Speed World Challenge - Sebring

[usbikepro]

Hey guys it's been a while since my last post but we've got a brand new season and I figured if you guys still want to listen to my rambling I'll keep you updated.

I could say "Man that was a great effort" or "Hey, that's racing" but I'm going to be honest and say, "That sucked!" Qualifying 12th, but come game time getting a great start and battling for 5th, 6th and 7th before losing the tranny with 7 to go. I've said it before and I'll say it again "That sucked!"

Ok now that I've got that off my chest all in all it wasn't such a bad weekend. Jeremy, who is my new crew chief after taking over from Dax did a great job in helping get the 3R Racing/ Motorsports Gallery/ Dodge SRT4 working well over the infamous Sebring bumps. For those of you who have never been to Sebring before it started it's life as an airport and the track is actually parts of the old runways and taxiways. That sounds pretty cool but in reality airport runways are not built to the same specs as most of the tracks we race on, in fact I think the guy who designed it is the same guy who oversaw the torture chamber for Attalla the Hun. Those bumps make Sebring a nightmare track for the SRT-4's for a couple of reasons.

First off on the suspension set up side of things, we have to run spring rates that are off the charts (higher rates than the Vipers) because we don't run a front sway bar and we need the stiff springs to support the car in the corners. This makes it tough over the bumps because if we lower the rates the car rolls but if we keep the rates we usually run the car bounces. We chose roll over bounce.

The second thing that the bumps do is make it impossible for a FWD car to get power to the ground, because out of T1 and T17 any time I would try to go to throttle all I would get is wheel spin as I watched the Bimmers and Audi's walk away from us. The other thing that I find tough about Sebring is that the grip levels vary so much over the course of the day and unlike Bo Bo I have maybe 10 days at Sebring and I have no idea what the grip level is going to be a any given time. Also I noticed that the grip varies from corner to corner and it took me forever to figure out what grip was where. For example because of the low grip in the brake zone to the hairpin I was over estimating my braking point by a dozen meters or so for the first few sessions and it was driving me nuts (as I was bouncing through the Florida scenery). Even worse the surface into the other corners varied almost as much so Sebring is a track were you really have to find your brake points and hit them consistently. Oh, then, the night before the race, Mother Nature thought that she would remind us all who is boss and dumped half of the Atlantic Ocean on the track and completely eliminate all of the grip that the track had been building all week.

The funny thing about that storm was that Sebring is usually the biggest spring break party anywhere with up to 250,000 fans showing up every spring. This year for the first time in history there were no arrests!!! The county Sheriff thought the reason was that most party goers were to busy searching for their tents (which were probably blown to Cuba in the storm. I mean how well do you really think drunk college students secure their tents? Beer. Tent. Beer. Tent. You get the picture) to cause any problems.

Qualifying went reasonably well in that looking at data I only made two small errors that cost me less than .2 seconds and all that would have gained me was one position. As it was I ended up 12th on the grid. 11th would have been a bit better as Sebring is a track that you definitely want to start on the inside as there is always a bottleneck at T3 and if you are on the outside there you can lose 2 or 3 spots while waiting, at a complete stop, for traffic to clear.

As it was I got a solid start and picked up 4 spots on lap one. One of those was at the expense of James Clay in the BMW as he tried to close the door into T3 I had my nose firmly stuck on his inside. When he tried to defend the line, my splitter punctured his tire. Sorry buddy.

As the race got on I was in a battle for 5th (Herr/ Audi), and 6th (Srofronas/ BMW). I would gain on the BMW on the back section but out of T17 he would pull me by 3 or 4 lengths as his RWD hooked up on bumps at the exit. All the while 8th (Cresintini/ Audi) was never more than .5 seconds back. Now Dino is a really good driver but he also has the ability to put in a blazing lap when he needs to. So for the first 8 or 9 laps I was putting pressure on Srofronas and was able to keep Dino just far enough back that I didn't have to defend much and keep up my pace. However on lap 9 Dino gets this great drive through T17 and gets right on my bumper. When I looked back and he was right there and caught me off guard and I lost a bit of time through T3-5 and Dino was able to get underneath me going into the hairpin. However the good news was that I was able to get my spot back a few turns later when Dino went wide into T10 but the bad news was that I lost 2 positions as I went wide as well. I'm not exactly sure what it was but something was dropped on the track that made it slicker than snot and the marshals hadn't thrown the debris flag.

Unfortunately none of that mattered a few laps later when my gearbox gave up the ghost and left me with only 5th gear to pedal around with. Now as strong as the motor in my SRT4 is there was no way I could pull around that track with only 5th, so I parked it and called it a day. When we got the car back to the shop and pulled the box apart it turned out that the syncros were shot. I am actually really impressed with that box which is basically a stock box, and has endured 6 races and several long test sessions with me flat shifting the whole time. That is some serious stress that I'm sure that the original designers never meant for that box to go through.

Congrats to Bo Bo for his double in the AMLS Lites races which I had a chance to watch from T1. (BoBo isn't lying when he said that they were inches apart into the corner. Man! ) Also it was great to have Randy Buck and Jon Morley stop by and shoot the breeze for a bit. Also thanks to Lonnie Pecnick for giving Randy, Todd and I a tour of the Flying Lizards AMLS padock set up. I thought that 3R's World Challenge set up was pretty sweet but we've got nothing on the Lizard's.

Anyway once again thanks to the whole 3R crew for working their butts off to give me the best possible car for the weekend. We've got 2 months to pick up the pace before Miller in May. Thanks for reading.

[dalyduo]

Great report Robb. Thanks for sharing. No pictures? Good luck at Miller!

[usbikepro]

Originally Posted by dalyduo

Great report Robb. Thanks for sharing. No pictures? Good luck at Miller!

Here ya go!