On Sep 25, 2010, at 7:36 AM, Doug Franklin wrote: > On 2010-09-24 21:47, Larry Colen wrote: >> >> On Sep 24, 2010, at 6:40 PM, Doug Franklin wrote: >>> There's a corollary in racing: a bad car offers the driver a lot more >>> opportunities to learn, but it's a lot less likely to win any given race. >> >> Most of what I learned was that I needed a better car. > > /A/ bad car, Larry, not necessarily /your/ bad car (or /mine/ for that > matter). :-)
For many years I campaigned a '68 Cortina in ITC. It put about 55 hp to the ground, versus close to 100 for the Datsun 510s. My suspension development on it was rudimentary at best. I had some great races to not finish in last place. And while they were great races, it was still last place. During my first shift of it's last race I realized that I was taking turn 4 at Sears Point with both inside wheels slightly off the ground. During my second shift (it was a four hour enduro and I drove first and last), I found that with a bit more speed, I'd just drift the two wheels on the ground. I needed a better car, there's only so much that you can learn from the back of the pack. The handling problem from the misfitted sway bar didn't cause it to crash though, someone spun in front of me and I zigged when I should have zagged. I collected some of my stories of it here: http://www.red4est.com/lrc/foocarstories.txt I did eventually get a better car, and racing was a lot more enjoyable. > > Another corollary in amateur racing: Going faster often just means hitting > the wall harder. ;-) That's pretty much what I'd tell people signing up for track day schools. Just drive some slow POS on street rubber. You learn more and aren't going as fast when you make a mistake. > > -- > Thanks, > DougF (KG4LMZ) > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
