Thunderhill Double National Roll Call

[Tony Moore]

OK all you Northwest Formula B racers. Edge engineering will be hauling 597 plus miles each way. We expect a few more cars to play with on March 13-15th! I talked with Dustin Wright and Mark Jeremco. They will be there, so who else will be out to play?

Tony Moore
Edge Engineering

[mjaremko]

We will be there !!
Dustin is putting the final touches on the car. We're both travelling on Wednesday the 11th. Hope the weathers nice....

mj

[rickb99]

As of 2 days ago, zero FB advanced entry's

http://www.sfrscca.org/images/2009/S...blnatentry.pdf

I haven't seen many posts from Oberndorf, Palmer or Belling during the off season. Hope they are still turning out in their FB's this year.

[Mike B]

Is there an updated entry list somewhere?

As an aside, why doesn't everyone use DLBracing.com?

[kmt63]

is there testing today?

[Wright D]

There was testing today, and we had the new Phoenix Race Works F1k.09 out on track.

There were two other F1000's running today. A Storh and Gary Hickman with his own car.

[kmt63]

There was testing today, and we had the new Phoenix Race Works F1k.09 out on track.

There were two other F1000's running today. A Storh and Gary Hickman with his own car.

how did the new car do?nice looking car you have there.

[Mike B]

Any news from the test day?

[Matt Conrad]

This isn't official or anything but I did hear a rumor that the new Phoenix was clocked in the 1:44's yesterday...not too bad for the first day on the track! Have not heard anything from today.

The Thunderhill website does not list the FB track record for some odd reason. Anybody have the exact info???

For some reference, here's a few other class records listed on the site:

FA 1:39.0 Bob Stallings Swift 014
DSR 1:43.8 John Hill WF1
CSR 1:46.0 John Hill WF1
FC 1:48.5 Carl Russo Tatuus

Matt Conrad

[Lee Stohr]

I can only speculate what the lap times should be now that Thunderhill has been repaved.
However, Mark Jaremko did 1:39's in DSR qualifying 2 years ago with a Yamaha engine.
The new Suzuki's are proven 1.5seconds faster. There should be at least .5sec development in 2 years. The repave should be worth one second at least. So let's say DSR times should be in the 1:36's. That means FB times should be at least a 1:40.0. I base that on Road Atlanta comparison between the best DSR and FB drivers and times.
I'm sure Mark and John Hill (running FF this weekend) will have a better idea.

[kmt63]

pretty good times for the first day on track.

[Jeff Read]

qualifying times from memory , sorry there were no result sheets to take home....

Pole position in class and overall was Nick Woodman in his Stohr F1000.Timed in the 1:42.'s

Jeremko should have been 2nd in class and 3rd overall in the beautiful new Phoenix with a 1:43 but his times were thrown out for sound violations. He will be strting at the rear.

Hickman in the edge I believe turned a 1:47.

I will take pictures tomorrow ...

[Richard Dziak]

Hopefully someone can get some good action photos of the new Phoenix and other F1000s for the F1000 owner/driver photo gallery. It keeps growing thanks to everyones effort to capture great action photos of our F1000 class.

http://formulaf1000classfbracecarownerd.shutterfly.com/

Feel free to send (email) any photos to me for the website. I am always trying to improve the site ...............an exclusive for our F1000 class.

[Wright D]

We did have some problems with sound. We had to add a 90 deg turn to point the noise away from the meter. Since our Quali times were discounted we will be starting from the back of the group. We will have to race our way back up to the front.

We are pleased with our times considering that we have less then 20 laps total on the car. On top of that; our times were on the same tires that we ran on the '07 in the Phoenix double national. We are gonna try out some fresh rubber tomorrow....

We are extremely happy with how the car has been running. We have had a few small bugs, but what new car doesn't. Our biggest problem was chasing down a fault in the wiring that was causing a bad miss fire. Five laps out and we were under the old track record.

I will try to post an update tomorrow, and maybe some photos too.

[Lee Stohr]

The first race completed this morning, here is a sketchy report. Chris Farrell won DSR, Woodman won F1000 in his Stohr, Mark came from the back to get second in the Phoenix.
John Hill won FF. I think Chris was in the high 1:37's with a stock Suzuki, maybe that was qualifying. Cell phone reception is poor at the track.

[kmt63]

did jr run the atlantic car?

[Mike B]

Any news from day 2?

[Stan Clayton]

JR started at the back of the field for today's race and did several laps before retiring. Not sure what the issue was.

Mark got around Nick after several laps only to retire after contact. Not sure of the details, as I was up by T9 and the incident happened over by T5.

Chris and Perry had a great DSR battle all race long, with Chris winning by a second or less. Chris appeared to have a marked power advantage over Perrry, who was faster in the twisty bits, and gave Chris everything he wanted. Congrats to both for super clean and exciting racing. Chris was also overall winner.

IIRC, Renny Damon won CSR over 4 other cars.

Greg Mercurio took FC solo, and I apologize, but I missed getting the FM winner.

There was about a 30 knot headwind blowing up the long main straight, so there were no records set that I'm aware of, though the times were generally in the low 1:40s.

A total of 112 cars turned a wheel, versus 170 last year...

[kmt63]

thanks for the update Stan.

[Lee Stohr]

Apparently Mark felt something wrong with a rear tire and slowed, unfortunately Nick tapped him in the rear before he could get around. Mark dropped out but later on so did Nick. Gary left early and missed an easy win !! No finishers.

[ghickman]

Apparently Mark felt something wrong with a rear tire and slowed, unfortunately Nick tapped him in the rear before he could get around. Mark dropped out but later on so did Nick. Gary left early and missed an easy win !! No finishers.

Hi Everyone
Just made the 10 hour drive back from T-Hill. Testing went well on Thursday and got down into the 1:47's with crap tires. Friday didn't go so well...in the first practice session I broke a rodend coming down the front straight at about 130mph leading into T1. I was able to save the car and myself. Then in Q1 about 3 hours later coming into T10 under heavy braking I broke anonther rodend. I only got one qualifying lap in @ 1:48 about 5 seconds off Woodmans time.

In the first race I hung on for second place as MJ's car had troubles and I passed him.

Sunday's race we decided to pack it in. Two broken rodends was enough to tell me that I was pushing my luck....I want to live to see another day. Suffice it to say breaking rodends is spooky.

One other thing...Thunderhill is my new favorite track. This place is UNREAL...the SCCA should have the Runoffs here. The race surface is superb, the track is like riding a 3 mile long roller coaster, and the people that run the place are super friendly. Thanks Dustin for donating the rodends.

Gary Hickman

[Mike Devins]

Any idea why the rod ends were failing?

[kmt63]

anyone take any photos from the weekend?

[ghickman]

Any idea why the rod ends were failing?

Hi Mike
Yep, two reasons. First off we've been using the hollow rodends that Aurora makes...won't use them any longer. Second reason we need to re-design our upper rear A-Arms to lessen the braking forces on them....We knew we had a problem early on in testing when we bent a rodend, just didn't think it was so severe. We're eliminating all the rodends in our upper rear a-arms and going to spherical bearings. Also changing the bolt-on camber link.

GH

[WFelch]

Congratulations to Nick Woodman and Autospa for a tremendous weekend. Dude you were wheeling that car! Lots of fun to watch.

Nick won the first race of the weekend from poll. Unfortunately Mark had to start in the back for a sound infraction. I have Saturday's qualifying sheet in front of me. Here is the rundown:

Nicholas Woodman 1:40.977 Stohr F1000
Mark Jaremko 1:42.957 09 Phoenix
Gary Hickman 1:49.617 08 Edge

On Sunday, Mark started directly behind Nicholas. Nicholas opened up a little bit of a gap. Mark caught and passed Nicholas. As Nicholas caught Mark, something happened in turn five (that I didn't see), and Mark fell out. Nicholas was then leading and got a flat rear tire. It was a good race.

We had our own struggles this weekend with the DB Stohr test car. We are cautiously optimistic and learned quite a bit. JR is a class act and a lot of fun to work with.

Wayne

[ghickman]

On Friday I had the chance to sit down and chat with Nick about his fast line around T-Hill. He said something that really rang true..."You know Gary, you've gotta drive this place like it's a rad country road"....how true it is.

Well someone emailed this picture to me today shot I believe on Thurday's test day. Looks like a country road for sure. Bottom of T5 with windmill in background.

Congrats Nick, hope you can find time to make it to the June Sprints.

GH

[Richard Dziak]

Gary:

Great photo.....looks like your out for a Sunday drive.

I have added it to the F1000 owner/drivers gallery

http://formulaf1000classfbracecarownerd.shutterfly.com/

If you have any other photos lets add them to the site. The gallery is 100% F1000.

Anyone else got quality photos?

Send them so I can build the F1000 owner/driver gallery.

It's looking good. The best selection of F1000 photos on the internet.

[Matt Conrad]

Congrats to Dustin on a pretty decent "Shake Down" weekend. Despite some typical new car "teething problems", MJ had the new Phoenix in front of Nick Woodman on Sunday.
For Dustin and the Phoenix crew to have the new car debuted at a Double National event over 14 hours from home, and to be right with the most developed Stohr F1000 in the country, says much about the crew, Dustin, MJ, and the cars' potential.

FYI.....for all you new to the F1000 scene....Nick Woodman has been running his car extensively over the past 2 years and probably has more laps and development than any other F1000's out there. It doesn't hurt that he can drive too....

I look forward to seeing the new Phoenix in action back here in Phoenix soon....and hopefully someday I'll get a chance to check it out from the driver perspective....unfortunately our season ends next weekend and I'll probably have to wait until it cools off (yes...it is already right around 90 degrees here) in the fall.

Matt Conrad

[Wright D]

The Phoenix F1k.09 had an excellent first outing. We had not run the car at all before Mark drove it at Thunder Hill, so we knew we would have to sort out a few issues.

Mark and I had discussed how we were going to handle the shake down. We had decided that he would do one slow lap, like 50%, then he would come into the pit lane so I could pull the body work off and inspect the car. After looking over the car, Mark was to slowly step up the speed to 100%. That is what I THOUGHT we had discussed. Mark did the first lap at like 85%, he ran the following laps at 100% straight away. Five laps out and we were under the old track record.

We did not encounter the first bug until the last practice session on Thursday. The engine seemed to be hitting a false rev limiter at high RPM's. We though it was an electrical problem, so we went through the entire wire harness, and changed both the crank and cam sensors. As it turns out, it was actually a fuel problem. After the first race we found that fitting on the inside of the fuel cell had come loose, making the engine run out of fuel at high RPM and load.

The second problem I caused. I put the wrong rear sprocket on and screwed up our last qualifying effort of the weekend.

During the last race of the weekend the left rear wheel nut came loose, Mark slowed down to prevent the wheel from coming off the car entirely. Nick hit the rear attenuator of our car, punching a hole into the nose of the Stohr, and spinning Mark off the track.

Hopefully Mark can give you guys some feedback from a drivers stand point. From a car builders point of view, I am pleased with our debut effort. Mark and I can't wait to run the car again as we both know it is going to pick up speed quickly.

I would like to give a BIG THANK YOU to all of the people that helped us out this weekend. Phoenix Race Works is a team effort, thanks again everyone.

[GoPro]

It was great having Gary and Mark out to flog the F1000s. It was a beautiful weekend, perfect conditions...and the brotherhood was strong.

Congrats to Gary on the achievement of building and driving his own car...it looked terrific, Gary. Now get some burlier rod ends!! :-)

And Mark Jaremko and the Phoenix crew, you guys were hauling the mail. I can't wait to race with you guys again...come to Infineon end of this month! Let's tangle!

Per Mark and my getting together...it was a total bummer but a part of racing. Mark got by me as I was battling grip from fuel draining out of the leading WF1 in front of me and then as I chased Mark he suffered a loosening wheel nut. Lesson learned, NEVER get off line, even for fear of going off track from lubcricants (!), if you've got Jaremko on your tail. He will eat you alive. You've been warned.

A couple of laps later I was hoping to train him through T5 when he slowed all of a sudden because of the sketchy loose wheel nut and there was nowhere to go as we were already on top of each other. Thankfully, Mark is a class act and he and I had a good laugh about it. I was so fired up to race with him...and am even more impressed with him now that I've met him in person. A guru of speed and a classy guy, to boot.

I've got a back to back 1:41.16 and 1:41.15 video of Thunderhill I'll post and send the link to for anyone that wants to see how rad that track is. Figuring out the last .18 to get to 1.40.97 is up to you! Good thing I was running a GoPro so I can go back and figure out how to hopefully do it again! :-)

Long live F1000 - GoPro (Nick)

[Tony Moore]

anyone take any photos from the weekend?

There were pics taken. I am waiting for the CD to arrive. Too many pics to email and probably too large to post on APEX without editing them. I'll post a few as soon as I can.

Tony Moore Edge Engineering

[kmt63]

alright tony.thanks for thinking of use on the forum.also a big thanks to all the great reports.

[Stan Clayton]

I've got a back to back 1:41.16 and 1:41.15 video of Thunderhill I'll post and send the link to for anyone that wants to see how rad that track is. Figuring out the last .18 to get to 1.40.97 is up to you! Good thing I was running a GoPro so I can go back and figure out how to hopefully do it again! :-)

Long live F1000 - GoPro (Nick)

Please post the link here, Nick. I'm confident there are lots of folks who'd like to see them!

[GoPro]

OK...the two laps shot on the Motorsports HERO WIDE camera are up. This is the GoPro F1000 during a practice session at Thunderhill. Times were 1:41.16 and 1.41.15 resepectively. The next session a couple hours later in the day we got down to a 1:40.97.

Special thanks go to Mark Jaremko who, unbeknownst to him, taught me a couple of things as I followed him during the practice session the day before. Good think I had my camera running to review it in time for this session and qualifying :-) Thanks Mark!

Here you go, it's the main video on the homepage:
http://www.goprocamera.com

Hopefully this video can help those new to Thunderhill...come out and race. It is an amazingly sweet track.

Hi5 - GoPro Nick

[glenn cooper]

Whoa. LOVE that up and over blind crest.
Pretty tidy drivin' there, Nick.
Thanks for the viewage.
GC

[Stan Clayton]

Great job, Nick...both with the video and with the driving.

Though I am sure you can see where you left several tenths on the table...

[GoPro]

Great job, Nick...both with the video and with the driving.

Though I am sure you can see where you left several tenths on the table...

For sure! You can always find time when reviewing video. The camera on the air intake gives you that "knowledge" because you actually see a heckuva lot more than you do slammed down low in the driver seat. Thunderhill is blind in T3, T5, T9, and T10...so the camera on the intake helps a TON seeing up and over the turn during video review. There's heaps left. What I learned from watching these laps helped me drop .18 seconds in the next session.

I think we could have broken into the 39s with an absolute ringer, full commitment, damn the torpedos lap where we just stuck everything. Consistently do-able? Hmmm...we'll see!

[mjaremko]

What a great track!, I agree with Gary, it would be a great place to host the Runoffs.

Dustin and I arrived Wednesday night and we got busy making a bead seat and getting the pedals adjusted etc. While I was sitting in the car waiting for the seat to cure I noticed I wasnt feeling too well, by morning I definitley had picked up a flu bug.
We took the car out for its maiden laps Thursday afternoon right after lunch, it felt solid right out of the box and after 4 or 5 laps we were in the 44's. Towards the end of the day the engine developed a misfire that seemed to be getting progesively worse the longer we ran it. So all we ended up doing for the first practice, qualy and race was work on solving that problem, it turned out to be a loose fuel fitting in the fuel cell. O.k., now were ready to start going harder,...............now were over on sound . We get that sorted and are ready for the final qualy with the car re-geared and two mufflers !!
When I get on track the car seems a bit sluggish and I cant get sixth gear on the front straight, I finally realize that instead of lowering the gearing Dustin must have accidentally installed higher gearing. We confirm that in the pit lane and get it sorted for the 2nd race.
The 2nd race started off great, moved up a couple of spots at the start and slotted in behind Perry Richardson in his DSR, Nick was just ahead of him in the leading F1000. The car felt better than ever now and I wanted to try and catch Nick. Perry finally got by Nick, now the battle was on. Nick was very quick around T-Hill and was setting lap records all weekend long, he seemed to be struggling a bit now though and I was able to sneak by him down the front straight. I was out front for a couple of laps when exiting turn two the car developed a big push and I put two tire off on the exit, I wasnt quite sure what was going on but now I was struggling, three turns later Nick was close and setting up a pass when he misjudged and ran into the back of me sending me spinning off the track. I got out and upon inspection found that the left rear wheel was very loose.

All in all it was a great first time out for Dustin and his new Phoenix F1000. The car is a front runner right out the box and I'm sure it will develope into the car to beat in F1000, cant wait to get back in the seat and go again with all we have learned so far.

mj

[GoPro]

Here's the correct link to the GoPro fastlap video at Thunderhill...the old link stopped wokring, sorry:

http://vimeo.com/3844959

Thanks! - GoPro