ARRC

[Wren]

Shame the "FS" (FA) was there as that car created a gap between P1 & 2 in Fb that the 3 guys fighting for 2nd could not overcome.

That was a disaster, he was blocking everybody. Stop racing outside of your class.

What was most impressive was Brandon Dixon posting the 3rd fastest race lap after tearing one side of the car off the day before....this type of adversity brings out the best in people and Brandon overcame this....most impressive.

He tore off a lot more than just the corners. That car was in bad shape when the hook finally got it back.

[Richard Dziak]

I have added a few photos from the 2009 ARRC on the F1000 owner/drivers website.

http://formulaf1000classfbracecarownerd.shutterfly.com/

I am looking for any other quality action photos so we may get them all together in one place for all F1000 owner/drivers to view and any others interested in the F1000 class.

Any submissions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Mr & Mrs Frog for those added to the ApexSpeed FB Forum ..topic ARRC.

I am looking for many more.

[Matthew Inge]

That was a disaster, he was blocking everybody. Stop racing outside of your class.

Trust me when I say this, its not his first time doing this and it sure wont be his last.

[Northwind]

I listened on the radio broadcast and WOW, what a race. Congrats to all that participated. It was another fine example of what the F 1000 class is all about. The video backs up what the race announcers called. Talk about parity between different types of chassis. If someone is thinking of buying a car it will be difficult to choose which brand to pick.

Oh, great job Mike B on your color commentating. It was good to have someone with all the proper facts and history behind the cars and drivers.

I also would like to thank all the sponsors for their support with this years F 1000 Championship. In tough economic times they still donated to help promote this class.

[openwheel]

After watching the in-car footage from the Phoenix I really have to hand it to Phil and Dustin. With a front wing the whole race they might have brought home the top spot since they were making up ground on Coello until the contact. Luckily they didn't lose too much speed in the corners and were still pulling hard on the straights.

Not to knock Phil's driving, but it makes you wonder if Jaremko was there with a bit more experience in a full-size car in traffic if he might have avoided contact or negotiated traffic a bit better. Same goes for a split start. Either way, great race by the Phoenix team and everyone else that made the long trip for the best race of the season!

1-The wing was broken later in the race at that time Nick had already opened up a sizable lead. Once Nick cleared the FS it was game over as he immediately dropped into the 21 second bracket lap after lap which no one else could do in the race and was at times 2-3 seconds per lap quicker through traffic and in the clear. You don't win by over 15 seconds losing time to the rest of the field. Phil did a great job, but nobody was making up ground on Coello in his Firman.

2- As I said above Phil did a great job, I think he and his crew got as much out of the Phoenix package as anyone could have on Saturday. As Purple Frog said Nick is Nick and the Firman car is one hell of a good car.

[SCOTTY81]

Sounds like I missed a damn good time.....
I had an injury from the past come back to give me a visit ...
Congrats to all....sorry I missed it.


scotty
Taylor Race Engineering

[Richard Dziak]

To some of the posters here that may be judgemental about the FB F1000 race:

No, I was not there personally but did listen into the live broadcast.

The 2009 ARRC FB F1000 race is over. Anyone can speculate about what driver could have been better, what driver blocked others, what driver did this, or what driver did that.

There can only be 1 winner.... and this time it was Niki Coello, because he was better than the rest. Phil De La O was 2nd, because he was better than the next finisher, and J.R Osborne was 3rd, because he was better than the next guy. There will always be someone who finishes 1st and someone that finshes last. That's racing.

What is important is that 10 or so FB F1000 drivers entered the race and represented the entire F1000 Class. These owner/drivers, put a huge effort to prepare for the race, spent thousands of dollars to travel to the event, and many towed their race cars many hundreds if not thousands of miles round trip to participate. Some never finished, some never made it to the race after being at the track and suffered mechanical problems. That makes all entries in our class winners in their own right.

Lets not forget the extremely hard work and dedication from Mike Bechaump who lived a passion to make this race happen and awarded thousands of dollars in sponsorship money and awards. Mike B finished 1st in his class this past weekend, and he was never in a race car.

My hats to off to racers like Jerry Freeman, who knew that he didn't have a chance to win, but made the trip and finished the 2009 ARRC race. Jerry is a winner.

So while we can speculate who had the better car, why they won, or didn't, lets not lose the prespective of what all these guys did for the class, racing or not. We have a group of F1000 owner/driver across the country that is like family, that's real important.

One thing for sure, we know that drivers like Coello and De La O, have extremely bright futures. Some day we will say that these kids had rides and won races in our class, when they both have the potential to become famous and legendary race car drivers. They both have extremely bright futures.

Wow, what a race, what dedication, and major congradulations to the podium finishers this weekend, and to Glen Cooper who entered many races throughout the year to earn his title of F1000 National Championship Points winner......great job Glen Coooper. I heard your after race interview Coop, your not a "old man" compared to the young guns,...."your one fierce competitor, who loves to race".

[tedsimmons2]

I went to look at the F600's but couldn't help but photograph its big brother!

Attachment 16714 Attachment 16715

Attachment 16716 Attachment 16717

Attachment 16718 Attachment 16719

Attachment 16720 Attachment 16721

Attachment 16722 Attachment 16723

[tedsimmons2]

Attachment 16724 Attachment 16725

Attachment 16726 Attachment 16727

Attachment 16728 Attachment 16729

Attachment 16730

[HastyHorn]

I would point out that one of the happier results of the weekend was that the pits weren't littered with blown engines. Apparently, the group has figured out the elements necessary for engine durability. The Phoenix (or maybe it was the Stohr) had its air intake partially taped over because the cooling system was keeping engine oil below 190 degrees.

Hasty Horn

[Jnovak]

It really looks like the engine durability is going to be great. Several guys had dry sumps & several were wet sumps. No problems at all with the engines & man do they sound sweet!!!!

Thanks ... Jay Novak

[RussMcB]

My weekend started out OK but ended early when the jack shaft broke. I'm pretty sure there was a bearing failure first, followed by the snapped shaft.

Even though the engine and car felt OK on the test day, I wasn't happy with my lap times, especially compared to all the other FB cars. The silver lining of my withdrawal was that I got to watch a great race. I was really impressed with everyone's driving. That FB field was crammed with talent.

I have a few options. We'll figure out why the bearing failed and determine how that can be addressed. I'm also going to look at tilting the engine, changing the diff mounting, etc. and eliminate the jack shaft.

I was pretty bummed on Friday, but now I'm looking forward to working on the car. I've got shoulder surgery scheduled next week, so that'll prevent a whole lot of race car work for a while.

on edit: Wait, I can get a little more sympathy from this. When the tow truck driver drove through the gate he knocked the fiberglass nose off the car. That was about when I almost lost it. Good thing I don't keep guns around.

[Gary Slahor]

Just wanted to add my appreciation for a GREAT weekend. It was great to finally meet some of the other F-1000 folks. Jason and I were in awe of the driving talant in this class. The top 5 drivers were less than a second apart in their lap times ... and in 5 different brands of car ! ! The best part was to finally get to compete against other F1000's. Looking forward to the 2010 season ! !

[Purple Frog]

While i'm sitting out the hurricane that wasn't, i've opened a few of Mrs. Frog's ARRC files.

This picture typifies the excitement of a great event. Lap after lap. Every lap the order seemed to change. I picked this shot because my buddy Coop was in the lead.

[Wright D]

Wow! What a great race

I would like to personally thank and congratulate Phil De La O! Considering he only had two short test sessions at Firebird East in Phoenix, a very different track, I think Phil did an amazing job! We will surly pick up more speed as he continues to get comfortable in the car.

Watching the full length video is pretty cool, a shame it had to be edited down! There was a lot of awesome racing that did not make it up on the web…. Thanks eFormulaCarNews.com for putting the camera on the car and sharing the footage.

Everyone who has driven the Phoenix has gone extremely fast and has loved the car’s handling, speed, and power. Obviously fishing second with a busted front wing for more then half the race is a sign that that we had a good car and a good driver. Thanks George Dean for building a rock solid motor. I look forward to refining our combination through the 2010 season.

I will try to get a full race report put together in a few.

Thanks again Phil, George, and the Phoenix Race Works Team for a great Weekend

[RussMcB]

Before the race, we all new Coop wasn't too satisfied with his starting position and he wanted to be at the front. He had plenty of incentive and generally just doesn't want to be anywhere other than battling for the lead.

But, with all the super fast guys, he really had a tough nut to crack. Everyone knew how fast Niki would be, and others, like JR, Phil, Jeremy, and Brandon were all flying.

For the first few laps, even with Jacek causing grief with the FB race, Coop was a ways back. Yes, he may have been gaining bit by bit, but there was that gap. Just didn't seem to be in the cards for him.

But lo and behold, by mid race he had caught the front group. There was no doubt he had driven every corner at 100% to reach them.

Surely, though, it took everything he had to catch them, and that's as far as he'd get.

Wrong. Holy smokes, here he comes and he's in the lead (well, the lead if you don't count Niki, who's now 20 seconds ahead of everyone.)

So, you can see I was impressed with Coop. But, I was equally impressed with JR (throwing that Stohr everywhere), Phil (how does a kid new to car racing do that well?)and Brandon (still kicking himself for not starting the race up front where his fast race lap shows he belonged), with Jeremy running a strong pace not far back.

We knew it would be a good race and weren't disappointed.

[Brandon Dixon]

On Friday during the Q1 session on my first actual "flying" lap, I had some power oversteer coming out of T7. I thought that I could drive "through" it with the throttle matted.

It didn't quite work.

I hit the inside wall.

My first impression was that I thought that we were packing up to go home. When I got back to the paddock, Wren talked me into staying and trying to get things back together. Thanks Wren.

There was, however, a good bit to fix, and my spares inventory is not very complete a the moment. The damage included:
Front wing crunched, front wing mounting box bent up, LF lower control arm, LR upper control arm, LR lower control arm, LR pushrod, the rear wing mount/crushbox was
crunched, the rear wing was tweaked, and the lower, aft pickup point at the rear was um... displaced.

The control arms I had on hand. The spare front wing was in "kit" form, just skins and ribs in a box. No spare rear wing mount/crushbox, the current part is the prototype and we are just getting around to producing production pieces. The only spare parts for the rear diff housing for the pickup point were on a shelf at the shop at home in Alabama. I didn't see how we were going to get everything fixed in time.

About 5 minutes after the car was on the ground at the trailer, people just started working on the car or asking to help. Nick Fuhs (the best fabricator that I know) started replacing control arms. Once he and I had the arms replaced, he turned to the front wing, and proceeded to turn my "kit" into a usable front wing. I don't even remember him cussing at me under his breath while he was slaving away.

We disassembled the rear diff housing and Stevan Davis and I straightened one of the parts using the floor jack and the trailer tongue (I think Wren has a photo). The other bent part was fixed using ratchet straps, my trailer, and our neighbors' trailer (thanks Slahors!). This undoubtedly looked very professional . The end result was very good, and essentially like new.

Mike Beauchamp came by and asked what he could do to help. We pointed at the smashed rear wing mount. He scratched his head and came back with Mike Devins box of composites supplies. The fix involved carbon, epoxy, my trailer, and again ratchet straps...perhaps a theme here?

By luchtime on Saturday we had a car that was ready to race.
I started the race a bit conservatively (Coop may disagree?). I wasn't exactly sure how the car would handle, and I did just crash it the previous session. I was determined not to have a repeat performance of the crash since my fragile ego can only take so much. I spent just a little bit too much time behind Jeremy Hill before getting by under braking for T10. The 2-3-4 pack was able to pull away while I was working to get by, so the next part of the race was about figuring out how the car was going to work. I had a decent amount of understeer, and spent a while working on adjusting the front bar. I never got the balance perfect, but the car was very good at the end of the race. I was able to put my head down and close the gap to the group ahead. I had the third fastest lap and closed the gap to about 2 seconds at the end.

I am indebted to many people for helping me get the car ready for the race. I'll try to remember them, but please don't be offended if I leave someone out: Nick Fuhs, Mike Beuchamp, Don Sievenpiper, Mike Devins, Stevan Davis, Wayne Dixon, lastly and definitely not least, Wren Keith who busted his butt all weekend long.

More people to thank: Leslie Dixon (my wife) stayed home with the 4 week old and the 3 year old boys while I went to play. Kerri Keith (Wren's sister was nice enough to help out as well)

Steve Lathrop, it has been a pleasure to work with Steve on this FB car. I don't think that I could have found anyone more open to sharing information and collaboration than Steve. I'm pleased to be able to call some small part of the creation of this car my own, and I look forward to learning much more from him.

Next Stop:
Quad Nationals in Florida in January
Come on down, Ya'll!

[Carl Middelegge]

This was the first time that I was actually able to watch a race while attending an event and racing myself. I enjoy taking pictures and camped myself up at the base of the Suzuki bridge.

I really enjoied watching these guys dice comming down the hill. They were all fair but firm in their positions on the track, the way it should be. Once Niki was able to get around the Atlantic he was able to show his true pace, he had his Firman on the edge every time by.

I have attached Links to Picasa. If any body wants picture files sent directly to them please send me a PM with your E-Mail, I will be happy to pass them on.

http://picasaweb.google.com/cam2675/...78039966040562

http://picasaweb.google.com/cam2675/...78106317371874

http://picasaweb.google.com/cam2675/...78172252482978

http://picasaweb.google.com/cam2675/...78261778158818

http://picasaweb.google.com/cam2675/...78339272236482

http://picasaweb.google.com/cam2675/...78411990114610

http://picasaweb.google.com/cam2675/...78515914601234

http://picasaweb.google.com/cam2675/...78618123549106

[Wren]

Friday was such a trainwreck. Brandon told me over the radio before he got out that he had thumped the car really hard. I didn't really enjoy the next 30 minutes waiting for the hook to get the car back. This is what came back:

The front left corner was the least damaged.



Front wing has seen better days, but Brandon went all season on this one, so it was living on borrowed time anyways. You can't see it well in this picture, but all of the front mounting structure was bent up pretty bad.


The back left corner took the worst of it. Nothing really salvageable there but the toe adjuster.


None of those things would have been too bad. The real disaster was that the rear structure of the car was bent pretty badly. There were no spares for this, the logic was that anything that bent the car that badly would not be repairable at the track. Oops.

This picture doesn't even really show how bad it was. This was a stout part of the car. About 8 bolts were completely sheared through and more were bent.



The rear crush structure was also bent up and broken in several places. When it was on the car, it was about 20 degrees out from pointing straight ahead.


Once the car was back, the willingness of people to just lend a hand and help us get the car back on the track made all of the difference between what would have been a futile effort to get the car back together without the help and actually getting the car back on the track.

This may look like Stevan Davis and Brandon bending major parts of the car back straight between the tongue of the trailer and a floorjack, but it is really a super secret material restoration method taught only at the highest levels of engineering.




I wish that I had taken some pictures of the repair to the rest of the rear box. The car was ratchet strapped securely to Brandon's trailer while the bent parts were pulled tight with ratchet straps to the Slahor's trailer and Brandon beat the **** out of them with a BFH. I would have gotten the pictures, but I was too busy trying not to **** a brick.

Mike Beauchamp walked up while I was working on a corner and Brandon was in medical and pointed to the rear crush structure and said, "I can fix that." I was not going to argue with him. By this point, Glenn Cooper had already gone to the store for us to get a fiberglass repair kit. I had a plan to fix the rear box, but my plan sucked, so I am glad that we can leave the repair kit in the trailer for next time. The willingness to help was very impressive.

I know Mike didn't come all the way from Wisconsin to work on other people's cars, but that help was essential to getting the car back going. He prepped the parts before the second qualifier and came back when we were ready and got everything lined up nicely. The repairs were also plenty strong to support jacking up the car from the back.


Notice the inventive use of the ratchet strap.



The repair looked good and worked well


We had to do the best we could with the front wing and mount. Nick made an amazing front wing for us, but everything else was tweaked pretty good. I had to take that thing apart 5 times and adjust for the wing to be even remotely level and it was still turned out pretty good from straight ahead.

With all of the damage, I couldn't really get anything but full wing on the front wing and somehow Brandon still went out with a car that was pushing.



It was probably bad karma that I went and bought a roll of red duct tape early Friday morning.



We had spare endplates in the trailer, but by Saturday morning we had lost the ability to care, so the car went out like this


All in all, it was an interesting experience.

Brandon, for our next challenge, let's get the spares package in really good shape and maybe next year at the runoffs you can barrel roll the car, Katherine Legge style, through the catch fence at the Kink and we will see if we can make the next session. Just an idea.

[glenn cooper]

goes way back to my 600 Supersport mortorcycle racing days.
In early '92 I put together a package of everything needed to get going again after a crash: Complete L & R foot control assemblies, complete L & R hand control assemblies, all levers master cylinders pedals, etc, complete wheel assemblies w/ rotors, body work, fuel tank, EVERYTHING!
All through the '92 season and 2/3 way through '93 I never hit the deck once...

Bottom line/Moral of the story - If you have it "in stock", you'll not be required to bust it out of the trailer!

What you guys did was truly a herculean effort. I thought I was the only one to have used a trailer and a fllor jack to straighten something. NOT!

Looks like there's a new "Alabama Gang" in town, you dudes rock!

GC

[Mike Devins]

This is the video from Jean-Luc's ASR from the start of the race.

http://www.vimeo.com/7549039

[S4mom]

Big thanks to everyone who helped get Brandon's car back together so he did not have to make the trip back home early. He and I really appreciate everything you all did. See you all in January for the Doubles! William and Archer will be there too, so encourage those wives, girlfriends and teenage daughters (who like to babysit) to come and keep us company.

Leslie Dixon

[Mike Devins]

If any one has data could they please take a look and see what the top speed was on the back straight and also what the track length in feet was in your data system - also would like to know if it is GPS or wheel data.

[Lincspeed]

Mike - don't you remember I clocked everyone on the front straight with your radar gun. seems as if all the cars were in a dead heat - at 888.6MPH a FAST dead heat that is... Clark

[formulasuper]

If any one has data could they please take a look and see what the top speed was on the back straight and also what the track length in feet was in your data system - also would like to know if it is GPS or wheel data.

Bump...inquiring minds want to know.

[RussMcB]

Bump...inquiring minds want to know.

I sent a PM to Mike because I figured my top speed would be too embarrassing to show publicly, but what the heck.

My AIM data (computed from tire circumference) says the track length was 13,113.5'. My top speed was 136 MPH (but my lap time was 1:30, much slower than Jean Luc and the fast FB guys).

[Brandon Dixon]

If any one has data could they please take a look and see what the top speed was on the back straight and also what the track length in feet was in your data system - also would like to know if it is GPS or wheel data.

GPS based system.

13084 ft track length
148 mph top speed

[Mike Devins]

Thanks guys - corrected to Brandon's GPS track length we were seeing 145mph on the LSR II