Lateral-g Forums - Bye bye GT3 RSs, chased around a 1972 Porsche RSR

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Awesome I enjoyed the videos and pictures....Thanks for posting.

Awesome Dane! Thank you very much for sharing this with us. Every time I see videos or pictures of your track trips it makes me nuts, because I want to go do it too!

That RSR is a really cool car. I would love to take a few laps in that too!

I am hoping there will be a NW get together this spring here. I will have to go get a rental to beat on since my car is not done. But that Caddy gives me some ideas......:unibrow:

Thanks again, I hope to see the Mini in one of these videos soon.

Awesome Dane. Thanks for posting the vid and pics, always look forward to seeing the track experiences. :thumbsup:

Great stuff!

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but seems like its got the right people for the answer. Do you need your SCCA license to go to track days like this? Have been thinking of finishing up racing school to get a license, but its $$$$. Do you need it for these type of events?

Quote:

Originally Posted by BC69 (Post 275039)

No, so therein lies some of the risk in running with open clubs. However, they will want to know your experience upfront and will make you start in the "slow" group for lack of a better word. These guys run 3 groups and many race clubs have similar format - slow, med and fast group. Often you will hear the flag colors used so blue group will typically be newbies or slow cars (you can be Mario but show up in a Civic daily driver and likely won't be allowed in the Red group), the while group (or often times the other color is yellow group) is the mid roaders, and the red group is the fast stuff. So Jack in BB2 would normally run in the red group, but as with anything, the better you are, the more you are allowed to run in whatever group you want, so I have used blue group stuff to get some testing on my setup changes in between red group sessions, then hit the red group hard, or have another opportunity to change setup while white/yellow is running.

Lots of words, but hopefully that pre-answers some other FAQs regarding this type of event.

NOW, if you go to an open track day at the race track itself, not with a specific group at that track, just track mgmt, then those are straight dangerous to be honest, but I run them all the time. :cool: Dangerous because they tend to be not too concerned about skill, etc and there tends to not be a set grouping with those, just hit that track and see what happens. I have had some hairy stuff happen at those events, like a newb running off the line, etc and I assume it is to let people by, I am rolling 150mph in the stretch and all of a sudden they just come on line. That has happened twice now so I am way way cautious running those days now. First time I figured it was just an idiot, second time I start to fear patterns with newbs and why I now highly recommend a newbie actually taking classes with SCCA and paying the money - it is safer because they actually one on one assess your skills and can help you fix bad tendencies before they become bad habits. :thumbsup:

Dane great video!!.Now I am going too the garage & sit in my camaro and see the motor will start that's all I can do.You guys in cali have all the good weather.It hasen't stopped raining for a week.:( :mad:

Quote:

Originally Posted by rogue (Post 274763)

constantly. There are tons of groups out there that run.

So far I've run with speedventures and this new (to me) group Open Track Racing. They book track time and you pay a portion of the rental, usually around $200, sometimes as low as $120. Bigger tracks like Laguna Seca can cost up to $300...

Look at the schedules of the tracks you want to drive on and find organizations running and contact them to see if they'll let you run.

The two I have mentioned are both great groups, but Open track racing defitely is a lot more laid back and fun. Kailo is an AWESOME guy and so is his wife. Every single person I met was nice as all can be.

Speedventures is a great group as well, but these are both CA based track run groups. Open track racing lets instructors run for free as long as they volunteer to instruct which is awesome. Speedventures charges.

I'm def gonna look into that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by byndbad914 (Post 275089)

Great info Tim. Answered a lot of my questions there. Thank you.

Dane- The pictures are nice and clear and with the suspension in as much compression as it is I can tell you were doing a fair click on the track. I dig the helmet!:thumbsup:

Eight months later -- I just found this thread. I hope no one minds it I bump it back up.

Here's the odd thing. The Car Craft photographer who was out that day is also the guy who just wrote up my garage for the magazine's 'This Guy's Garage' section in their April issue.

How often do you get to see a 38-year-old 911 in Car Craft? :thumbsup:

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/4...tiveangle1.jpg

I was looking at late-sixties Camaros when I found my 911 eleven years ago. I ended up with the Porsche for a few different reasons, but I still think the first-generation Camaro is maybe the best-looking American car ever.

I still watch that video Dane shot. It's fun to see my own car on the track, but I swear he has to brake sometimes to keep from rear ending me on the straights. :willy:

Let me start my list of excuses. I was down pretty significantly on horsepower that day -- basically running on five cylinders after the rings gave up on cylinder #1. The engine had been in the car for ten years and was on its last legs. Oh, and I'm not allowed to pass any cars in that group if they don't give me a hand signal -- and I'm not allowed to pass in the corners at all.

I swapped a new (used) engine into the Porsche in August. The new one should make about 20 more horsepower. But we're still talking pretty modest numbers -- officially, Porsche says they got 272 at the crank from the 1995 air-cooled flat six I now have in my 1972 tub.

The license plate on the car is '1972 RSR,' but that's a kind of inside joke. 1972 was the last year that Porsche didn't make an RSR model. The first time it existed was in 1973 -- and those cars sell for over a million bucks now.

Mine is a plain old 1972 base-model 911. But I've put in an engine from a 1995 911, a magnesium transaxle from a 1977, and brakes from the 1986 Turbo model. The car is pretty light -- 2700 pounds with me in it. So it doesn't take a huge amount of power to get it around the track quickly.

It's not a track car, per se -- it's a daily driver that's got a cage and fire system in it (mostly because I crashed the previous version at Laguna Seca and figured my 'walked away without a scratch card' had been used up). For actual racing, I'd get rid of all the interior amenities and put in a fuel cell.

I drive this car to the track and run it on the same tires I use for driving around town.

For Willow Springs, I bolt on a wing and front spoiler. They fit inside the car for the ride home, but make the car a lot less scary going through turns 8 and 9. I made all the aero stuff in my garage -- the rear wing is just 3M structural adhesive and aluminum flashing that's made for roof repairs. I tested it with wool tufts and ride-height sensors from a 1995 Lincoln Continental's air ride system.

Here's the way the car looks all done-up for a fast lap at Willow:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1296668662.jpg

And if anyone wants to see what an entire driving session looks like, here's a full video from the last time I was at Willow, two weeks ago. There's not enough traffic to make for very entertaining viewing, but watching it will give you a (repeated) snapshot of the driving line for Willow.

My best lap time with the old engine (in its prime) was a 1:29.11. I still haven't gotten back there, even with the 20 extra horses. I blame the arrival of my first kid on that. My self-preservation instinct has slowed me down. But this video shows a bunch of 1:30s and a couple of 1:29s, so I'm getting closer to my pre-Daddy speeds.

Dane, you should come back out. Open Track Racing is back at Willow in March. I'd be happy to take you out in my car or ride along in yours. I can tell you what I know about the oldest and fastest* road course in North America.

*Oldest purpose-built course that's been continuously operated, and fastest in terms of average lap speed.