F1000 ROLL CALL - April 5 - 6, 2008 - Buttonwillow Raceway Park – 25A CW!

[Nicholas Belling]

Any FB's planning on attending this event..

[Matt Conrad]

It is a maybe for us...

We have some other commitments for that weekend that may be going away...so if they do we may run over there. I'll know more by the end of the week.

Matt Conrad
Phoenix Race Works, LLC

[Matt Conrad]

Nicholas,

Our other commitments have fallen by the wayside and my entry is in. Still not 100% that we'll be there, but we're now planning to. We had hoped to start tearing the prototype down to the chassis and re-building it to a more "production" quality, but will postpone that until after the April race.

I've only raced at Buttonwillow twice and 25CW once...and that was 4 years ago in my old 1990 Van Diemen FC. I think my fastest lap then was a 1:53.0. For reference...the FC track record is a 1:49.9.

Are you going to join us?

Others?

Matt Conrad
Phoenix Race Works, LLC

[GoPro]

Any FB's planning on attending this event..

GoPro will be there. Who else is going?

Only had 1 other FB at Infineon this past weekend but that was ok because there were 12 Pro Mazdas / FAs to race with. We qualified 5th (.2 off of 3rd) and got into 4th off the start and held 4th for about 80% of the race until an increasing push dropped us to 5th overall. Took the Pro Mazda four pass attempts to make it stick, though

5th overall out of 12 FAs with 8th fastest lap overall. The Stohr F1000 is faaaast at these technical tracks.

I will post footage of the race tonight at www.goprocamera.com

Special thanks to Auto Spa www.auto-spa.com for always giving me the best possible car to race with. First class all the way.

Here's a photo of our new GoPro livery:

[VehDyn]

Your car looks great! Great job.

[rickjohnson356]

But I didn't see where the Go-Pro camera is mounted???

Where is the best place that you have found that works?

[martyb]

Ours was the other F1000 at Infineon this last weekend. We qualified mid-pack, ahead of a lot of FE's and FM's, and proceeded smartly from there. Our driver improved his laptimes dramatically during the race, made a lot of good passes, and we didn't get lapped by the GoPro rocket. Not too bad, considering this was the first race for our rookie driver, who has never raced anything faster than a spec Miata before!

Marty

[GoPro]

But I didn't see where the Go-Pro camera is mounted???

Where is the best place that you have found that works?

I'll post more photos tonight with locations. I mount on top of air intake front and / or rear facing, shoulder of cockpit, under nose.

When we set qualifying and race lap records this weekend I was running all 3 of above locations...4 cameras total.

GoPro! -

[GoPro]

Still waiting for Vsocial to process the qualifying lap video...but in the meantime here's a link to a video of the two FAs that crashed heavily at Thunderhill in mid March. I was in P4 behind them...shot on the Motorsrports HERO camera:

http://www.goprocamera.com (in center of page)

Hi5 - GoPro

[GoPro]

OK...got the qualifying lap up on our homepage now...in the center:

http://www.goprocamera.com

And now the FA crash at Thunderhill is here:
http://gopro.vsocial.com/#215010

See some of you at Buttonwillow I hope!

Hi5 - GoPro

[Tom Valet]

Great videos and nice driving. I have a question about the rear camera view-- the rear wing seems to move around a lot, flexing from side to side. Is it an optical illusion or does it really have that much flex? We have an FF so I never paid much attention to wings and such.

Sorry to further hijack your thread Nick.

Take care.

Tom

[Matt Conrad]

Nick...

Unfortunately it looks like we're not going to make it over to Buttonwillow for this weekend. I'm bummed as I'm already packed and it looks like the weather will be perfect.....mid 70's and sunny. Send reports as you can.

FYI....Tom makes a pretty good point....I also watched that rearward facing video and that amount of wing movement would be a huge concern to me...escpecially after you've already had one rear wing failure.

Matt Conrad
Phoenix Race Works, LLC

[jjstecher]

No way that rear wing is going to hold up for a long period of time vibrating like that. Its strong as hell but its going to start to stress and fracture and I know I sure as hell don't want mine coming off at the kink in Road America at the sprints this year...I am going to see what i can do to support it more. It also can't be good for any type of meaningful aero bopping around like that.

You weren't bottoming the tunnels out and causing the vibrations in the rear wing that way were you? I would think that buffeting causing the wing to shake like your seeing off the body would be a really strange thing as I don't see where on my Stohr it would be coming from.

Ah well the fun of continual evolution begins and I don't even have the engine in the car yet.

[ghickman]

not to hijack this thread but.....

I had a real good chance to watch several of the FB practice and qualifying rounds (and the race) at the 2007 ARRC. Of all the different chassis running I can tell you first hand we saw lots of side to side movement from all the Stohr chassis rear wings. If I owned one I'd look at this in depth.

[GoPro]

Hi All,

I agree that the rear wing is moving a lot. That is not an optical illusion from the camera...it's moving!

Matty...we did have a wing break last Sept. at Infineon but that is because Donna Gilio hit me from behind (not her fault at all) because another driver hacked down on me in T11 and forced me (and Donna) to get on the brakes. Donna did a terrific job of not punting me and I thank her genuinely for only clipping my rear wing...! So it's not fair to say we had a wing failure (your new car looks sweet, btw Matt :-)

While the lateral stability is poor on the wing...it doesn't flex up and down. So...I think the overall downforce may not be too affected by the lateral movement since the wing planes are staying on the same vertical plane. I can confirm that at speed I don't feel the rear wing's instability at speed through even the high speed technical sections. If it is affecting downforce, I cannot feel it.

However, I totally agree the durability question is alarming and we'll be researching ways to improve it.

Other than that...the car is a dream and I cannot wait to see more F1000s of all types on the tracks soon.

Rock and roll, boys...bring it to the track and tell me how the wing looks from behind :-)

Doh!

[PMPerformance]

Will you GoPro boys have any units available at the track this weekend??

Paul Marciano
PM Performance
602 677 5529
pmperformance@cox.net

[996kyle]

Nicholas you better win the race !
haha you guys will have to figure out who I am routing for, have fun!
I wish I could be there, but I'm saving the long drives for the June Sprints and ARRC races.