San Jose Grand Prix (not DSM)

[Dauntless]

Okay, it's not directly related to DSM...but I am rebuilding my '93 Talon TSi into a road racer so maybe the mods won't delete the thread. If it crosses the line, feel free though. I don't want anyone's tail getting into a knot...

Anyway, as some of you know, in my day job I am team engineer for Ishikawa Racing, a Los Gatos (San Jose) based road racing team campaigning Champcar's Toyota-Atlantic C2 class. C2 is for older cars, but to the casual eye they are indistinguishable from the front line cars. This past weekend we contested the San Jose Grand Prix with mixed results, but after passing a few pics around today I got a request to post them here to maybe help inspire a few more DSM'ers to move over from the Dark Side...er, I mean drag racing...to what cars are meant to do - go fast and turn left AND right!

So if you don't object to my hogging bandwidth I'll share a few pics and try to place them in context.

Car prep comes first. Here I am doing my damper magic while mechanic Darrell Benner brings the nose assembly into position.

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Here we are ready to roll for first practice.

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Rolling in the hot pits.

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Doing 136 mph on the streets of downtown San Jose...

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Oops! A slight misjudgement of the chicane and an expensive nose has to go back for repair... WTF

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[Greg Collier]

Oh man, real race cars!!!! I saw the race was blown away with how tight the track was especially at the turns. What blew me away even more was the the fact they were turning speeds in access of 130 MPH. They even had a hump to contend with were everyone was getting a bit of air which I'm sure wasn't that great for the suspension let alone the drive train.

Your day job would be my dream job working with high tech racing machinery and tweaking it's performance at the track

All of this and your a DSMer too... How cool is that?

Greg

 

[Defiant]

I first heard about this on Thursday. Where the hell was the publicity? If any of it leaked out here to Sac, they sure were keeping it to themselves.
I'm looking forward to the replay next weekend.
From the clips I've seen, what the hell was the deal with the railroad tracks? Great course layout. WTF

 

[96whgsx]

Yeah, I didn't see any ads about this but they kept playing it on the local news. Every day, they had to say something about it. Also, I think it is the first time they had a race course with railroad tracks.

 

[Dauntless]

Yes, the track was a real challenge due to sections being very narrow and having to cross the light-rail tracks twice on each circuit. One of our crew members took this photo of another Atlantic getting air under the fronts while simultaneously dragging the stainless skid plate and sparking like a Formula 1 car of old (now they usually use jabrock skids which don't spark).

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[Dauntless]

The San Jose Grand Prix being a Champcar event, naturally we had to have an umbrella girl to keep the fierce sun off our driver...

So naturally, our crew chief and resident bon vivant Dave Rich had to ham it up with her. Cute little number...

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[Greg Collier]

Don't ya just love racing

I had a (NASA) supplied umbrella girl stand next to my car in grid at California Speedway

My wife didn't talk to me for a week.................

Greg

 

[Ludachris]

Crazy seeing Champ Cars running through downtown San Jose at 100+ mph. I heard that they were changing the course throughout the weekend. So from practice to race day, drivers were having new things thrown at them every day. Guess that's what happens when you run a race in a new city. It seemed a lot more crowded than it actually was, but it was a nice atmosphere. Funny, I remember looking at that car in the photos above in the Convention Center - wish I'd known there was a fellow DSMer involved with the team. Are you guys going to Denver too? I'm actually getting out there that very weekend.

Nice to see some DSMers involved in higher forms of racing!

 

[Dauntless]

D'oh! Sorry I missed you, Chris!

Unfortunately we will not be at Denver. We were going to make Denver the next stop on our season, but the team owner bought a brand new Swift 014a, which he wants to get ready for Road America and Montreal, so he decided to skip the mean streets of Denver to get the new car ready.

Someone sent me a photo of another Atlantic getting some 'rear air' at one of the railroad crossings. The impact registered 2500+ pounds on our pushrod strain gauges...

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[Dauntless]

I mentioned earlier that we contested the San Jose Grand Prix with 'mixed results'. Well, here's how our day actually ended...

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About half way through the second lap, our driver came 'round a blind 90-degree corner (are there any other kinds?) and met up with 3 stopped cars. WTF

Mark slammed on the brakes and slid into the back of the center car. The rear wing of that car sliced through the nose cone, filleting it like a fish. (Note: this is not the same nose as above...we brought 3 and used up two of them.) The wing also damaged the toe link (single bar at top coming from the tub to the upright) and the trailing link of the lower control arm. That link eventually failed after 27 laps, leaving us in 16th place. Such is racing!

 

[Microrcdude]

Was lee atkins there? How did he finish?