Quick Race Weekend - LDRL
I can’t pass up the opportunity to run Thunderhill with Lucky Dog Racing League. I’ll keep this post short as the weekend was pretty uneventful. Just good clean fun with friends. The weather forecast was rain. Lots of rain. So we prepared by using the same normal Hankook RS4 tires, RainX the windshield and install new wiper blades. Basically we did nothing except say we were ready.
Drivers included Greg and Zaid whom are well experienced with racing and the car. We added Garret to the team for his first outing in our E30. With plenty of other experience and a car more durable than Sonoma K-walls I had full confidence he would survive and likely thrive.
Thursday Evening Arrival - find power!
Gentle reminder for checking bolt torque. Towards the end of Saturday, Greg lost brakes. Coming over radio to share something was wrong. After a few corners he decided the car needed to be inspected. Upon arrival in paddock our issue was clear. Somehow the right rear caliper found its way loose, literally hanging on by the line. The piston was held in with a single remaining pad, thanks BMW for designing a retaining clip for the inner pad.
Excellent teamwork to determine the exact issue, find new parts and get the car back out. We lost the caliper bracket, mount bolts along with ruining the pads. Greg found another pair of bolts, Garret got new pads from the pro shop (last set apparently), Michael dug through bins for a new brake and sliders, Zaid helped clean up and tear apart things. Colleen bled the brakes and voila, done.
Other than the brake issue, the car was rock solid. Back to its normal tank self after all the repair/replacements on that rear corner. Definitely need to sort out the telemetry system as it gave me headaches all weekend.
The new Insta360 camera was excellent and performed flawlessly. Still reviewing footage and may augment the post with some snippets. The view of all directions makes post race analysis a bit simpler as any angle is possible.
Lap Analysis
Turns out we had a good collection of safe reliable drivers. Greg and I took the fastest times, while Garret and Zaid pumped in quite a few solid laps between all the yellow and red flags. Unfortunately in-car telemetry failed to record anything so we are stuck with only the lap time analysis. Below are the python analysis details for anyone curious. I’m glad we roughly averaged out seat time between everyone.
-
Saturday Statistics:
Average Lap Time: 3:34.7
Fastest Lap Time: 3:27.0
Slowest Lap Time: 3:46.7
Number of Laps: 14
Sunday Statistics:
Average Lap Time: 3:31.0
Fastest Lap Time: 3:23.4
Slowest Lap Time: 3:52.9
Number of Laps: 19
Total Laps Across Both Days: 35
-
Saturday Statistics:
Average Lap Time: 3:44.6
Fastest Lap Time: 3:33.6
Slowest Lap Time: 4:7.5
Number of Laps: 21
Sunday Statistics:
Average Lap Time: 3:55.8
Fastest Lap Time: 3:36.4
Slowest Lap Time: 5:21.1
Number of Laps: 19
Total Laps Across Both Days: 40
-
Saturday Statistics:
Average Lap Time: 4:4.4
Fastest Lap Time: 3:38.6
Slowest Lap Time: 5:19.8
Number of Laps: 12
Sunday Statistics:
Average Lap Time: 3:42.4
Fastest Lap Time: 3:31.7
Slowest Lap Time: 4:9.6
Number of Laps: 21
Total Laps Across Both Days: 38
-
Saturday Statistics:
Average Lap Time: 3:31.9
Fastest Lap Time: 3:26.8
Slowest Lap Time: 3:47.1
Number of Laps: 19
Sunday Statistics:
Average Lap Time: 3:33.4
Fastest Lap Time: 3:23.6
Slowest Lap Time: 4:18.2
Number of Laps: 21
Total Laps Across Both Days: 42
Damn you Greg…. 0.2 seconds faster than me over a 3:23.4 lap. 0.098% faster.
