You all might remember the fantastic Labor Day race that Doug Makishima and I had. A lot of people had seen both in-car videos and thought it would be fun to see them together. So did I.

But, of course, I didn’t really know how to do it with Windows Movie Maker, which is what I use for all of my videos. Mostly, I use WMM because it’s free, it’s already on my work laptop (which is plenty powerful enough to do this stuff, unlike my home desktop, which is getting so long in the tooth that we never even turn it on anymore), and it’s brain-dead simple to use.

Of course, brain-dead simple means that you can’t do much fancy stuff with it, like picture-in-picture, side-by-side, etc. Or so I thought.

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As you probably read in the race report, it wasn’t the most eventful race I’ve had all season. In fact, it was the least eventful! But it was the season finale, so it was worth racing in.

If you prefer, the full-size video is here.

It’ll take a little while to get the enduro videos going — we used Rod’s camera. I’m told that perhaps it wasn’t aimed all that well (we had it out the window, facing forward, to get a more interesting view … but it didn’t work as well as we’d hoped.) So watch for those later!

There’s a reason why they say that. In the video below, which happened in our qualifying session last weekend (on the outlap after a black-flag all, no less), you’ll see the #36 Miata miss the brake zone for T10 and get into a big slide. What she should have done at that point is just put her feet on the clutch and brakes and ride it out.

Instead, she tried to save it. The car see-sawed back and forth a number of times, and I didn’t know whether to zig or zag to avoid hitting her. It was qualifying, so I just patiently waited it out, but if it had been the race and I’d been in a real hurry … I don’t know. She’s lucky she didn’t get hit.

If you just stomp on the brakes in that situation, the car might spin, sure … but it’ll at least travel in a straight line while it spins, and everyone behind will be able to easily avoid it.

If you prefer to skip downloading the Silverlight browser plugin, you can see the video here.

This weekend was the 49th running of the Illgen Enduro, this time a 4-hour affair at Thunderhill.

The only endurance race I’ve ever driven in was the wacky “24 Hours of LeMons“, a play on the world-famous french race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.  In LeMons, however, there is a spending limit of $500 on the car (i.e, they are all crapcans that aren’t likely to be able to make it through to the end of the race, in other words, “lemons”, and our race took place on the tiny “road course” at Altamont Raceway.

With the help of the LemonLappers team though, we were able to win that one.   But it wasn’t so clear that my Go, Dog. Go! Racing team, with me, Rod McLane, and Ali Naimi, would be able to win this one.  Because we were running in the “O” class, which stands for Over, which consists of all production-based cars with an engine larger than 1.7L.  In other words, a supercharged Corvette would be in the same class.

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This weekend was the double-points season finale for the San Francisco Region’s racing season.  Also this weekend was the 49th annual Illgen Enduro, which I’ll cover in another post.

I was looking forward to the weekend even though it was way up at Thunderhill, primarily because the track was repaved this summer and this would be our first chance to drive on the new pavement.  Quick review: the track is smooth and quite grippy.  The exit berms are also very gentle so they are easy to use.  Some of the apex berms are a little taller than they used to be, but nothing too dramatic.  In any case, I figured that most classes would set a new track record, although with the high air temps (upper ’80s) and new very black pavement, perhaps conditions weren’t optimal.

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The entry list for the season finale and the RDC enduro at the end of the month has been posted.  252 entries for the regional, and 32 for the enduro.

Specifically for my races, James will be there to compete in ITR (although he has already clinched the 2009 championship, due to me missing two double weekends), and in the enduro, well, our class (”O”) is the largest of the classes with 12 entries.

Of course, the entry deadline has not yet passed, so the numbers will probably climb a little.  I’m really looking forward to the weekend!

EDIT 10/21: Regional is up to 287 entries, and 38 in the enduro (13 in “O”).  Unfortunately James has chosen to switch to ITE in group 1, so that he could run his car in a different configuration.  Well, I’ll still be having fun, and the enduro should be a blast!

I have uploaded the videos from all three races this weekend. You may have already read the race report, in which case you already know what happened, but the videos add a nice new element to it.

Saturday’s race was made interesting because it was a little damp.  But for Sunday’s races, I turned the camera around and faced it out the back window, which is really where the action was happening.  I’d say that the first race on Sunday was the most exciting.

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The buzz leading up to the weekend was the weather — rain was forecast for Saturday.  This is news because here in sunny California, we pretty much never see rain during the racing season.  And that means that most of us don’t bother buying and carrying around rain tires that we’ll never use.  And that means that when it rains, we feel like we’re basically going to have a bad weekend.

But the forecast for Sunday was fine, and 2 of the 3 races were going to be on Sunday, so at least there’s that!

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The San Francisco Region has published the entry list for the upcoming race weekend.

For me, looks largely like “same stuff, different day.”  I’m looking forward to another knock-down-drag-out with Doug, and hopefully with James, who kicked butt at the last Laguna race (which I missed).

269 total entries thus far.  That’s not very many for a double weekend at Laguna Seca, although most other racing groups would be thrilled to get that kind of turnout.  But this is the weekend before the Runoffs, which could be part of the reason.  I think the last double at Laguna had over 350 entries.

UPDATE 10/2: The revised entry list has 293 entries.  Rain is forecast for Saturday.  Too bad I don’t have rain tires.

By now, I think a lot of you have already watched the video from the 2nd of the two Labor Day weekend races.  That one was quite the spectacle, a truly constant battle between me and Doug Makishima for the overall win.

I have also just added the video from the first race from that weekend.  It was a great start with a couple of passes on the first lap, but after that it settled out.  There were two full-course caution periods, so not much traffic to contend with (I think I only passed two lapped cars), but there was a nice moment with a big oil slick in T4.

Enjoy the videos!

EDIT: Just because I figured out how to do it, here’s the excellent Race 2 video, embedded right here on this page. To see it full size, click the link above. You’ll need Microsoft’s cool Silverlight browser plugin to see it.