OLOA10 - Day 7 - Event 14 - New Jersey has a track? In the countryside?
Honestly, I had no idea that any part of New Jersey was so beautiful. New Jersey Motorsports Park is located about an hour south of Philadelphia, surrounded by fields, trees and even a bit of elevation changes. It is a gorgeous facility and where we are today. Dan is running the events today, trying to hold onto our now Top 10 overall position!
We started the day waking up in possibly the shadiest hotel we’ve been at this week. Last night I had to go down to the office to get some sheets for the fold-out bed I slept on; these sheets came from the maintenance room, which upon the hotel person opening the door, there was a scurrying of little critters - I’m guessing cockroaches, but I wasn’t about to do a closer inspection… I might be burning my pj’s after this one….. Coffee was on par with the low end of the scale (I think I might be getting used to it…) but on the plus side, they had BACON!
Most of the one lappers stayed here, and offered up a few cool shots last night and this morning. And guess what, I figured out the picture loading thing…. so here you go! (oh, and I’ll be adding pics to previous posts, so check those out too).
Arriving at the track, we once again unload the car. Nick and I get the suspension changes done while Dan takes off for the track walk. Once we get the car squared away and the Data Acquisition setup, Nick and I strap on our running shoes and do a few laps also. The video we watched of the track does not do the elevation changes justice! Big rise going into turn 1, followed by a quick drop. Turn 5 is similar and the last corner has some significant banking.
Here’s Dan all lined up and ready to go.
While waiting on grid, the drivers have a tendency to chat. Its part of the fun of this event. Usually talking about some crazy thing that happened on the driver over (like narrowly missing a 4×4 in the middle of the road!), or the track line. Or I think in this case, how to make the perfect spinach quiche…. I also found a nice little sticker on one of our fellow BMWs - my thoughts exactly!
Dan hit the track and was off. Watching the car brake into turn 1 and disappear over the hill was nothing short of amazing. And hair raising! 2nd lap through, he stomps on the brakes, carrying a lot of speed, and misses the apex. Big time. Off in the dusty part of the track. Brake issue? We will find out shortly. Somewhere out there on the last lap, a little too much speed through a corner resulted in some agricultural activity… oops.
It turns out that this track isn’t very hard on brakes. The effective range of the Cobalts is in the 300-1300 degree range. With the last 1/3 of the track needing no brakes, and high speed, we found that the brake ducting on the car was cooling the brakes too much. By the time turn 1 came up, the brakes were cool again. Hum… what to do, what to do… A bit of track-side engineering with a drill, 1 20 oz pop bottle and 2 tie wraps. Make-shift duct covers. 
Results will be posted from this morning when we can. Hopefully the off didn’t loose too much time, as we are neck and neck with a few cars for the top 10…
