The SCCA’s 2009 Road Racing schedule has been posted, and it looks pretty good to me.  A total of 8 weekends: 3 races at Laguna Seca, 2 at Infineon, and 3 at Thunderhill.  Like 2008, it’ll be 12 races + one bonus race, plus the 4-hour enduro.  Hopefully we’ll have an IT Triple Crown race again (we’re working on that.)  I would still like to try out a BMWCCA race, but I just don’t know if there’s really going to be enough free weekends to do it.

So the season won’t start until late March.  That’s kind of a drag, but since I’m making super-slow progress on the off-season to-do list, maybe that’s a good thing.  Seems like every time I start one project, I end up with 2 more on the list.  But the car is here at home, in the garage, so that as I get a little time I can get things done.

I’m really looking forward to next season.  It’s been only 6 weeks or so and I’m feeling some withdrawal symptoms!  We’ll have at least one more new ITR car around, Mike Uhlinger in his Prelude VTEC.  The build of the car is in progress and it should be pretty nice and fast when it’s done!

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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My friend (and boss), Kausik, is a private pilot, and he is planning to fly up from San Jose to Willows to hang out and watch the enduro on Sunday (10/26).  He’s always open to taking passengers.  Let me know (via the form below, or directly) if you would like a free round-trip ticket to Willows!

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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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