Thought you might be interested in a little video from my camera on the fastest road race track in the USA. BIR is a 3 mile track with the front straight being 4700' long. It is flat out through T1 and a slight lift in T2. You are in the throttle all the way for well over 1 mile. We enter the straight at roughly 80mph.
You will experience Terminal Velocity on this track.
http://joe.phatzo.com/BIR.wmv
This was the first of two races my Cobra teammate Ken Olson and I were in this last August at Brainerd International Raceway.
The first lap we enter Turn 1 at roughly 140mph. It was very windy and the tires were cold on the first lap. Turn 2 is about 10mph or so slower. Turn 3 is roughly 50 mph. I will admit that I was too busy to look at the speedo.
The second lap the tires are feeling much better and we enter T1 at 150mph and T2 at roughly 10mph slower. With the wind we had that day, 150 was about all the little 302 could pull. I have had it up to 155 but it was getting so light and twitchy at that speed, I had to let off to enter the first turn.
Having just had eye surgery for a detached retina, my eyes (both for some reason) are very sensitive to light and fumes. By the second lap my left eye was buring quite badly and the pain was distracting. The right eye was watering so bad I could barely see. Ken, who is still faster than I - but not for long - gets under me behind an E-Production Miata going into T3. I didn't figure out until a couple of laps later that if I opened my visor that I could actually start to see again. I was just about ready to pull off the track when I had made this discovery. I ended up finishing about 12 seconds behind Ken, but our fastest lap times were .2 seconds apart.
What this video shows is that Spec Racer Cobras (with stock 302) can go fast, but Turbo Porsches with much slicker aerodynamics and huge brakes can go even faster!
My car was a handful. I don't blame the 2 year old tires as Ken was experiencing the same "skating" that my car was when we were at speed.
Results - one of the two Porshes had dropped out with a flat tire, the other went on to take 1st place in SPO with Ken and I coming in 2nd and 3rd respectively.
My vision is now 20-15 with my new glasses so I was not a hazard on the track. I was, however, driving for almost a full lap (about lap 4) where I could not concentrate very well or see well enough to manage traffic so I pulled over with the visor open until my vision cleared.
Hybrid Mode
