2014 VIR Majors Report - Pigeon amongst the cats
The intended pun in the title is one MC engine (me) amongst ten Rotax/Arctic cat clutched cars.
The spring race at VIR is always a favorite of mine. Traveling from Washington DC to Alton, VA is a beautiful drive in the spring time down Interstate 95 to Richmond and then down Virginia route 360. The trees are just starting to leaf out in spring green and against that green backdrop is the white and pink dogwood tree blooms with a splash of purple from the myrtle trees.
Arrived on Wednesday about 1:30PM and sat in line until 5:30PM before we got in the track. My van towing a 16’ trailer looked out of place among the toterhomes and duallys pulling 40’ trailers.
Thursday’s test day was an eye opener as we were lumped in with all sports racers plus wings and things. Closing speeds are unbelievable – better watch your mirrors carefully! This is the fourth race for me with the GSXR 600 engine installed (F600 to some but F500 within the SCCA) and I’m still getting use to downshifting. Leon Mitch (Mitchell Racing Services) says it’s a rhythm thing and I should take dancing lessons. Didn’t get all the test sessions in as my clutch cable broke and I needed to make repairs before getting back on track. Didn’t have a spare so I needed to coble something together. Took a spare throttle cable and spliced it into the exiting clutch cable and had something that would work - just hoped it would last the weekend! It did!
Friday was qualifying with my best time of 2:13’s in the first session, but still not happy with downshifting without a clutch. Talked with Leon (Mitchell Racing Services) regarding downshifting without a clutch and he was able to give me some pointers on shifting and my car set-up. Jeremy only provided me with grieve about not being able to downshift without a clutch. Made the clutch cable fix and the afternoon session went better plus downshifting got easier with a drop of 2 seconds off my morning session down to 2:11.3.
Saturday morning it was raining when I arrived at the track. Prepared for rain – changed to rain tires, not sure what else one can do for the rain in a F500. As we lined up for the race it stopped raining and with the wind blowing the track dried pretty quickly. Oh, did I mention it was cold ~52 degrees! On the pace lap you could tell the racing line was going to be dry for the race. Rain tires – wrong choice. During the race I could not come to terms with rain tires in the dry. My car understeered like a pig and I didn’t adapt well. Consequently I went off track a couple times, once at the end of the back straight. That corner is somewhat blind and I sat there hoping no one would hit me – they didn’t. My race was pretty much done, so I focused on getting my downshifting done right – can you tell I consumed with downshift this thing right! I did get much better at it which served me well for Sunday’s race in the dry.
Sunday, everybody had their hopes up this would be a better race then yesterday’s race fiasco – at least I did! Green flag waived and we headed into turn 1. Since I don’t know what started the melee I’ll just say that three F500 were involved, putting one out on the spot and one dropped out a couple of laps later. I don’t remember if any Formula F’s were affected or involved – I was too busy avoiding spinning cars and FV’s slicing through the mess. The FV’s did hold me up somewhat as we went up through the esses. Not some place I’m comfortable trying to pass someone. I was able to continue with my new found downshifting skills (thank you Leon and Jeremy). I was able to make short work of Vee’s on the back straight. Several F500 cars dropped out with mechanicals and I was fortunate to finish in second place and got to stand on the podium! The advice from Leon paid off with a reduction in lap time to 2:09.6. I’m starting to get the hang of this clutchless downshifting. Being able to do that really lets you start focusing on driving rather than worrying about gears etc.
Looking forward to VIR on May 9-11th for the F600 pro race!
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