleweeds.
Anyway, back to the race itself - got another blistering start, and pulled a carlength on the polesitter (Tim Micklos in his Stohr WF-1 CSR) to just nip him into T1, then held him at bay for 12 / 15 laps or so before he snuck by me in one of those aforementioned lefthanders. I really, really got killed in those corners, but had enough straightaway speed to keep Tim behind me for most of the race - not more than a few carlengths at most, and most of the time with me seeing a whole lot of Stohr WF-1 filling up my mirrors. Not being one to give up so easily, I decided to see if I could stick around and put up a bit of a fight. I studied Tim's lines, and adopted some techniques that allowed me to inch back up, and with two laps to go, I really was able to stick through one of those critical lefthanders long enough to get a good run down the back straight, and so I snuck by him to retake the lead for good. Despite the car being worse, I picked up a bit more time, and ended the day 1.8 seconds off the lap record pace - not terrifically fast, but it'll have to serve as prep for the Sprints.
Gonna get the car stripped down for the turn-around and hustle our butts out to Elkhart Lake now... see y'all out there!
Cheers
Rennie