MARRS 4 - 2007 - Summit Point Race Report
Brakes only slow you down! But are they still important to going fast? We answer the age old question... The short answer is yes. The little bit longer story is that everything you do on the race track, you want to do fast. The faster you are on the brakes, the shorter you are on the brakes, and the longer you are on the gas. Our brake prolem has been growing in severity all year. Going through rotors and pads like tissues, use them once and throw them away. Not only that but the car won't stop. So how did that impact our weekend?
Qualifying would show that we had not solved our braking problem. Our diagnostic frustration would continue throughout the weekend. We were reasonably fast but braking earlier and longer in all of the braking areas kept us from getting up to speed. We qualified 3rd in both sessions. Our fast competitor, Chris Perera in an Acura Integra, from the previous race at Virginia International Raceway was first and a newcomer, AJ Nealey in a Honda CRX Si, was in second. Both were significantly faster than the Team Sisu Nissan 240sx.
Over night we figured that the problem may be the brake power booster. The hard pedal may just mean that there was no power assist for the brakes. Could this be the solution? Not having a spare, we had to soldier on with the brakes in less than optimal condition. We could not put enough force on the pads to lock them up which means we were not getting to the edge either. We had another bad start to the race with the field bunched up ahead, our jump meant nothing as we had to get out of the throttle to avoid contact with Nealey. As the two competitors pulled away by a second in the first laps, we had to contend with an out-of-class competitor trying to get by, and succeeding. Then as we caught Perera to create a battle for second, John Martin made it a three way battle for second. We stayed close behind Perera whose car grew suddenly very wide and difficult to pass. As the out-of-class competitor finally got by, Martin followed. We had dropped to fourth in class. The brakes were starting to get more comfortable - at least, we were more confident that we could push really hard and get something resembling stopping. We went a little deeper into braking zones each lap and were now faster than Martin but we were having a beast of a time getting by. Finally, after some side-by-side action through the entire carousel, we were able to pass Martin but that had cost us a few seconds and with three laps to go, we had a three second gap to Perera in second place. We set off after him and got lucky with traffic to allow us to be on his rear bumper going into the last lap. Going deep into 1, Perera tried to go deeper and ran off the end of the track. We passed for second place but there was no time left to go after first. Perera recovered to get back on track in third place and Nealey took the win. Second place points solidify our position in the standings going into the double race event Jul7 1-2 at Nelson Ledges in Ohio.
Finishing Position Name Car Laps Fast-Lap 1 AJ Nealey Honda CRX Si 16 1:28.834 2 Kirk Dohne (Team Sisu) Nissan 240sx 16 1:29.539 3 Chris Perera Acura Integra 16 1:29.012 4 John Martin Honda CRX Si 16 1:29.366 5 Matthew Yip VW GTI 16 1:32.014 6 Brad Barnhouse Honda Civic Si 15 1:31.463 7 Jason Fields Nissan 240sx 15 1:31.744 8 Mark Johnston Nissan 240sx 15 1:31.801 9 Bryan Pritt Acura Integra 15 1:30.355 10 Thomas Thompson Chrysler Neon 15 1:33.104 11 Mark Schecter Mazda RX7 15 1:33.225 12 Kurt Genatowski BMW Tii 15 1:33.144 13 Art Jaso Toyota MR2 15 1:35.082 14 Bill Griffith Toyota MR2 15 1:35.553 15 Carlos Schooler Toyota MR2 15 1:36.008 16 Dick Hummel Toyota MR2 14 1:40.144 17 Bill Hutchins Mazda Miata 12 1:31.226 DNF Andrew Johnston Acura Integra 5 1:33.847