[Fot] COTA- Race Report

[chasgee22 at gmail.com]

Sounds like you had a good time Walt.  Sorry I missed out on that trumpet playing!  Looking forward to the videos.

Chuck

> On Nov 10, 2020, at 6:38 AM, walt at hot-tr6.com wrote:
> 
> 
> Just got back from a successful race weekend at Circuit of the Americas. I raced my 1970 TR6 with no mechanical issues whatsoever. The weather was a perfect upper 70s to mid 80s all weekend. SVRA placed me in Group 8 GT while I would have preferred to be in Group 3 where other British car racers I have competed with were. My wife was with me as my umbrella girl and two of my grown children were there to pit crew for me. I found that the best starting tire pressures on my Hoosier TDs were 26 front and 24 rear. I set my 123 ignition at 32 degrees maximum advance while I normally set it at 36 where I live at 5,000 above sea level. I ran all three practice sessions on Thursday the 6th to learn the track. Friday I ran with 41 cars in my group for the two practice races. Within my Group 8 GT class there were only a few cars which some broke and one crashed out so by the Saturday feature race it was just me so I won my class by default. Same thing on Sunday. I kept my revs down to 6K so I would survive the weekend. My best lap time was 2.527 which is respectable for me. The long straight is impressive and you really get going a fast top speed. I kept driving deeper into the braking zone but I was probably on the conservative side. On Sunday I performed a rendition the National Anthem on my trumpet that Chris Botti gave me over the public address system for the crowd and it was a big hit. Sunday afternoon I ran the one hour long Endurance race solo with one pit stop to check tires, fluids and add fuel. My two children did a great job of the pit stop. 36 cars of all Groups and classes ran the Endurance race which made things interesting while I was watching my mirrors for superfast cars to blast past me such as me such as a Ford GT, Lolas, Vipers and Cobras. I had planned on running modest lap times during the Enduro but the red mist hit me and I had an awesome dice the last four laps with a very fast Porsche 356 driven by a father/daughter team. We were side by side through the esses and I could pull a little ahead on the main straight away but on the sweepers we were side by side waiting for the other driver to miss a shift or get a little bit loose but neither one of us slipped up. Going into the last corner (#20) of the last lap we were still side by side with me on the inside. We both drifted through the 90 degree left hander with less then 4 inches between our cars and the Porsche went pretty wide over the second white line. We crossed the finish so dead even I honestly don’t know which of us broke the electronic beam first but neither one of us cared. I have mixed feelings about SVRA. During the feature race on Saturday a BMW 2002 passed me dragging it’s entire exhaust system which was kicking up sparks and debris. I kept pointing it out to the corner marshals for the last two laps but he was never flagged. Also, $550 for the practice day and another $550 for the Endurance seem expensive but I guess that’s the price in the big leagues. The COTA track is awesome and I’m I  can say I have raced there. Overall I had a great weekend.
> I have lots of pictures and GoPro videos to download and edit over the next few days. That will be fun.
> Walter Hollowell
> Albuquerque, New Mexico
> 
> 	Virus-free. www.avg.com
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