Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama is next. This is one of the finest racing facilities in the nation. It is to racing, what Augusta is to golf. It has a fantastic museum dedicated to racing and motorcycles. It's a good track for the Mini's with tight turns, short straights and very smooth. RSR had two cars lead the race last year before mechanicals ended our day. It was at this race, one year ago, where the 198 car caught fire. It was the subsequent rebuild and re engineering that took the Mini's to the front in the second half of the season with two wins and a second in the last 3 races. That success has continued in 2011 with a 6th and a 3rd in the first two events of this season. Lineups: 195 - Dicky Riegel and VJ Mirzayan 196 - Ron Farmer and Jason Hart (currently 8th in Points) 198 - Sarah Cattaneo and Owen Trinkler (currently 3rd in points) The Mini Brand is 3rd in manufacturer points.... the highest ranking ever. 1 67 ST Volkswagen 2 56 ST Kia 3 55 ST Mini Cooper 55 ST Mazda 4 54 ST Honda 5 52 ST BMW 6 41 ST Porsche 7 5 ST Mercedes 8 1 ST Acura http://www.grand-am.com/assets/2011BarberofficialSchedule.pdf SCHEDULE TV Coverage will be April 16th at 2:00 EDT on Speed
Randy, the sched at the Grand-Am site still says the TV coverage will be Apr 16 @ 2:00 PM ET. Is there an update they haven't published on their site?
Ummm . . . Event Information It says April 10th on the event page. That's the next day and they usually delay them for a week. I'll watch the TV listings at Speed and update accordingly.
You can see why Barber is a track for MINIs (17 turns and 2.3 miles). More track maps here for anyone interested. Also, according to the TV sched on speedtv.com (checked minutes ago but subject to change, obviously): Apr 16, 2PM ET and Apr 18, 2PM ET
Technical Bulletin #3 issued yesterday: Mazda 3s lose 1.0 psi boost. All VWs lose 1.0 psi boost. Minis get a max RPM (7400).
Guess the powers that be want to try & keep the playing field even. 1st & 2nd lose a pound of boost & MINI gains some RPM. Hope that helps the RSR MINIs. What was the max rpm the MINIs had before this change?
Actually . . . we lose RPM's . . . this is not a good development. It came as a surprise. They never discussed it with us. :confused5: Oh well . . . the loss of boost for the others will help. Randy
Holey crap Randy!!! Not good at all. :mad2: Maybe the Kia guys are bribing the officials. :crazy: Good luck in Burningham. We will all be pulling for you guys.
It's starting to sound like NASCAR...if a mfg. starts to do good....change the rules. Good luck Randy. RSR has had to overcome greater issues than this and continues to improve...we'll be cheering you on
Well they can't make the series sponsor look bad now, can they? Good luck! We'll be watching and pulling for you!
Wrap up It was a difficult weekend for Team Mini. The Rev limit really hurt. We expected it to be a problem but it was worse. It hurt the top speed in each gear and it screwed up the shift points. :mad5: Example . . . at the end of the back straight the rev limit forced an up shift to 5th and an instant return to 4th. If the driver held 4th, the car would hit the limiter and kill the momentum. If the driver backed out of the throttle . . . same result. There was just no way to make the car work. Owen did set the fast lap. It was after a late pit stop where we gave him FOUR new tires and fuel. We were hoping the tires would give him an edge. It did for a while but not enough to overcome the problem discussed above. We have asked Grand Am to reconsider the limit before VIR. The USLED car was knocked out at mid race in a shunt with a Honda. Ron was driving and Jason never got into the car. Dicky drove an inspired first stint in the 195. A combination of ill timed cautions and incidents when VJ was in the car prevented a better finish. They deserved better than 14th Owen spun the car at the shift spot discussed above. The rear came out and he backed into the ARMCO pretty hard. He made an unbelievable save to bring the car home it 11th. It will be the highlight of the upcoming TV broadcast if they caught it. Next stop . . . VIR. Randy
I understand the desire to make things competitive but there are always some cars that are better than the rest, and they effectively pushed you guys back down the grid. I don't know how the Grand-Am folks work but I would be surprised if they're willing to listen, if at all, until there's at least one more set of race results on the books. VIR in a month, fingers crossed.