tomhoppe.com

I race in ITA. Improved Touring A. I also race at the “pointy” end of the field which means “winning”, so the budget ain’t quite as cheap as they say and the racing is not “as” grassroots as noobies in old pos cars. Some of the IT cars would make some Koni challenge cars look bad, and some of the drivers are MUCH MUCH better then Koni challenge drivers, but they came to the realization which this article tries to portray, that racing on TV is so cost prohibitive that is better to do it in your part of the country, with other drivers that are just as good as the guys on TV, but just don’t want to spend their entire life and all of their money doing it.

http://www.speedsportlife.com/2009/03/27/avoidable-contact-25-exploring-the-pyramid-of-speed-the-real-costs-and-stories-behind-entry-level-sedan-racing/

For IT Racing
“Let’s put that in perspective: racing an old VW Golf or Honda Civic once a month costs as much as buying a Nissan GT-R or Porsche Cayman S on a five-year loan.”

For Koni Challenge
“Think about it. At this level, it costs just as much to race a Honda Civic or Volkswagen GTI for a year as it does to own a Lamborghini Gallardo.”

And what “Racing” is
“And once you’ve won a race, the fever to do it again will never truly leave you. Once you’ve put your foot on someone else’s neck — once you’ve looked out of your window net and simply destroyed another man’s confidence on the entry to a critical corner — you will want to do it again and again until it either kills you or ruins your life.”

So I received my roll of blingtastic carbon fiber vinyl today. I had great plans and aspirations of wrapping my fenders and hood with this vinyl and avoiding any further paint work and body work on the race car. Whoa I sure failed. Apparently this carbon fiber vinyl is not like th other vinyl in that it can stretch and form itself to curves very easily. Thus it is VERY hard to place around curves like the edges and curves in the fender. It ended up looking “ok” but not nearly what I was expecting. Guess thats what happens with the $40 stuff instead of the $300. Oh well, it was worth the experiment.

So the new plan! I’m just going to have Mike at Sentry Auto Body paint the fenders red to match the rest of the car. After that, I’ll get KC from RallyDecals.com make me some sort of base design in carbon fiber vinyl. Not sure what exactly, but it won’t be too crazy. Maybe some carbon fiber flames or something like that. It will look black from far away, but really cool up close. Then go with silver stickers for the rest of the car.

I picked up my new fenders and front bumper cover this week. With those parts here, its time to fix the dents on the doors, and the rear quarter panels. Not sure how I feel about the rear panels yet, as the car has had those dents all of last year, but the door definitely needs to be fixed. I think I’m going to learn to bondo/metal work on the door and then see what happens from there. It can’t be harder then touching up holes in drywall right?

I also bought the wrap for the hood and fenders and ordered the rest of the stickers from Keith. Since we’re not going late season skiing, I decided to make the Carolina Motorsports Park SARRC race on March 27th. Should be a nice and easy start to the new season. The track has been slightly redesigned since the last time I was there, so it should be a little more fun. I also have to pick up my new lens, so I finally have some damn in-car video!

Went and picked the car up from Trever’s shop today. She’s straight, corner weighed, new uprights/bearings/balljoints, and the header/exhaust is all welded up. I’m going to tear off the fenders tomorrow, and start working with a sander, hammer, and a touch of bondo to make the quarters/doors look a bit better. I decided to spend some hours of my time instead of the $1000+ it would take to get it fixed at a body shop. If I have a full year of no more banging doors, I’ll get it fixed next winter, but I’m not feeling like dropping a grand in body work just to get it banged up again

So “RedRum” is definitely less bent then I thought. To be more accurate, I’d have to say, its not bent at all. Trever checked her out, fixed the header, built me some new uprights for when the wheel bearings go out during this season, and gave her a clean bill of health. Seems that when I got hit, the front subframe, which is just bolted to the unibody was the only thing that moved. The unibody didn’t bend, but the subframe just shifted over in its bolts. That was the cause of the front camber being slightly off, and also the crack in the header.

I should pick the car up sometime next week, and next up is the bodywork. I’m going to pull off all the stickers from last season, and clean up the doors some. Then she’s off to Mike at Sentry Auto Body to get the dents fixed. Mike is going to fix the two rear quarter panels and maybe the drivers door as well. Going to also get new front fenders and bumper, and she will literally look good as new.

I’m planning on a new graphics scheme for this season. The back half of the car will continue to be E46 M3 Red, but the front half of the car is getting an overhaul. I’m going to vinyl the hood, fenders, and blend the vinyl into the doors. Also, the front bumper skin will remain factory black. The paint cracks too fast with bumpdrafting, and the black bumper will fit in real well with the fancy vinyl thats going over the rest of the front bodywork I’m excited! We might head to Colorado for some late season skiing in March, but if we don’t go, I’m hoping to make a late March date at Carolina Motorsports Park. We’ll see.

In an earlier post, I talked about how I was going to get a nice cheap radio setup for the race car. Well, after turning on the Midland GPRS radios from Bass Pro shops that sat around for a while, I figured out they were busted. Crapola. So I decided to get “real” radios instead. After messing around on Ebay and finding some Chinese knockoffs, a friend suggested I call Sampson Racing and see if they had any used gear. They hooked me up with a set of Vertex radios, crew chief headset, and a PTT button, all demo gear out of the owner’s race car. Sweet! Cameron at Conover Motorsports is going to build me a badass antenna, and I will still have my “cheap-er” radio system.

• Vertex 5-watt - $160
• Crew Chief headset - $90
• PTT + free car harness - $25
• Driver helmet gear - $140
• Badass Conover antenna - $50
• Misc adapters (headset to radio, car harness to radio) - $25

In the end, I’ve spend $500 and ended up with around an $800 system. My cheap ass is happy Looking forward to being able to hear my crew at the ARRC

In car radios are a very “nice to have” in our amateur racing world. The crappy this is, that a nice radio setup is just south of $1k, while the bottom of the line systems are $600. I had a chance to spend that kind of cash on the race car earlier this year, and correctly opted for the data acquisition package. Having data in the car has allowed me to very quickly pick up time at new race tracks, and also find more time at my home track. Frankly, I don’t see a point in even doing practice or test days w/o data.

Back to radios though. I had to buy a helmet headset for a few endurance races I’ve done, and also my codrives with Lyman last year. With that, I had a small but expensive chunk of the system out of the way. I decided to put together a cheapo system with the rest of the components, and we’ll see how it works out

Below are the pieces one needs and how I got them, and for how much.

• Radios - I found Sampson Racing uses Midland 5 watt radios in their “cheap” radio package. Found mine at Bass Pro Shops for $50 for the pair on closeout. Sweet.
• Driver - Headset/headphones I had to buy before. $140, no way to get around that one. Any cheaper/crappy mic or headphones and the crew chief cannot hear the driver.
• Car - Two components needed. The car harness, and PTT. Car harness connects from the driver to the PTT button and to the Radio. I picked this up for $0 since Lyman had a busted connector on his and just bought a new one. Connector needs some re-wiring. We’ll see if it works. PTT is $40 from Sampson Racing.
• Crew Chief - Need a fancy crew chief headset. This needs to be noise cancelling in order to work trackside while cars are going by. Most of the time these are right around $180 or so. I found some on ebay for $100 new. We’ll see if that works, but it seems to be the same stuff as the more expensive one.

The above system should work for some of the parts of the race tracks. To have full track coverage, you need nicer (read: $$$$) radios with an external antenna. Depending on finding some used ones, I will do that later, but for right now, I’ll settle with having radio communications for the front half of Road Atlanta.

My total outlay so far is $330. Same components, but 1/2 of the price of the bottom of the barrel system, and 1/3 the price of a middle of the road system. We’ll see how it works in November at the ARRC

Fun weekend! First off, the facilities at Barber are top notch. Everything is “F1 Quality”. From the manicured grass to the buildings/bathrooms, to the timing tower spectating areas with TV cameras on all the parts of the track.

I’ve never been to Barber before, so as I posted about previously, I played a bunch of video games to try to get used to the track before I drove it. It was certainly time well spent, as other then the obvious G’s that you feel, the visuals were right on with what I was seeing in real life, down to the braking points/zones.

I started out with qualifying on Saturday morning. I was able to use the new Dash3 part of my DL1 to display sector times and lap times, and I was able to run some decent times right off the bat. After only 6 laps on the track, I qualified 2nd in ITA and right after hometown boy Chuck Baader in his BMW, who was sitting on pole. Chuck put in a new motor since last season, and my time was faster then everyone’s lap times from this race last year, so I felt pretty good.

In no time at all it was time for the afternoon race. I started on the inside with Chuck in front of me. Got a decent, but not great start and took it easy for the first few turns. In the corkscrew turn, the 3rd place qualifier, Steve, had his air flow meter break and basically stall out on the outside of the turn. Just happens that I was on the inside, and the 4th place car of Willie Phee was right behind Steve. This allowed me to get a huge lead on Willie. By this time Chuck has pretty much checked out on the rest of us, so it was a very boring 15 lap race for me, basically driving around by myself and getting bored.

In nice contrast, Sunday ended up being a lot more exciting. I tried to find more time out there during qualifying, and got closer to Chuck, but still qualified 2nd. This time I got a GREAT start and pulled right alongside of Chuck before turn 1. As we entered Turn 1 three wide, Chuck got hit, and in turn hit me, which sent both of us off into the grass, still on the throttle, not letting up. Steve was able to get by both of us and started off a great battle with Chuck for the lead, while I hung back and watched. I was being held up in the turns by a higher classed (ITS) RX7, which was supposed to be much faster then I was. I ended up hitting him a few times in turns trying to push him out of my way as I couldn’t pass him cleanly. After a few laps, he got faster and then started getting in the way of the Chuck/Steve battle ahead of me. In the meantime, my car started overheating a bit. I had a bunch of grass stuck in the radiator opening, and also was right on this RX7’s bumper not getting any airflow. I lost focus in a few turns and lost a bit of ground to the lead pack. Chuck ended up passing Steve for the lead and I started reeling both of them in from 3rd. After a few fun laps of chasing and battling, I was able to pass Steve under braking into the hairpin and started to try to chase Chuck down. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to come back all the way and ended up in 2nd again, with a 2 second margin to Chuck. Not bad!

All in all, I feel good for this being my first time at Barber. Both Steve and Chuck live within miles of the track and have a lot of experience here. Chuck’s 325 BMW is also a lot better here then my car. He’s got a LOT more torque to get out of the tight turns, and my car never gets a chance to stretch its legs. Never even get into 5th gear. I also ended up eating two fairly new front tires because of all the wheelspin that I get out of the very slow turns.

Now I take some time off and work on the Jeep/House. Going to start working on the car again in a few weeks to get it ready for the ARRC in November.