Clubsport Race 3 – Road Atlanta – GTC6
All,
I had not had a chance to write up my race report from Road Atlanta, so now I am finally sitting down to do that. Unfortunately, the story will lose some detail from the amount of time between the race and now.
I need to start with this plug for the PCA Clubsport series. The Clubsport series is for the GTC6, 7 and 8 classes as well as the GTD 1, 2 and 3 classes. This is the 991 and 992 cup cars as well as the Clubsport Caymans. The series hands out some pretty awesome trophies and Demon Speed is looking to help out with some end of the year points trophies, so stay tuned for that. Weekend position is decided based on points for each of the two races with fast lap determining any ties. As soon as I get any of the season points, I will get them posted on demonspeed.com so everyone can see where they are at.
I have talked about my transport trials and tribulations from the other race events, so I figured I would not leave this one out. We left early in the morning on Thursday. Very early. Initially, Waze said that we would be there around 3:30PM and load in was at 5, so we felt that we were in good shape, but as time went on, the time of arrival kept slipping and we started to be concerned that we would not even be able to load in before registration closed. Traffic jam after traffic jam plagued us. We finally arrived with a 30 minutes before registration was to close. I am not going to tell you the specific compromises that needed to be made to achieve the goal, you may fill in the blanks yourself.
To start with, as I mentioned in the VIR write up, I am not that fond of Road Atlanta. It scares me. Too many corners want to kill me. Not everyone, just me. Based on this data, I expected to be slow. Have a nice showing and enjoy the weekend without contact and come home safe. The original roster showed 7 drivers in class, but by race time it was just 4.
I had a tire plan. It was to wring the last of whatever was left from two sets of tires and get a third set mounted up for the 4th Clubsport race in the series, Watkins Glen. What that meant was that I was purposefully handicapping myself so that I would not feel too racy and try too hard and end up in a body cast. I say all of this because the tires and tire strategy played heavily in the weekend.
On Friday the plan was to re-learn the track. The last time I had driven on RA was in 2018 with IGT. This was to be only the third time there with the first being 2013 for the NASA national race. By the time qualifying finished, I was in the mix. Not the lead, but the mix. Of the four of us, I was gridded 3rd behind Keith Clark by less than .1 seconds and in front of David Dunigan by .9 seconds. At that time, I took off the tires that I had finished the races at VIR and put on a set of tires that I spun on at Sebring. The Sebring tires still had plenty of life, but they had crazy tire pickup on them from driving around Sebring in a runoff area. I went out in warmup on Saturday on them to scrub some of the pickup off, with little success. I had not mentioned, TJ Larson was also there. In first place, but something like 3 solid seconds faster than any of us. I felt that I had a plan to maybe take on Keith for 2nd place, but TJ was not even on the table at this point.
The Demon Speed tire warmers were in full swing to prepare the car for the start of the race. The start went well, but I was slower, significantly slower, than qualifying. Everyone was a bit slower, but I was a lot slower. Fortunately for me David Dunigan was also slower, yet omnipresent, so I was able to prevail. However, I lost my grid spot and moved back to 4th in class behind David by .02 seconds. If I had only known.
Between races, we took a look at the tires. I had considered putting that brand new set on, but thought better of it. I looked at the other set I had, but visually the ones on the car were better. We pulled them off to discover that the heavy side of the car still had pickup on it, but the light side had scrubbed all of the pickup off, so rather go to another set of clapped out tires we swapped them from left to right in hopes that the clean tires on the heavy side would do the trick. Back on with the tire warmers.
Rolling down for the second race, I am following David and I see that he is wearing a very nice set of sticker tires. Damn.
At the start of the race, a lane forms on the inside inside of turn 1. There is a train, I moved right of them to run down to turn 2/3 to slot back in. Not only did this allow me to get in front of David, but now also Keith and TJ. For just that moment I am winning the class in GTC6. This would not last long as first TJ and then Keith pass me up. Eventually, David catches up to the back of my car, but Road Atlanta is a difficult track to pass at. Either you have more HP and get the job done in the straight or you need to take some pretty good risks in the corners. I spent the entire rest of the race doing what I could to keep David behind me. This included managing lapped traffic to try to time when a good place for me to pass them would be and to hopefully create a challenge for David as well as being extra careful exiting the corners on to the straights to be sure that I did not slip at all.
The race was green flag from start to finish. The white flag lap was very exciting as in the back straight I stayed in the center as I could see that David had a run on me, so I figured if he was going to get the job done, he would need to do it from the outside. Instead to my surprise, he chose the full inside lane. In the braking zone, I was not as aggressive on the brakes and I wanted to leave David some room which led to me going all the way to the edge of the track before taking the left and then the right. David came out from behind and crisscrossed me and now had a run on the inside. My inexperience with RA showing here, I left him room. Way more than I needed to. So much so that when we came over the hill and I could see where I had set myself up for the run onto the front straight that I could see that I was going to run out of track.
Which is exactly what happened. Three times at Road America. Two times I have driven in that little stretch of grass between the track and the pit wall. But, I kept the car straight, off the wall, and under the starter stand just ahead of David. Funny thing you think about on the cool down lap. I was thinking to myself, well, I hope the timing loop includes the ground between the track and the wall. I had heard that it does not extend into the hot pits like it does in other tracks, so I wonder where it ends.
I really enjoyed my race with David and look forward to our next race. I would be saying this even if I had came in behind him. It was a tough challenge to race against him. We talked after the race, which was great. He could have been more aggressive with me and I would have yielded since he knew the track better and had the better tires. Or he is just the better driver, but time will tell on that one.
There is also a live stream for the event. You can find it HERE, but there are very few chances to see the Demon Speed car since we were not leading overall and it seems that the live stream focused on those racers.
I think the only time you hear my name is when they are calling out all of the racers and when I finished the race in the dirt.
Thanks so much for reading everyone.
