Sears Pointless 2013 - The Willey Wankel RX7

What a freaking awesome weekend! The weather was amazing and my dad's RX7 was a total blast to drive. It was the first race the car ran and there are some setup changes to be made like correcting the terrifically tail happy rear end. Otherwise, the Willey Wankel is a solid ride with great potential. I was the test driver and I might have missed a few points about the car, like say oh the rears lock up first under heavy breaking. There were sketchy moments for all 4 of the drivers so I guess I should have pushed it a bit more during testing. Being the third driver and with a good warning that the car handled this way, I still lit up the rear tires and slid into a slow corner like a bonehead. Lucky for me I caught it just short of a spin and the car behind did not cream me. (Thanks AJ)

We had a new driver this time named Ozer who got the full LeMons experience. We sent him out first, someone bumped him, and he spun. So obviously he got to meet the judges. He did a great job going out first. There was no one to warn him that the rear breaks lock up and the car is totally tail happy. He just figured it out on his own.



Cem returned to race with us and again was the fastest on the team, great driving as always. He even told off another LeMons driver in a very classy manner for speeding in the pits.. Another thing about Cem, he has this sweet helmet that I am jealous of..



The first goal was to finish the race and we did that. We also had fun and are home safely which are the most important things when it comes to racing LeMons. There was one scary moment for my pops when someone aggressively turned in on him going down the strait, but he did everything right and kept the car away from a major wreck. After a short break to calm down and look over the car, he went back out on the track. Later he laughed it off and we prepped the car for the next day. (Props to you Dad)



There is plenty of video and tons photos I have to go through, the video of the wreck will be first. Then I will look for the video of my bonehead spin to post that as well.

On to the results, the ones that matter anyway... The real winner was Rich with his IOE award for the horribly awesome IMP and his class C win with his Jag. Congrats Rich!





Good times were had and I can't wait to do it all over again.. which ever car we race. More pictures and videos to come soon. Here is the team pic with Chief Prep "Jay".. Keep it classy LeMons!

Other events at Sonoma Raceway - Photos

While up in the Sonoma, CA for a work trip, I had a day off which was spent at the race track. Nothing else in the area really interests me and Sears Point is just an amazing facility. Now sporting a Nikon D5100 with a $130 refurbished 55-200mm VR lens, I am learning to take motorsport pictures. The camera can take really good images and goes with me almost everywhere.

There was a racing school on the track hosted by Emotive that ran some nice Formula 3 Lola cars. Was fun to watch these machines cruise around the track with no one else around. The grounds were open and I was free to roam the whole place, which I pretty much had all to myself.





Another day I found out they had Drag and Drift racing Wednesday nights at the raceway. So two hours were squeezed out of my work schedule to go check it out and take some pictures. Most of my time was spent watching the drifters as it was more exciting than the drag racing. Some of these drifters obviously had no idea what they were doing except for enjoying themselves, though, others were quite skillful in the art. From what felt to be a safe distance, I snapped as many pictures as I could in the short time frame. Still lacking good panning technique, it takes me often a hundred shots to get one I like, but I am successful often enough to show some pretty good ones.





In all honesty, these times spent taking pictures at the track were to practice for the 24 hour of LeMons race - Sears Pointless. With my Dad and a couple friends, I will be racing in this event, so having an idea of where to take shots from was the plan.

Here are links to both albums from the Racing School and the Drag and Drift Night.

Enjoy!

Blog Name Change - 3/19/2013

I am updating the blog.. because.. well.. I just want to.

I changed the title and description as we now have multiple cars and who knows what we will be doing as time goes on... plus I am taking pictures now and you will have to suffer through some of them!

I will update the blogspot link later.. and may also change the name again.. if you don't like it, well sorry, I had no idea anyone even read it so Thanks!

Getting Ready for Sears Pointless 3/19/2013

Just a quick update.. this week we head up to Sonoma Raceway (previously Infineon, previously Sears Point)

The Sex Pistons Spitfire will stay home, as with lack of time and budget, we could only prepare one car. The Spitfire needs a lot more work and the RX7 is ready.

My pops has spent lots of time prepping the Willy Wankel RX7 and it is running well. Hopefully the weather will stay clear and we will stay out of trouble. The car has lots of potential and is a blast to drive, so we should have a awesome weekend.

The drivers for this race will be:
Jerry (My Dad - The team Captain and Car Owner)
Colin (Myself)
Cem (raced with us twice before - Fast guy)
Ozer (Cem's friend - new to Lemons)