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Greg's Dark Blue 911Blackhawk Farms Raceway - October 9, 1999 |
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This Driver's Education event at
Blackhawk Farms
was sponsored by PCA Chicago Region..
The fog on the way there was terrible. I could barely see most of the time.
It didn't actually lift until almost 11am, so we got a really late start. They
let us take some low speed parade laps to help dry the track and blow some of
the leaves off. I did those as much as possible to re-familiarize myself with
the track.
I was so happy with the Pagid Orange pads in back last time, that I put a set of them on the rear as well. This is also my first track event with my cross-drilled front rotors, front brake cooling ducts and front spoiler. I had no problems with my brakes and no fade at all! Jason on the other had was having brake fade issues on his Boxster this day. Lily also came to this event and was driving the Boxster. Her lap times improved significantly!!! There was no formal instruction at this event as you had to have track excperience to attend, but Michael Gallagher went with her for a couple sessions. He got her lap time down to the 1:39 range by the end of the day! Lily let him take the car out for a couple laps and managed to turn a 1:31 lap in my stock Boxster! That's what track driving since before getting a driver's license does!! Some other highlights for the day was meeting the owner of Bacino's Pizza. He brought a 944 Turbo race car, along with an 18 wheeler support vehicle and 2 mechanics for himself only!!! He drove to the event in a Honda S2000, which also got quite a bit of attention! The other memorable incident was a 911 RS losing control in corner 7. He apparently went off the track with the left wheels, over corrected and slammed into the inside wall of tires. More details and pictures of that incident below. I was very happy with my lap time improvement. I was managing 1:36 lap times quite regularly. My best lap all day was 1:35:87, during which I even passed a car! This was a major improvemnt over my best lap last time at this track which was 1:39:64. Jason basically did the same this time as last time. His best lap this weekend was 1:32.64, EXACTLY the same as his best lap last time. |
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) The sun just came out and my car is ready to go. |
) Another shot with the new front spoiler visible underneath. |
) Lily taking a nap between sessions. Driving really takes a lot out of you. |
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) Here I am behind a fire-breathing 911 Turbo. Pretty cool! |
) Me on the track in the 911. |
) My wife in my Boxster on the track. |
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Here is some video with me taking a lap around the track.
This is one of my faster laps. I'm sorry once again about those annoying
beeps, I have no idea what's causing them.
QuickTime Movie - Approx 6.2M |
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Here are a couple shots of Jason's HotLap installation. It seems to work quite well. It did come loose once, but it has held up for several track events so far. He uses Velcro to attach the receiver to the wiper blades. He removes the wiper fuse as he accidentally activated the wipers on the track and nearly lost the receiver. |
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) The receiver is attached to the passenger side wiper blade with Velcro straps. |
) He made a bracket that attaches the display to the console. |
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The car that probably got the most attention was this Honda S2000. It looks pretty good, but in my opinion doesn't look as good as the Boxster. As far as track worthiness, that remains to be seen. I checked the brakes and they look pretty small and aren't the mono-block variety. The owner told me the car has a 9,000 redline, but hasn't tried it yet as it's not broken in yet. I have little doubt the car will be very fast when driven by an experienced driver. |
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) The S2000 emblem on the side of the car. |
) Lily talking to the owner's wife with the car in the background. |
) I do like the seats, but they do look a lot like Porsche Sport seats. |
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) A nice shot of the front of the car that looks like the Z3. |
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Like I mentioned above, the major event this day was a 911 RS crashing at corner 7. I was at the start finish line when I heard a noise and looked over to 7 quickly and saw the car about 10 feet in the air and land on the roof. The driver immediately behind this car when it crashed had an in-car video camera and caught the whole thing. It looked like the car made it past corner 7 and was straight. Just then the left wheels went off the pavement into the gravel and it looked like the driver overcompensated and veered sharply to the right and into the wall. The car bounced off the tires and into the air, did a back flip and landed on the roof. The driver was apparently not injured. They made him hang upside down by his harness until the paramedics arrived. The fire department needed to use the jaws of life to get the driver's door open and pull out the driver. I was told the in-car video of the crash would be put on-line by the owner of the camera and I'll post the URL here once I find out what it is. |
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) I happened to capture this shot of the car a couple laps before the incident. |
) My first shot of the crash. You can see one of the tires from the wall rolling onto the track. |
) Here I was approaching the car. |
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) The driver is still hanging in the car at this point. |
) The fire department and paramedics just arrive. |
) The front of the car after it was towed off the track. |
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) Gawkers check out the driver's side of the car. |
Here is some video of when I first saw the crash then me walking around the
car showing you the full extent of the damage. I put this up as a reminder
of what could happen at track events and to remind people to drive carefully.
QuickTime Movie - Approx 8.2M |
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And finally here are some random shots of cars I captured as they passed the start/finish line. If any of these cars is yours, please drop me a line and say HI. |
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