Readers will remember that with 2 laps to go at the last race weekend, I blew up the engine in the race car. What a bummer. But I’d been sitting on a spare engine that I got from a theft-recovery 328i for a year or so. The intent for that motor was to build it up into a killer race motor, but prices were high and it was very hard to justify spending the money with the small ITR turnouts that we’ve been having. So it sat on an engine stand in my storage unit for a long time. Vic Sias helped me diagnose the motor with the help of my compression tester and his leakdown tester, and we determined that the #6 cylinder had no compression and it was leaking past the piston. So, with only three weeks until the next race weekend, I decided to just put the spare engine in the car.
Archive for the “Videos” CategoryI failed to get the new video camera started for the race, but I did use it in qualifying. Qualifying videos tend to be pretty boring, but I use the camera so that if I mess up, you’ll all get to see it! This time, there was only one interesting moment, when I nearly lost it going through T8. Playing with a new camera, new editing software, new posting mechanism, so this is really just an experiment! If I continue to like this software, I’ll buy it. It’s tied to the computer though and I’ll probably get a new one soon, so … for now you have to put up with that annoying text in the middle of the screen. Camera is a cheap Aiptek HD, worked great, but has no provision for a wide-angle lens. Wish you could see my hands in this one. Bummer. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Wow, what a weekend! Fantastic weather here in the bay area, a nice double race at my favorite track, and some intense competition … awesome, just the way I like it! Now that I’ve integrated the blog and the gallery better, let’s try to embed a video. As you probably saw from the race report, I failed to get video from the race. But qualifying worked, using my brother’s old camera. The exposure wasn’t get quite right, but I’ve made a video of the fastest qualifying lap. I’m also experimenting with flash video vs. WIndows Media here. This is a large flash video. Let’s see how it goes. I have finished editing my in-car video from the race this past weekend. This one makes the second great group 5 race in a row! I think both are pretty fun to watch. Here’s the link to round 1 if you want to go back and see that one too. Enjoy! |
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