Nice to see the road racing guys getting down to some serious action!

Thanks to Phil for letting me know about this extension of the forum. (I'm a little slow at times...)

With some luck I'll get to see some of you at Vegas and hopefully you guys will be having a ball out on the track.

I'm going to poke around that race series deal a bit more and see if there's something I can do for some contingency support. Pads, rotors, whatever.

Keep up the good work.

 

Glad to see some NASA talk here. I posted about NASA in the 5280/Rockies section and didn't get any responses. I see 1/2 dozen Minis on the road everyday but... I'm starting to think nobody here wants to drive them fast.


For reference, here is NASA RockyMountains schedule. All events will have HPDE and TimeTrials. March is the only date w/o racing:

March 11/12 - Pueblo
May 20/21 - Miller Motorsports Park (Salt Lake City)
June 10/11 - LaJunta
July 23 - Pueblo
August or October?? - Hastings (Nebraska)

The May Miller date will also feature BMWCCA running with NASA. This will also be everybody in the CO/UT area's chance to meet USTCC Mini "Star Dirver" Rich Peterson!!!

 

I might add, the new directors of the NASA Rocky Mountian, David and Revkah Balingit are really great people and are always willing to help newbies. For those of you who have not heard of NASA, National Auto Sports Association, this is a great organization. Their HPDE classes are well put together with safety always first. When I started driving on the track again after a long spell off the track, (30 years), NASA was the group I joined. If you only want to track your car with a first rate group visit one of the NASA regions. You can move up to Time Trials then Wheel to Wheel racing at the pace you want and with lots of fun.

The MINI's are a blast on the track. You'll find that the first time out you'll be one of the fastest cars on the track. You'll find some cars faster but those cars cost 2 to 3 times what a MINI costs.

For those in the Rocky Mountian area and want track time join NASA and go to the events held. Find Dave and ask for his help.

 

Unfortunatly NASA is a little weak up here in the northeast.

 

Greg
Did you get my email on PDA and NASA joining together in the N/EAST. I think you'll see a lot more events by us now.

 

I agree hope the merger with PDA will improve NSAS-NE, I had a great year with NASA-MA at VIR, Summit Point, and Shenandoah. hope to be there again in 06

 

Real reason in clip 1 below

Clip 2 should help you decide, Too much weight in the rear

 

Laguna Seca short HPDE videos :

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ad.php?t=57244

 

Pics of the MINI Racers at Laguna:

 

Is that pole car Randy Webb?

 

Greg, he's in the 2 spot. For me, the give-away is the lower grille being out, and if you look closely in the scoop, you'll see red (Gintani manifold/IC)...

 

Tony, is not that the #1, "pole", position? Isn't the first turn a this track a left?
Didn't see the IC until you mentioned it. It looks as if an oil cooler is occupying the open bottom grill.

Looks like fun! We don't have that kinda fun out here.... (also about 2 degrees right now )

 

The first turn *is* to the left, so I'd think that Randy was the pole.

 

Greg, interesting... at first look, it appeared that all 3 cars were lined-up together, in a row. But now that I look again, that other red MCS is off to the side. So, Randy did have the pole. Sorry about the confusion...

Laguna Seca is like 40 minutes from my home... If you are ever open to the idea of re-locating, there's some land here in the canyon . Seriously, though, if interested, I'd help ya homestead!

 

Indeed (left). And I believe it's called the Andretti Hairpin.

 

The area around Laguna Seca is beautiful. I wish I could move there!

 

Some of the best stretches of road are in that area, Highway J1, Highway 25, Jolon Road, Highway 58, Highway 198, not to mention Highway 1.

 

Actually, that's the pit lane.
Maybe pre-grid, so Randy would be in Pole position

Would like to hear more: who was in the line up, how they started (IE standing or rolling), lap times and finish.

Someone had to have a camera on-board.

 

The better question Mickey is .... why where you not there?

 

If I remember correctly, the red car to the left of Randy's was the pace car belonging to Dave from the Phil Wick's Academy. They ran one pace lap and then got the green flag.

 

I would of been there if I could. Maybe next year with Phil Wicks.
Anyway, next month there will be (4) track days at Laguna

We're so spoiled here in the West Coast Bay Area - year round track events!

Looks like there were only about 10 or 12 cars in the race.

Not sure if there were transponders on board or how they kept score.
Did a search on http://mylaps.com/ and did not find any Laguna 12/14/05 races.

Who won?

 

A brief description of the race, i was there and took those pics of the starting line-up:

First, qualifying times were gathered the first 2 or 3 times out in Group 1 for the 10 racers ... Not too fun for those of us who were just going around the first 20 minutes to learn the track and get a feel of a borrowed car

The line-ups were based on those times and it was a rolling start, as stated above, behind the pace car pictured... Randy was on the pole with times of ?

The corvette race prepped car was 10th and the original MINI race prepped car was 3 or 4. The start was uneventful and Randy held and pulled a good lead on the other cars, till the Vette chased him down and it was a 2 car race for the finish, the Vette snuck by him on the straight and he chased hard ... The vette almost went off, had 2 wheels off, spit up dirt and debris onto the track and Randy at turn 3, a couple laps later Randy limped up the staright and into the pit row, a broken-shred up belt, "it's only a 15%" he said, thought maybe debris went up and got in the belt, from the Vette.

One other JCW car limped off, a victim of poor engineering on his front mounted "CF intercooler thingy" ... The Vette went on to win, much to our dismay, The real race then became the Original MINI chasing down the stickered Arizona MINI and PASSING him !!! to win the MINI race

 

Hey guys, I think you are confused on some of the aspects of the race. I qualified 7 for the race(the Dark Silver car with the aero grill and big neon green WebbMotorsports decal on the side), and won the JCW/210hp class, so I participated in the whole thing. There was a racer only practice in the morning (first run group), then racer practice throughout until 10:30 when the racer group (12 cars originally) ran there qualifying laps. Randy did qualify for the pole position, and would have taken first in unlimited if not for the belt failure(which we are still trying to figure out, we think a rock got jammed in the belt when the vette lost it and almost went into the dirt). Yes, we used transponders (the current SCCA spec version) to keep lap times. I was turning 1:52's with stock brakes and street tires... Kind of sucked against big brakes and r-compounds. Who took the picture of the staging? I wish there where more pictures of me , but those are really nice.

 

Brian, thanks for chiming-in with more info. So, does Randy have any video (with audio)? If so, I'm sure you guys have watched it a few times trying to figure-out what exactly happened...

 

No confusion ... just details are scarce, fill us in please
Yes, Randy had video