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DE Crier Update: The Pitt Race

Hey!  Remember me?  It’s been 14 months since I last wrote an article for the NOR’EASTER and I figured that my reader might want to know what the Jamaican Bakin’ Team has been up to lately. This is the tenth year that our group of 5 PCA DE instructors (Dave Berman, Dennis Mascetta, Nick Shanny, Chip Wood and me) has been doing endurance racing  – or in the case of the last few years, it’s been more “trying to do” endurance racing. We started in 24 Hours of Lemons racing with a $500 Miata, upgraded to ChampCar (originally ChumpCar) and American Endurance Racing with an E30 BMW, switched to a Boss 302S Mustang and have now settled on an E36 BMW M3.

And oh boy, the Mustang!  What a disaster!  Our first race was at Mid-Ohio in 2021 where the clutch failed on the first race day.  Next year we went to Watkins Glen where the engine blew up on day two.  The replacement engine (don’t ask how much) then blew up on the dyno.  Then we learned that AER changed their rules so that the car was effectively outlawed.  We gave up and purchased the E36 and the Mustang finally left our hands via a sale on Bring A Trailer earlier this year. During the auction one of the commenters, who had seen the car at a race, questioned why it had Jamaican Bakin’ signage when it was owned by “a bunch of old white dudes.”  Ouch.

We raced the E36 once last year in a ChampCar race at Thompson where it ran perfectly and we were first in Class (albeit in a weak field).  For 2023 we plan to do three or four races, the first of which was over the April 1st weekend at Pitt Race. Nick was racing elsewhere (see below) and since you really need at least 4 members to do pit stops efficiently, Bill was allowed to participate despite being just barely legal after a bout of covid.

None of us had driven at Pitt Race before but we had heard good things and it lived up to expectations:  2.78 miles of rolling terrain with 17 corners, quite a bit of safe runoff (in all but one notable spot), some blind turns, grippy pavement and excellent facilities.  It was opened in 2002 and is located in Wampum PA (apparently the woke patrol has not made it there yet) not far from Pittsburgh – a 10 hour drive for us.  We stayed in a perfectly acceptable hotel for $100 a night in Beaver Falls PA (yes, the birthplace of Joe Namath!). We found three more-than-adequate places to eat and were astonished at the low prices:  dinner for 4 at the El Paso Mexican restaurant including top shelf margaritas was $79!  (Bill recommends the enchiladas verde.)

OK, maybe you’d rather hear about the racing.  AER changed their format this year and the assignment to classes was done based on lap times during a two hour race on Friday, rather than open track driving. With three mandatory pit stops the plan was for each of us do a 30 minute session. But of course it poured rain. Our “rain tires” are actually just all-season Michelin Pilot Sports in a slightly narrower width.  We softened the rear sway bar and the car had remarkable grip with nice predictable understeer.  As we were all just learning the track we were not too fast and were surprised to be placed in Class 3 (with 5 being fastest, 1 being slowest).

The 8 hour race on Saturday started in beautiful weather but a severe thunderstorm followed by rain was predicted so we left the rear sway bar soft and ran Falken Azenis tires (about the stickiest 200 treadwear tires available in our size).  Pitt Race was reputed to be tough on tires but with some rain we thought they would last. As it turned out the thunderstorm was a doozy – 60 mph gusts of wind that shut the track down for an hour, killed power for 24 hours (pop up tents flying everywhere!) – so the tires were fine to the end.  The car ran great and our lap times came down as we got familiar with the track but we were not competitive in Class 3 and also didn’t do a great job with pit stops. But no car problems or offs let us finish in the middle of our class.

Sunday started out with ice on the windshield but gradually warmed to be a pleasant, sunny 50 degree day.  We ran Hankooks (longer lasting but slightly slower) and stiffened the rear bar (one of us discovered a little more oversteer than expected but the spin managed to stay on the track).  We all took a bit more off our lap times but the results were similar to Saturday – reliability leading to another mid-pack finish.

So we are off to a decent start to the season with what seems to be a very reliable car – but one that needs a little fine tuning in the set-up.  Our next race is May at Watkins Glen so we will see.  And hopefully everyone will be over the covid that Bill seemed to have passed along by then.

Oh, yeh!  Back to Nick!  As you know this is his second year competing in the SRO GT4 America series in the Am class with teammate Terry Borcheller.  The second event of the season (same time as our Pitt Race) was at Sonoma and Nick’s team came in second in class on Saturday and first in class (and FIRST OVERALL against the pro drivers!) on Sunday.  Way to go Nick!  Bakin’ rocks!

Author: Bill Seymour

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This and That!

This month’s column is about membership communications and more Sim Racing.

With our website and social media being our primary communications vehicles to the membership, you will see much more content than you used to find in the NOR’EASTER appearing on porschenet.com. To ensure that there is a steady and interesting flow of content there we have established a formal submission and publication process. In addition to the regular contributors, we would love to hear more from any members that have something interesting to share, like a trip report, or your experience from your first DE, Autocross or Rally, the new or old Porsche that you just bought, or anything else that you would like to share with the rest of us.

Submissions should preferably be in Microsoft Word format and emailed to [email protected] with any pictures attached. The pictures should be in the highest possible resolution you can provide. Once we receive the email, we run the text through Grammarly to fix any punctuation, spelling, or grammatical errors, but we do make sure that your writing style is preserved. It is also categorized and tagged in order to make it easy to locate in the future. After that is done, it is sent to our web team, who add the content to the website and schedule it for publication. New content is summarized on the front page. Then, on a weekly basis, we send an email to all members summarizing and linking to all new content published after the previous email and a calendar for the current and following month to ensure that you don’t miss anything interesting. Any questions or comments you may have for us should also be emailed to [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

The summer Sim Racing race series and both the regional and national levels are wrapping up, and the fall race series are about to start. This is a good time to jump in and join the fray. We have loaner equipment that we let members take home to get a taste of Sim Racing with minimal investment. If you are interested, send an email to [email protected].

At the regional level, the next series will be racing Porsches on a weekly basis. Race evening is Tuesdays at 8 PM and lasts about two hours with practice, qualification and races. We have a friendly, welcoming, and fun group and work hard to keep it this way. We also invest a lot of effort in bringing new racers up to speed with advice and practice races. To learn more, join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/810156892838722

At the National level, we will be racing the Porsche GT3 R, a sweet car, in an 8-week series. National also works hard to be accommodating to newcomers and has programs targeted towards bringing them up to speed and into the races. They have divided the races into four classes, Challenge, Sport, Club, and Pro, according to the driver’s abilities, so you will race against drivers with similar skills. The next series, number 7, will be published soon on the National Sim Racing League’s website pcasimracing.com. The website has a wealth of information about what Sim Racing is, how to join, and much more, so head over there and take a look.

At the National level, December, January, and February are dedicated to races between the PCA Zones. They have been organized into five groups that each will run their own races in December and January to select the top 8 drivers in each class for each Zone Group. These 32 drivers will participate in a series of three races in January that will crown the Zone group and individual winners within each class.

While we wait for Series 7 to begin, there will be an exciting two-race series between International Porsche club teams. The races will be broadcasted on YouTube and will take place (virtually) at Road Atlanta on September 11th and Spa Francorchamps (no rain!) on September 18th. It will feature the best Sim Racers in the PCA and is guaranteed to be exciting. When I know the exact times and have the URLs to connect to, I will let you know.

Finally, a few comments about myself and Sim Racing: the series that just completed was organized by the West Coast Zones in PCA and featured the Porsche GT3 R in 8 venues. 7 were road races, and one was an oval race at Indianapolis Speedway. To do well in these races, requirement one was to participate. To increase your chances of placing well, you also had to finish well in at least 7 of the eight races. To do that, you had to avoid incidents (crashing, getting penalized for violating racing rules, spinning or running off the track), and finally, you had to have a decent pace. Good pace with incidents leads to worse results than slower pace and fewer incidents. It also requires a huge amount of self-control. It is easy to increase speed when you are anxious to pass a slower driver or when a faster driver is on your rear bumper, but increased speed also increases the risk of incidents, so the best strategy is not to let the adrenalin surge take control and lead you into trouble. I have worked on this for two years now, and it finally came together in this series, and I placed much higher in the rankings than I expected.

It was a good thing that only 8 out of 7 races counted. My performance on the oval was embarrassing. I was involved in multiple crashes (but didn’t cause any) and was black-flagged multiple times for infracting rules that I didn’t quite understand. It was fun but very much a learning experience. If you are interested in seeing a 10 minute summary of the race, check out https://youtu.be/cU1VilIrWsU  for a 10-minute video or https://youtu.be/lmr3GXoHO08 for a 30 minute video.

Anker

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Special Autocross Event

PCA Northeast Region
Autocross Special Event
Sunday, August 15th

at Moore Airfield in Ayer (Devens)
(THE Place for AUTOCROSS!)

 

Sponsored By

 

The NER Autocross Team has historically held an Autocross School at the start of our season. Last year, We canceled it entirely due to COVID. This year, we have decided to hold a different kind of event that will still allow people new to autocross to learn some driving skills and meet and socialize with our Autocross Community and have some fun. Perennial AX School sponsor Conway Autoworks is sponsoring this event, and perhaps we’ll see Kenny or someone from their shop bring something interesting to try a few runs around the cones in.

We will not run the event as a regular autocross competition – we plan to set up two courses – one timed and one untimed. The untimed course will be used as an exercise allowing novices to get a good feel for some of the basic autocross elements like slaloms or turns or veterans to fine-tune their technique through repetitive runs. And the timed course will allow everyone to gauge their improvement throughout the day or against their favorite autocross buddy – regardless of class. Instructors will be available to work with the novices.

Autocross allows you to learn car control skills in a safe environment. We are fortunate to enjoy probably one of the best venues in the area (Moore Airfield at Fort Devens in Ayer, MA). If you’re new to the Club, or you’ve hesitated to try a motorsport event because you were intimidated by all the veterans driving faster than you or hurting your car – this is the event for you.

Registration

You must register for this event in advance.  Registration will open soon at motorsportreg.com. Space may be limited, so register soon to ensure a spot. Everyone must register and pay for this event – sorry, no instructor freebies this year. Also, if you have registered for the season, this event is NOT included as part of your season pass, so you’ll need to register also. The price will be the regular event fee of $55.

The event will be open to Porsches only (with a couple of special exceptions for folks who do all the work behind the scenes). The Club will provide lunch.

Watch our website and email blasts for more details on this special event – and mark your calendars!

For event and eligibility questions, contact NER Autocross Chair Chris Ryan at [email protected] . For registration/payment issues, contact  NER Autocross Registrar Jeff Johnson at [email protected] .

Directions to Fort Devens:  The event will be at Moore Airfield on Route 2A which is separate from the main Army base. The Google maps address is 91 Fitchburg Rd. Ayer MA.     From Rte128 or I-495: Take Route 2 West. Take Exit 38B (Route 111 North) for 2 miles. At the rotary, take Route 2A West toward Ayer. Stay on 2A as it turns right in downtown Ayer.  Follow Route 2A, bearing left at the fork by Tiny’s Restaurant. Continue past the Shop & Save market on your left – the entrance gate will be on your left just after the railroad tracks with a sign reading “State Police Driver Training”. Enter through the main gate, look for the “Autocross” sign, and bear left up the hill to get to the airfield. At the top of the hill, there will be someone to check you in, check that you’ve signed the e-waivers, or have you sign PCA waivers and greet you with instructions.

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