8/22/10 - Here is my NASA ST2 Race at Thunder Hill

[Olitho]

 

NASA ST2 Race at Thunderhill, August 22nd, 2010 on Vimeo

 

Thunderhill CCW with Bypass

 

NASA ST2 Race with SCCA T1 Corvettes and Seven's Only Mazda GT2 race cars.

 

Thanks to Gary Hoffman at HardbarUSA for my fantastic new T1 floating rotor and AP caliper set-up. It worked flawlessly even against the GT2 cars that had over 1000 lbs of weight advantage over my Corvette. Chris Ronson finishes 3rd and he is on HardBarUSA brakes, too.

 

The brakes run strong, but most importantly the pedal stayed firm. Even at the end of the race where I would normally start getting a long pedal due to pad taper there was no such thing. I never had a long pedal on the rougher parts of the track presumably due to the floating rotors and the anti-knock-back springs in the AP calipers. I was impressed with how light the APs are and the machining on the thin-walled stainless steel pistons looked nice and no doubt kept the heat out of the brake fluid. Brake bleeds showed very clean looking fluid as though it had not even be used. The floating rotors have now taken a beating at several brake abusive tracks and the pad wear and heat-cracking is very modest.

 

The brake modulation was very comfortable. After chasing some sway-bar issues that I first thought were brake biasing problems the car became a gem to handle on the stock ABS/proportioning set-up. This video does not show the brake control as well as my Saturday practice, but I was able to get some beautiful high-speed corner entry trail-braking car rotation into the turns. The power of the brakes, the consistent resilency even after 20 minutes of hard use and the predictable modulation made it so much fun to get some rear-end slip angle/rotation coming into the corners. It really inspired confidence compared to the stock T1 Corvette set-up. I am looking forward to the T1 Corvette specific Ferodo pads that are due out soon. That coupled with the new Quantum brake ducting kits and the car will be in top form as far as brakes go.

 

There is a good spin in my rear view mirror on Turn 12 on the last lap as Chris Ronson passes Jon Van Caneghem and then gets bumped. He still finishes third and he had a great run up from the back of the pack. Jon Van Caneghem has a great run and pressures me hard the whole race except for a few laps at the beginning where he is leading.

 

At minute 12:45 I almost throw away the race at Turn 4 as I suddenly think I am in a drifting competition or something! Overall it was not some of my best driving. In fact, I felt like my rhythm was off and I was a little tense compared to Saturday. But I still netted the win and that is not bad for my first ever weekend at this track.

[icemang17]

WOW your car sounds GREAT..... I'm considering building a car for ST2 next year...... Only time will tell.....

[Olitho]

WOW your car sounds GREAT..... I'm considering building a car for ST2 next year...... Only time will tell.....

 

Thanks! Yeah, everyone loves the sound of those LS6 engines.

 

What kind of car do you want to build?

 

 

Oli

[NasaRacerx]

Oli - Great racing you did there. I was in the Trans Am which you pointed by late in the race (Thanks BTW) Very Gentlemanly racing by you!!!

 

Anyhow I was sitting behind you and the 7s only car for a while as the 2 of you were battling it out, and I didn't want to ruin a great race. I have some great footage of the 2 of you racing from my incar cam. Also did the same for the Other T1 Vette as he too was having a great battle. It's a shame he didn't end up with a 2nd, as I saw he was given a bit of a nudge from the vid's

 

 

Here's a link to my race footage....