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The Marathon Coach Sebring 14 hour


Aleru

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What an thrilling race with a battle for 1st place lasting the full 14 hours!

 

Congratulations to Team 225 KSR/Flatout Racing for a hard fought Victory!

 

And a huge thank you to all the Corner Workers, safety team, and staff at Sebring International Speedway that helped keep our Race safe, fun and running smoothly, and to all the Teams who came out here to make this event as much fun as it was.

The Race Results are in!

They can be found online at:

https://speedhive.mylaps.com/Events/1595947

And you can download Lap times and Results from Google at:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qsE2dpn-YJwa5lVRyYu4aYOh2QG6GOWc
Safe Travels Home.

Edited by Aleru
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4 hours ago, Team Infiniti said:

Rather then pollute with a new thread...

 

Early race 3 car crunch/spin, apologies in advance for camera placement.

 

Good job KSR and everyone else on jackstands after the race!

 

 

 

that video is titled 2019.... YOU KNOW THE FUTURE!??!?!  

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I want to give a giant THANK YOU!  to the guys at Backwoods racing.  They helped us not only before the race even started, but during the race after some minor contact and we completely lost a headlight.  They drove some of our guys to there shop and gave us a headlight assembly out of a parts car they had.  

 

We got it installed on a pitstop just before the rain came.

 

Our Cobra exceeded our expectations for its first race and we learned some lessons for having a new car.  Unfortunately a left rear brake caliper failure took us out of the race around hour 12.  We'll be back for the Sebring double 7s and the car will be even better, thanks to everyone who helped us even if was just someone to rant to #hoodgate2018

IMG_20180923_165153.jpg

Edited by MoparBoyy
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I would check in periodically throughout the day and evening. I think at one time early on the top 10 cars were within 5 laps of each other - that's under 15 minutes I think, so just have even a minor problem and you were out of the top 10. It seemed to me that the race may have been a lot closer than just the #1 and #2 cars, but I might be wrong. 

 

We'll be out at Sebring in December racing on a friend's team, so mebbe I'll meet some of you nutcases. 

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6 hours ago, Team Infiniti said:

Rather then pollute with a new thread...

 

Early race 3 car crunch/spin, apologies in advance for camera placement.

 

Good job KSR and everyone else on jackstands after the race!

 

 

 

What in the actual hell?

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I want to thank Sub Par racing for helping us out with the part we needed to repair our clutch arm connection.

I also need to thank REI Racing for lending us their welder , allowing us to fabricate a shifter to repair ours that snapped off .

    We used a shock absorber bolt welded to a 17/19mm MAC Tools box end wrench.

It works Great!

Our race would have been over without the help of our fellow racers.

FF1E01F0-891A-4D54-BD1C-355353EC135F.jpeg

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Had a good ole time this weekend. Our car was way more sorted out this race than at Daytona earlier this year. I think we've mostly got the aero and suspension sorted, but now we're off to eating brake pads. We've never used a full set in a single race before, but we went through two full sets yesterday. 

 

Another new one - completely pulverized a cv joint... Ball bearings all gone. Took us less time to replace the axle than to change the brake pads... A bit less heat involved. 

 

One notable incident involved getting punted from behind in turn seventeen. Anyone else notice the torn up grass on the inside of the corner?  Some of that is still stuck in our tire bead. Also, got ran off track a couple times by that EC Honda accord who was driving like they were the only car entitled to any track space.  Everyone else managed to power passed them on the straights but we just don't have that sort of acceleration.

 

Will have more videos later but here's a lap with aforementioned accord:

 

 

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Blowing out a CV axle at the end of the main straight.  Driver could only get grindy noises when trying to move, was scared we'd lost the clutch or trans.  Just the axle and we were back on the track:

 

 

 

Got smacked from behind and spun in turn 17.  Curious if we were in the wrong here.  Of course, we don't think so, but we're happy to get some input about what y'all think:

 

Edited by krispykritter
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9 minutes ago, krispykritter said:

Got smacked from behind and spun in turn 17.  Curious if we were in the wrong here.  Of course, we don't think so, but we're happy to get some input about what y'all think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNUGr0F0CVA&t=3s

 

Hard to tell really since the mirror and the camera don't line up good...  looks like the camera car driver took a wide high entrance to the turn and then made a slow arc to driver's right / apex of the turn.  I think it really depends on whether the second car which we don't see was already there, or was easing up behind you guys, or maybe it was a faster car and could not re-act because the way that corner is, with the dips and the speed some cars can carry through there, it can be hard to change direction and not wreck yourself, the second driver may have been praying that whole time that driver 1 was going to get going in the right direction.  I'd say we need a second camera, not enough to tell.  

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Running Bulls race report.

 

We came into this race with decent expectations based on our finishes this year of just outside the Top 10. While we didn’t finish as high as we would have liked, where we finished after our issue left us high-five’ing after the race. 
 
Mike Merrill began the race about 17th and dropped about 20 spots just due to we aren’t setup to go “balls out”, but the consistent 2:50’s in traffic started us back up to the mid 20’s by the time the first caution flew. Somehow we were lucky enough to catch it just right and not drop any spots. 
 
Our guest driver, Arjun was next in with a lot of e30 and Sebring driving experience. He immediately picked up 5 spots due to other cars pitting and started clicking off mid 40’s and with the exception of a spin due to contact by one of the KSR cars(he believes...) in turn 16, his stint was uneventful with a team FTD of 2:42.9. He brought the car in on the next FCY in 9th place. 
 
Michael Bulls was next to get in and continued pacing the car in the mid 40’s and picking cars off until he reached the Top 5. We were ecstatic and everything was looking good until we heard on the radio that he was coming in with a mechanical issue. He heard something bounce under the car twice coming down the back straight. The car made it to the pits with water spewing out of the overflow. A quick diagnosis found the water pump belt had been thrown off somewhere down the back straight. We hurried to find our spare belt and began the repair. Based on the newer style hose routing we were forced to take a little longer to make it than we wanted, that and we had never practiced that, we got it done in approximately 25 minutes. After checking the fluid level, fueling the car and getting the next driver in we were now down in 38th place. 
 
Andrew was now in the car and the slow trudge back up the order began. With the mid 40’s continuing and other than a quick trip in the pits to check the splitter after a forced off on the inside of the hairpin, he was able to pick up 7 spots bringing the car in in 31st place. 
 
Mike Merrill got back in with the threat of thunderstorms rolling in and an uneventful stint picking up 4 more spots.
We decided to pit a little early before the storm rolled in and do our fueling and get Michael Bulls back in. Then the yellow and reds were thrown. 
 
With 4.5 hours left, we decided to split the remaining time between the 3 drivers unless strategy caused us to change.
Michael Bulls got back in with the track wet and rolled off laps to bring the car in in 21st place with no issues.
At 8:00, we brought the car for Arjun to get his second stint. Everything was going well while still running 21st until he was hit with a PUY just before the 9:00hour. We made a quick decision after he said he was stopping for driver change if we were ready. After a slightly slower stop Andrew was back on track just after the 9:00. The goal was to make it to the end. He spent the first hour and a half trying to push the car and the team FTD. Traffic was just enough that he ended up just off of it. The fuel light came on solid at 10:35, so it was then a matter of saving fuel with lowered rpm, drafting to get us to the end. He crossed the finish line in 18th place and the car sputtered twice on the cool down lap. 
While not the finish we were hoping for, it was what we thought well deserved with the mechanical issue we had. We are knocking on the door of Top 5 and had it not been for that, we would have been fighting those teams for it.
 
Disclaimer: KSR is a great group of guys in our eyes and we don’t have our videos yet, so not placing blame on them for the contact. With several different lines through there it could have easily just been a “racing deal”. 
Edited by jakks
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We had a blast, especially starting the race in 49th place and moving up to 10th in the first 30 minutes! Lost fuel pressure and after changing fuel pump(wasn't the problem), re-routing fuel lines(vapor lock? NO!), and filter(no!). WAIT, what is THAT in the old filter? See? Crap, that's fuel cell foam!! Pulled off new rear window, tank cap  and started removing ROTTEN foam! Blew out lines, found a new filter in Lake Placid and had a friend in Lakeland bring us new foam blocks. About the time we were ready to go back on track the "lightening red flag" came out. Our car is NOT good on a wet track so we waited awhile for the track to get dried out. From there on the Camaro was flawless. Until I ran out of fuel 1 minute from the checkered flag. 

The foam was replaced last year but I guess letting fuel sit in the tank for eight months isn't a good thing. I'm a dumb ass...

 

Does anyone know what happened to the fast Camaro that led the beginning of the race?

 

Special thanks to the wrecker crew for towing us in 4 or 5 times !! 

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1 hour ago, Justin9 said:

 

Hard to tell really since the mirror and the camera don't line up good...  looks like the camera car driver took a wide high entrance to the turn and then made a slow arc to driver's right / apex of the turn.  I think it really depends on whether the second car which we don't see was already there, or was easing up behind you guys, or maybe it was a faster car and could not re-act because the way that corner is, with the dips and the speed some cars can carry through there, it can be hard to change direction and not wreck yourself, the second driver may have been praying that whole time that driver 1 was going to get going in the right direction.  I'd say we need a second camera, not enough to tell.  

 

Well, after the spin, we could see an orange mitsubishi go by - so, a significantly faster car than we are (our FTD was a 2:56) assuming the hit came from that car.  I'd like to think if he was going inside to our outside curve, he'd see our driver's arc and plan for it (look like a pretty consistent turn), but who knows.  Our driver never even saw him coming, but it's impossible to say whether he should have (our top speed at the end of the back straight is 108 if we get a perfect run, so a lot of cars are carrying much more speed into turn 17).

 

Either way, not much damage to the car, just cracked our brand-new bumper cover and added another dent to our mangled fender.  Could've been much worse.

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1 hour ago, krispykritter said:

 

Well, after the spin, we could see an orange mitsubishi go by - so, a significantly faster car than we are (our FTD was a 2:56) assuming the hit came from that car.  I'd like to think if he was going inside to our outside curve, he'd see our driver's arc and plan for it (look like a pretty consistent turn), but who knows.  Our driver never even saw him coming, but it's impossible to say whether he should have (our top speed at the end of the back straight is 108 if we get a perfect run, so a lot of cars are carrying much more speed into turn 17).

 

Either way, not much damage to the car, just cracked our brand-new bumper cover and added another dent to our mangled fender.  Could've been much worse.

I haven't driven the track so I can't have in intelligent opinion on fault, but perhaps you should look at a cage-mounted convex mirror on the right hand side so that your driver has a better chance of knowing what is there.  Those factory mirrors are damn near useless when you have a helmet, containment seat, HANS etc.  Those factory mirrors assume you can turn your head a lot more than you can.

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10 minutes ago, Racer28173 said:

I haven't driven the track so I can't have in intelligent opinion on fault, but perhaps you should look at a cage-mounted convex mirror on the right hand side so that your driver has a better chance of knowing what is there.  Those factory mirrors are damn near useless when you have a helmet, containment seat, HANS etc.  Those factory mirrors assume you can turn your head a lot more than you can.

Yeah, the passenger outside mirror is useless, but we do have the wink mirror which does a pretty darn good job of showing us the right hand side of the car.  We added a convex mirror to the driver's side which has increased our visibility on that side.

 

I guess more specifically - I feel it was on the passing car to execute a clean pass unless we did something abysmally stupid.  I can definitely see how we'll pay for not avoiding the passing car, but I spent a lot of time being forced to drive off-line Saturday to avoid certain cars that didn't care whether we were on the line or not...they were coming through regardless of who was in the right.  So - did we do something abysmally stupid?

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8 minutes ago, Team Infiniti said:

It is ALL up to the faster car to complete a safe pass, at no time did your car do anything we considered stupid. Hope you did not feel the urge to move out of our way

 

Never once felt the urge to move out of y'all's way.  Honestly, most of the fast cars also have pretty courteous drivers.  Unfortunately, there seem to be some teams (or drivers) from who I get the impression that they feel us slower teams should feel honored to share the track with them, and believe me, I know which cars those are.

 

Saying that, there are a ton of folks that both let us on our merry way when we caught them, or waved a thanks when we came out of the corner and waved them on by as we lifted off the throttle a little, you guys included.  And the Jacky Ickx guys as well - they always waited to pass until it was safe to do so or we waved them on by.  It's very much appreciated!  What looks like driving miss daisy for some of you fast guys is literally the edge of adhesion (or a little beyond) for our 20 year old family sedan!  We're workin on that...

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