xcarguy

Bob, If you get all wheel drive installed in your car, I wanna ride.

https://www.hoonigan.com/hoonicorn

LOL! Never thought about 'city' rental.

Mike, You truly summed it all up with 'formula 1'. :iagree:

Thanks. Will do.

Just finished looking thruogh the old thread. Jim Gunther still lives in CT (New Haven area) and still owns his Stalker. In fact, I paid him a visit this past Thrusday. Red Duck, I'll pm you Jim's contact info; he may of some help. Shane

. . . . . . :lurk:

There's silly, and then there's . . . . :iamwithstupid:

That was one of those get-it-right-the-first-time stunts. :iamwithstupid:

Steve, How are you and the orange beast? I still want my ride.

LOL! Now I’m really confused. Don’t know if I was getting slower or better. Mike, In short, I have to agree; the track just doesn’t flow. However, for the sake of discussion, let’s divide the track into two distinct sections and do a bit of dissecting. I’ll refer to any combination of turns within a section as a segment. Think of section one as the momentum section, with it beginning at the corner-exit phase of turn one and ending at the corner-entry phase of turn eleven. While some might want to argue my choice and say that the momentum section truly begins somewhere around turn two and terminates at turn nine, I’ll leave it as is for the sake of simplicity. Although not without its technical challenges, section one is, in my humble opinion, the most fluid portion of the track and the friendliest to drivers of small, lightweight cars. In this section—with the exception of the downhill run from turn one to turn two and the doglegged straight defined by turns nine, ten and eleven—momentum pretty much rules. On this section of the track, turns three through nine ended up being my most favorite segment, especially the esses (turns three, four and five along with the beginning of six). The most technical segment of this section is found in turns six through nine. Along the apex-to-exit of turn nine, there is a slight dip (drops off to the left) and then a slight hump (off camber to the right). Negotiate this area wrong and you upset the car (revisit 17:15 to 17:23 on my video). Get turn eight wrong and you will more than likely will get turn nine wrong. Get turn seven wrong and you’ll probably botch eight. Get turn six wrong and you will most assuredly screw up seven. Negotiating turn six properly, therefore, ends up being very crucial to the transition from the exit of turn eight to entry of turn nine. And turn six can be somewhat tricky; you’re just coming out of the esses and have a good grove going on and all of the sudden you come off the first apex of six and the track drops away to the right. I think of six as having a double apex with the second requiring the driver to tighten up the turn in order to set up properly for the entry into seven. Turn eight can be a bit intimidating, especially when the track is wet. It’s a right-hand uphill 90 degree off-camber turn. The best turn eight-to-turn nine transition is to stay close to the rumble strip until the very top of turn eight (end of the rumble strip). Because of turn eight being off-camber (and the track, wet), I had a tendency to transition too early (again, see video clip) which resulted in upsetting the car in, and on the exit of, nine. I’ll define section two (again, for the sake of discussion) as beginning at the mid-corner phase of turn eleven and ending at the mid-corner phase of turn one. This is definitely the point and squirt section of the track where torque and horse power are much more likely to dominate. On this section of track, I found turns twelve, thirteen and twenty to be the most deceiving. While the rain and lack of traction perpetuated the problem, I seemed to try and carry too much speed (for the wet conditions) through these corners. It was never intentional; these three corners simply seemed to tighten up quicker than expected, no matter what entry and/or exit I used. As for turn fifteen, I think it was designed on a Friday evening at five-o’clock by a disgruntled engineer who had one too many beers the night before. Turns sixteen, seventeen and eighteen remind me of the bowl at NJMP Lightning; although not banked, you can carry a lot of speed through this trio of turns. On this section of track, turn nineteen ended up being my favorite single turn; slightly downhill of-camber left-hander. I’d heard/read about drivers having trouble finding grip in nineteen, but my car seemed to set up fairly well which left me feeling relatively comfortable all the way through the turn. Coming off the straight and running uphill twelve stories to turn one allows for really late braking (obviously). However, at the top of turn one is a crest which was the cause of many a spin on the exit. During my last session, I exited out of turn one to find a Radical sitting off to my right with his nose pointed back at me. If a car hasn’t finished taking a set prior negotiating the turn one hump, the result will pretty much be a spin, especially if the track is wet. Where the segments of track between turns one and two and the dogleg (nine through eleven) in the momentum section are torque and HP friendly, the segment of track defining turns fifteen (exit) through twenty (entry) in the point and squirt section are somewhat momentum friendly. When it’s all said and done, I’d like to revisit COTA and run the track under better (dry) conditions. I suppose a track map might help :banghead:

For those of you who have been following along on this thread, I've posted a COTA video link in the video section of the forum: http://www.usa7s.net/vb/showthread.php?p=91147#post91147 . . . . . :lurk:

Cold, wet weekend with Chin Motorsports at COTA on the 15th and 16th. The track remained damp and slick the entire weekend (rained every session) with temps on Saturday never rising above 45ᵒF. Sunday wasn't much better with temps topping out at around 50. Fog, mist, rain, cool temps and overcast kept the track moist and cold; getting heat in the tires was pretty much an impossibility. During session three of my run group on Sunday, we had a couple of descent laps when the wind picked up a bit and the track began to dry. This lasted till around mid-session as the rain returned and track conditions deteriorated rapidly. :cuss: I ran the entire weekend on Avon A11 compound slicks; cold tires and a wet track made for some interesting laps for all. Lots of spins during the weekend; surprisingly, I wasn’t one of them. :ack: I also had some data logging and sync issues with my Traqmate setup; as the video progresses, the blue dot on the track map steadily outpaces my car a bit more with each lap. Despite the rain and Traqmate issues, COTA was a blast. The track and facilities were superb, to say the least, and the folks from Chin were excellent hosts. Being that it was two weeks after F1, lots of temporary structure was still being disassembled (you can see some of this throughout the video in the way of viewing stands, portable buildings, etc.). I have a new-found appreciation for what it takes to 'ready' a track for F1. In the end, lots of bench racing was done, many lies were swapped and multiple pots of coffee were consumed all while new friendships were forged and memories were made. :cheers:

Skip, I think this is your car: :drool:

The color combo is stunning. Well done! :cheers:

. . . . . . :drool::drool::drool:

Now, about that trailer; it's worth a photo. :drool:

LOL!!! Mike, watch out for little old ladies shaking their fists and throwing shoes.

Fixed it for ya'! :smilielol5:

Lotus badging on a Cat! Oh no no, already got that covered with the Storker. But I can't speak for the Michael Schumacher Mazari or the Prageot.

Yes we do. :jester: Was it this guy? https://www.facebook.com/jalopnik/posts/480220068692811 No, there's blue sky in the back ground. We didn't see a speck of blue all weekend.

Kitcat, To give you an idea of what (who)showed up, Jack Baldwin and Buz McCall came out to play. Walking the paddock was a humbling experience; lots of high end eye candy. I was fascinated as much (if not more so) with the equipment used for transport as I was the cars. Another couple of quick notes about running with Chin; unrestricted passing (point by required) and passengers could ride with any driver in any of the solo classes. In the photo above of me sitting in the car in pit lane, that's my neighbor in the right seat . . . He's a brave sole.

The red open wheel is actually an Élan Pro Formula Mazda owned by Michael Ellis out if Tampa. He and Mario came over together. Sitting in the garage, it does make the Storkers look good. The white car is a Praga R1: http://www.pragasportscars.com/ Unfortunately, I only witnessed the Praga do one run and it spun on the first lap out. Afterward, it sat in that same spot for the rest of the weekend; looks fast even parked. There were quite a few spins over the weekend. One Porker tagged the barrier coming out of turn five in the esses (not a lot of run off there) and buggered up the nose pretty good. A couple of other cars gave it up at the top of turn one (both mechanical).

. . . . and

A few more shots