Mid-Ohio Major May 22-23

[Jason Stine]

Perfect weather and great to see everyone this past weekend!

Congrats to Steve - nobody had anything for him out there (including most of the E and F cars...)...

 

[Ron Bartell]

The track time or lack of it issue relative to entry fee is interesting to me and others who have a longer perspective. When H Production was essentially a one-car class, with a 17:1 plus motor that was required to compete at the National level, you tried to actually minimize your track time in order to save your motor. I point this out because many of the new members of H Prod have no idea what we put up with in order to be competitive in a class where all of the cars were theoretically identical. With the limited prep formula it is really nice to be able to complete a full practice or qually session without being concerned about how much time you have taken off your motor.

 

[hoffman900]

The track time or lack of it issue relative to entry fee is interesting to me and others who have a longer perspective. When H Production was essentially a one-car class, with a 17:1 plus motor that was required to compete at the National level, you tried to actually minimize your track time in order to save your motor. I point this out because many of the new members of H Prod have no idea what we put up with in order to be competitive in a class where all of the cars were theoretically identical. With the limited prep formula it is really nice to be able to complete a full practice or qually session without being concerned about how much time you have taken off your motor.

I get why, but I never understood if living on the ragged edge is worth giving up track time. Watching the Runoffs in say a GT or a Prod class vs. a SRF / Spec Miata, there is a marked difference in how polished the driving is in the latter two classes, and that comes from running every session as much as possible and a lot of races. Maybe throw the grenade engine in at the Runoffs, but the rest of the time...

 

[Ron Bartell]

Maybe throw the grenade engine in at the Runoffs, but the rest of the time...

Don't worry, the Runoffs motor was just for the Runoffs unless you broke the other one, but even so you waited until the last day of qualifying to put it in in order to keep it fresh. Of course that meant that even if everything went right you still had an engine swap at the Runoffs. But with four hours between rebuilds you didn't want to use up too much time on the motor. Quite often you missed a shift and broke something so you didn't even get the four hours. New plugs every race, 116 octane fuel, adjust the valves after every session, special procedures for head gaskets, approaching 9,000 rpm out of a 3 main bearing tractor motor.... It was a crazy time and I am glad that it is gone and we have an LP motor that will allow full sessions without worrying about how much time is being taken off the motor.

 

[Protech Racing]

Seems like many racers decided that it wasnt worth it and went Chumpcar racing. Those guys want to race longer than the transit drive.
I always told my rental guys to be at the front of every line going on track and to take all of the laps.
Now it gets more serious and we take practice data looking for each 10th and run 3 laps with high pressures for Qualifying. Fuel, Tires, engines, entry fees, Way too much per minute of racing .

 

[JessePrather]

Seems like many racers decided that it wasnt worth it and went Chumpcar racing. Those guys want to race longer than the transit drive.
I always told my rental guys to be at the front of every line going on track and to take all of the laps.
Now it gets more serious and we take practice data looking for each 10th and run 3 laps with high pressures for Qualifying. Fuel, Tires, engines, entry fees, Way too much per minute of racing .

I've done both. It depends on if you want to circulate or really push a car to the absolute limit for a short amount of time. I'll stick to sprint racing for now.