Kakashi Racing Shines at the ARRC Championship!
Joe DiMinno and Greg Amy shined at the '07 ARRC at Road Atlanta, with Greg taking fourth place and Joe coming home in seventh.
Greg Amy:
This year's ARRC was working up to be a barn-burner; since we were the defending champions it seemed that all the other competitors were sharpening their knives in anticipation of a feast (did someone paint a bulls-eye on my back?) The field was expected to be world-class, with everybody bringing their "A" game to the table.
The week started out long, since Matt Kessler and I left the week prior to drive down to Virginia International Raceway to participate in the 13 Hour endurance race. I co-drove to a 1st-place finish in ITB, while Matt managed his Miata team to a respectable come-from-behind finish.
The endurance race finished late Saturday night, and we could have easily driven home to Connecticut the next day. However, VIR is roughly 2/3 of the way to Road Atlanta; had we gone home Sunday we would have been forced to turn around the following Tuesday to head south again. So, instead we chose to bring with us to VIR the entire truck, trailer, and Nissan for the ARRC, and we continued southward from there.
So, the next Sunday was a lazy day, with us going back to VIR to assist the endurance teams' packing up, then we followed Cameron Conover to Conover Motorsports World Headquarters in Burlington, SC. We were all beat, so we had an early dinner with Cameron and wife Stephanie and we pretty much crashed in a local hotel early...We got up early on Monday and spent the day at Cameron's shop doing last-minute prep work on the Nissan, finalizing the myriad small details for the upcoming ARRC race. That night we made the final 6 hours' trek southward, arriving at our friend Tim Roger's house in time to go to asleep again...
Tuesday dawned early, and given the free day we decided to spend
some time on the dyno doing some ECU tuning. Our Nashville buddy
Kevin Hart arrived
from Tennessee very late the night before, and we all headed to
DIYAutoTune in Suwanee GA.
Jerry Hoffman has quite the facility there, specializing in pre-configured
MegaSquirt standalone ECUs, and he's got a DynaPack (our preferred dyno). It's an impressive bunch of folks
at DIY and Jerry really
knows his stuff; his tuning skills really came in handy as we worked through eeking
that last bit of power out of the NX2000 with our
CalumSult Real-Time
ECU. In the end we spent six hours on DIY's dyno, learning a lot, and picking up
a few ponies in the process.
Wednesday started out as a lazy day, with a late breakfast and lolly-gaggin' around; we didn't have to be at the track for registration until late afternoon. Joe DiMinno and Jeremy Billiel were driving in from the northeast that day and they arrived at the race track late morning, then called us to say they'd heard the parking was going to open early. We scrambled to collect everything and head out there, only to find out the rumors were wrong; so, we had even more time to spare and lollygagged around there while waiting for parking and reg to open. Soon enough, though, we were allowed in mid- to late-afternoon and while the team unpacked and prepped I spent my normal pre-test-day evening parking Northeast folks in our allotted paddock area.
Our plans for the Thursday test day were pretty simple: get the
driver re-acclimated to the track, work on improving the chassis setup, and go
fast! The first two sessions went as planned, with our swapping and
testing of setups and tires going well. Unfortunately, during the third (of four)
sessions we were black-flagged off the track a couple of laps in,
indicating there was a pretty good wreck somewhere on course (I never saw it;
musta been behind me). As we sat
there in the pit lane word started floating around that our buddy Chris Perera
in his Integra had not come in after the black flag. Soon thereafter a pitlane worker
came up to me and said there was a car on its roof after Turn 5, it would take
too long to collect it, and that our
session was done (he also noted the driver was OK). As we cruised back into the paddock we looked for Chris; our
suspicions were confirmed when his squashed Integra came rolling in on a
flatbed truck, much the rounder and flatter than it was before...fortunately,
as reported, Chris was uninjured but his team was facing a long row to hoe to get ready for
the next day's qualifying sessions...
As for us, we prepped for the last session of the day, making final detailed changes. We had shown up for the weekend with a stock - but brandy-new - factory transaxle; our goal for this final session was to try different gears in places on the track where we weren't sure the best one was. As we went along Tim calmly called out which gear to try in which corners (we were going to compare that to the DL-1 data post-session). Then, towards the end of the session, maybe just a few minutes left, I bobbled going into Turn 5 and slightly locked the front brakes; I pulled away in third gear a bit low on RPM and let it rev up to redline. Then, I reached to upshift for fourth gear -- and I actually grabbed SECOND gear!! My brain recognized my mis-shift immediately, even before I released the clutch but not nearly fast enough to stop my leg from lifting - and I knew what was coming. And it did: I seriously over-revved the engine (to 10,317.04 RPM, we found out later via data acquisition). DAMN !! While mis-shifting like this is a reasonably-common thing to do in the Nissan community - you hear about someone doing it just about every week - it's something I had not done since 1992 when the car was in Showroom Stock. Well, in the span of about 2 seconds I did the mis-shift, dropped the clutch and re-selected the proper gear and released the clutch, verified the engine was missing terribly, and knew that I had broken one or more of the rocker arms inside the top-end of the engine. I immediately shut it off, called into the pits to let them know what happened, and then coasted to a stop at a corner station, way off in Turn 7, 'bout as far as one can get from the pits (and, ironically, the same exact corner I blew up the engine at the '04 ARRC...). I was flat-towed in.
Here's where the ugliness turned to beauty. Within seconds of arriving in the paddock, Matt Kessler, Kevin Hart, and Tim Rogers had the valve cover off the engine and the damage assessed: two broken rocker arms. Then, Joe DiMinno reached into his trailer and brought out two boxes containing new rocker arms! Satisfied that there wasn't any other apparent damage, the crew set to replacing the broken parts, and probably had the engine running again within an hour. A beautiful site to behold, and we were ready for qualifications the next day!
Qually
day (Friday) was yet another bright and beautiful Atlanta fall day (aren't they
all thatway?), and we were looking
forward to reasonable success. Nissan friend and
BHP Brakes sales guy
Matt Nicholson stopped by say "hello" and help us with some new braking
compounds (those things are incredible, Matt; thanks!) Everybody began
their prep, getting ready to go. Joe DiMinno had challenged me that my
nice, new, pimpy front airdam/splitter
that I had spent so much time fabricating was going to last three laps, max; in fact, I
think there was a pool amongst the crew to that effect...well, I not only made it
through first qualifying just fine, I made it through both qualifying sessions
with a scratch (well, there was that one time I went off at T7 and I was
convinced I'd destroyed it, but it didn't do anything more than just get the airdam dirty...) At the end of the day, after the two qually sessions were over
we sat seventh on the grid, behind three strong CRX Si, a Miata(!), and an
Integra. Not far behind at all was a Dodge Neon, then Kakashi teammate Crazy Joe
in his Sentra SE-R. Told ya it was gonna be a beast of a race...!
That night much hilarity ensued, with numerous crew and drivers getting, well, "happy", courtesy of a few (or more) adult beverages. I think I'll let that event silently pass without further comment...
Race dawned bright [nice tired opening, Einstein. - Ed.] and we were ready to go. Both Joe and I knew that our torque would be a significant advantage at the start, and as always it was our goal to get up as far as possible at the start and stay there. And that's just about what happened. By the time the field took the green and worked its way through Turn 1 Joe and I had found ourselves in fifth and sixth place, respectively, with me tucked up right behind Bowie Gray in his Miata, preceded by Joe and Bob Moser and AJ Nealey in their CRXs. I knew Bowie would be strong in the twisties, so I planning on staying in behind Bowie for the long haul instead of blowing by him and fighting. On that first lap I gave him a nice "whack!" going down the backstraight to bump him towards the CRXs and maintain our close trail. Unfortunately, on teh second lap Bowie over-cooked it into T7 and drove off the track, ultimately resulting in a visit to the driver's side concrete wall; his race was done. That little mis-step caused me to check up and let the CRXs get a bit farther away, but it still appeared to be attainable.
Then came Ruck and Lyman.
Kevin
Ruck and Tom Lyman were playing it smart, using their Integra's mutual
advantages to draft up to me. I saw them coming and pushed hard to stay in
front; unfortunately around lap three I lost the back end of the car going into
T3, and took an agricultural adventure across the grass and bumps. That,
unfortunately, resulted in a significant loss of front airdam/splitter,
including half the OEM airdam, and of course I completely lost touch with the CRXs and fell
full into the clutches of these Integra drivers. I maintained my line and drove as
consistently as I could, and although the Integras had the measure of me in the
corners, I had enough "oomph!" down the straights to build distance and keep
them behind. Eventually, though, the inevitable happened and Ruck got in front
of me, though Tom was unable to; left behind without a drafting partner, Tom got
the short end of the stick and slowly slid back. Recognizing that battling Kevin would result in
nothing more than our mutual slowing, I chose to bump-draft him towards the CRXs.
He maintained his speeds in the corners, and I donated some speed on the
straights.
And
that's pretty much the way the race went for the most of it: Kevin faster in the
corners, me faster on the straights. AJ had his difficulties dealing with the
1-2 Moser punch and eventually started to lose touch, and I had hopes the Amy/Ruck
train had a shot art him; but it soon became apparant that the laps were
disappearing to the point where there was likely no way it was going to happen. At that point I chose to pass Ruck on the
backstraight and headed for home. I maintained my advantage for those last couple
of lap except for one more mis-cue in T3, where Ruck re-passed
for a short bit; but I re-passed on the backstraight and
finished a respectable fourth place, behind winner Joe Moser, second-place
Bob Moser, and a damn fine third place for "retard" AJ Nealey! Teammate Crazy
Joe had his own battles and crossed under the checkered flag to take seventh
place behind Tom Lyman.
As the NX2000 sat in the impound area, the three CRXs went through various stages of tear-down, and we were all released later that afternoon with no changes in position during that "19th Lap". The Kakashi Racing Nissan NX2000 was the first non-CRX finisher.
And, as predicted: a HELL of a race. "Madz Props" to the Mosers and the Retard, they deserve the accolades. Their s**t wasn't weak!
As for us, no excuses, we gave it great shot! Generally speaking, though, I suggest the resurfacing really, really helped "the handling/momentum cars" (such as the CRX) a lot more than it did those that rely on power (such as the NX). Whereas last year everyone had to deal with hopping cars on a poor racing surface, this year only we had to deal with a hopping car (but on a smooth surface). The CRX just kept going and going (without lifting, it seemed at times) keeping their momentum up and on one else could rate. The track's character has most certainly turned from one of power to one of momentum (just watch AJ's in-car video to see it for yourself! It didn't help that we chose to try the stock final drive and LSD this year (we thought the numerically-higher final drive might have been better; we were wrong) and that all of the years' development had been on Hankooks but at the last minute we decided to go with Hoosiers.
Regardless of the reasons, the winners did a DAMN fine job and deserve all the accolades! Congrats, guys! It was a super time, and I'm looking forward to the next one!
So, "what's up" for '08? Hmmm...
Thanks to:
Matt Kessler, Kessler Engineering - excellent prep and build work
Matt Nicholson, BHP Brakes - by far, the best brakes we've had on this car
Lee Grimes, Koni North America - best dampers!
Jeremy Lucas, FastTech Limited - data acquisition guru! Best laps don't come without this
Cameron Conover, Conover Motorsports - best race prep in the Southeast!
And certainly not least, crew and friends: Matt, Tim, Kevin, Jeremy, Brian, Josh, Jerry, et al
Results:
Videos -
Greg's in-car - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6639373157549462902
Greg's test day "Money Shift": http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6119532823547421444&hl=en
Joe's in-car - http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-7174731415675483200&hl=en
Discussions:
Road-Race Autocross, VIR 13 Hour: http://www.roadrace-autox.com/bbs/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=5770&start=1
Road-Race Autocross, ARRC: http://www.roadrace-autox.com/bbs/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=5837&start=1
IT.com: http://itforum.improvedtouring.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=13410
SR20DE Forum: http://www.sr20forum.com/road-racing/216431-arrc-time-coming-v2007.html
