[Fot] VIR Wild Hare race report

[davehogye]

Wow! Really great drive Tony. Watched the whole thing with a big grin. 
It seems you didn't use over drive. I'm guessing there just wasn't enough straight? 
Man, you really pushed your 4. Excellent. 
Mark impresses me too. Too bad for the mechanical issue. He has a simple and basic, yet very effective approach to racing. He was pretty amazing last year at RA. 


Dave H. 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Drews" <tony at tonydrews.com> 
To: fot at autox.team.net 
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2014 8:48:11 AM 
Subject: [Fot] VIR Wild Hare race report 

Last weekend's race at VIR was another excellent event. We had the 
usual Triumph "Ghetto" set up on top the hill, and had quite a number of 
Triumph folks there. The paddock paving project hadn't made it quite 
that far yet, so I was still able to use the normal tent stakes to hold 
down the canopy - may be the last time for that at VIR, though. The 
Triumph bunch had their usual Friday night party, and it's great to get 
all of the Triumph guys bench racing over a beer or three. The Triumph 
gathering is one of the things that makes that race special. 

The newly repaved track is fast, smooth, and grippy. The esses are still 
FASSTT and a test of your intestinal fortitude. I ended up set up next 
to Randy Williams, Mark Wheatley, and Leo Oddi. We spent a good portion 
of the weekend figuring out carburetion on Mark's car - finally getting 
it right for the Sunday feature race, so he and I had an awesome battle 
in that race - video link below. 

In the Friday afternoon practice, an Elva lost power on an un-sighted 
part of the track forcing Randy to take evasive action and he ended up 
running into the side of Dean Tetterton's TR-4 as he was sliding back 
onto the track surface. Sad to see. Both drivers were able to continue 
the weekend though. 

The Friday afternoon Wild Hare pursuit race was my first chance to run 
the car flat out after a couple of break-in practice sessions. Runs 
really nice, new tranny guts are sweet to use. That race was cut short 
by a lap or two by a couple of S-2000's getting together on the way in to 
Oak Tree (which now doesn't have an actual Oak Tree at the apex due to a 
storm last year). 

In Saturday afternoon's race, with Mark still battling carb issue I 
managed to ease out a nice lead over all of the TR-s in my group, but we 
ended up with a full course caution due to a grass fire outside turn 1 
which closed the field back up. I was napping on the restart and Randy 
managed to get by me as I was blocked by an Aston Martin with 2 laps to 
go. On the last lap, I was kinda closing in on Randy but the same Elva 
that caused the incident on Friday passed me going into turn 1 and then 
proceeded to get all kinds of sideways in the corner. I had a better run 
out of it but he slammed the door on me so I followed him into 2. In 
turn 2, he managed to completely spin. In my avoidance of the Elva, 
Randy got a comfortable lead that lasted until the checkered flag. This 
allowed Leo to close right behind me for the remainder of the last lap. 
Leo used an "insider" trick of knowing that the finish line was 100 yards 
or so from the checkered flag to pass me between the flag and the actual 
finish line. Neat trick that he won't be able to pull again! :) 

By Sunday's race, we had guessed at some better carb settings for Mark 
which turned out to be pretty good. We spent most of the race following 
each other closely, drafting by on the straights, and at one point we 
went through turns 1 and 2 side by side - I edged him on the inside of 
turn 3 to lead through the esses. Unfortunately, dropping oil pressure 
force Mark to ease off for the last couple of laps. I got passed by the 
Aston Martin and tried Leo's trick at the end of the race - but the Aston 
didn't let off enough for me to sneak in that pass. 

I had a hoot, Mark really enjoyed the race with me, the car's running as 
good as ever and I'm good to go for Eagles Canyon. 

In-car video from Sunday group 3 feature race: 
http://youtu.be/8Q5BqfxZGaE 

Tony Drews 
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