Tell us about your recent racing weekend.

January’s Race Weekend Recap…..

Well what can I say, this past weekend didn’t quite work out as planned. Geno was going to test drive the Silver car, race all weekend and hopefully like it so much that he would just have to buy it, unfortunately the car failed to start on the first session, and Geno ended up injuring his right arm and would be unable to drive that weekend. It turned out to be a bad ground strap on the battery.

My car ran pretty good for 2 sessions, since the motor was just rebuilt, I was planning to take it easy on Saturday, then give the car a quick tuneup (re-torque the heads, adjust the valves, timing, jetting etc. ) on Sunday a.m. , and then race as usual all the rest of the day . Then during the qualifying race, 3 laps in, I hear a slight ticking sound, wasn’t sure what was, maybe the cowling was rattling , or something like that, then 2 seconds later, while decelerating I felt a heavy knock in the motor, I pushed in the clutch the motor died and I rolled into the hot pit area. I knew it was probably going to be bad, but since it wasn’t bleeding I had some hope. After removing the rear cowl, we spotted the problem…a huge hole on the top of my new motor. Now normally this would be the end of the weekend for me, but since Geno wasn’t going to drive the silver car, I decided to use that for the rest of the weekend.

For Saturdays main race I drove the silver car. I had never driven that car so I was surprised to find out that it was a handful ! Even on the warm up lap, there were very bad vibrations in the front wheels, but I decided to run it at speed for a lap or 2 and see whats up with it. I would get bad vibes decelerating and braking going into the turns, the tower turn was the worst, but somehow it seemed to corner pretty good once the car settled down. I would also get vibrations from the rear of the car at top speed as well. Needless to say, it was all I could do to get a high 1:18 in that race ( should be around 1:11) . I used that race more as a test session to study the car, and try and figure out what was going on with it. During the first few laps I was going fairly slow and cautiously when John Piggott slipped by. He was driving his 1200 Vee, and even though I was troubleshooting the car, I have this defect that does not allow me to turn down a race! But since I was driving a car that was considerably faster than his, I decided that I would not use the long straight to over take him, I would keep whatever distance we entered the straight with and try to beat him in the turns…. this proved to be a major challenge. Even though this was J.P.’s first official race, he drove that little Vee quite well! I spent the next 7 laps struggling to close the distance between us, when the white flag dropped, he was still 3 or 4 car lengths ahead of me going into turn 1, by 2 I was right up on him, at turn 3 we were side by side, neither of us backing down, race on! I finally slipped by on the outside just before turn 4, J.P. fought back hard all the way to the checkered flag, but I managed to finish just a few feet ahead of him! And even though the car was the worst thing I had ever driven, that was a really fun race!!!

Sunday morning we worked and tweaked on the car, made adjustments, changed wheels and tires, by the qualifying race, it still wasn’t perfect but it was considerably better, by the 4th lap I started to feel more comfortable with the car and started to push it a bit harder, I only had problems braking into the tower turn and a vibration around 60mph but it smoothed out after that. The car was feeling pretty good, I was sailing thru the back section and just when things were looking good, a hear huge knock, and a ton of smoke spews from the motor, just like that, my day is done.

I managed to blow an even bigger hole thru the top of this motor! Needles to say this will be the most expensive 2 days I have ever spent doing anything.

I stayed and watched the final race, Greg and J.P. were the only ones left in the class, Greg had problems with the suspension early on and was unable to be competetive, he ran the entire race anyway ( a true racer) . J.P. did exceptionally well, I watched from the bridge and could see the entire track (except the tower turn). John was very smooth and drove the line quite well. I have to say, he is going to be very serious competetion once he gets his FST! John Piggott takes first place in his first feature race at Firebird main, Congratulations John!!!

Now, despite the fact that I blew up 2 motors, cost myself a lot of money and didn’t get to race every session ( not to mention, Didn’t sell the silver car either). It was easliy the worst race weekend I have ever had, but it was still better than the best day I have ever had at work!!!

Thanks to Geno, Scotty, Gregg, Mauricio, J.P., Ron, Tom, C.K., Kurt, Nick and everyone else who helped out this past weekend, despite the troubles, you all made it fun!!!

See You All Next Month,

Fitz

P.S. I have a smokin deal on a silver FST!

We are looking to buy Formula First cars or Formula Vees ,  if you have a car in any condition, let us know. We can help put sellers and buyers together, and get more people into the Formula First class.

Just a note to say thanks to the fine folks at Formula-First.org, they were nice enough to post a link to our site, We have also posted a link directly to their site.

Formula First.org is a great source for all things Formula First, They have a huge amount of information on this class. And a great Forum! Not to mention some great Videos and photos!!

Please take some time and browse the Formula-First.org site. It is a great site!!!

JKfitz

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-JKFitz

Formula First Driver’s Association

After being talked about last year, Robert Guhde took the iniative and has started a Formula First Driver’s Association. The goal is to have a unified voice to be able to speak and lobby various sanctioning bodies on the U.S. Formula First movement. The FSTDA will give us an ongoing list of drivers so that we can alert everyone of technical bulletins, upcoming events, as well as asking for input on issues that affect the class. If you are a Formula First Driver and have not joined, contact Robert Guhde for information.

You can contact Robert at fst@rochester.rr.com

This was originally posted on the Formula-First.org website, I apologize for the blatant plagerism, but I feel this is a very important topic, and I urge all Formula First drivers to join.