2018 SCCA Runoffs..Run to the Championship

[bertvorgon]

That is it, hope you got a sense of the week, the special place it is in motorsport history.

I have to commend Nissan for my G35, that thing is so good on road trips like this, comfortable, quiet, precise when you need it and lots of power for slicing and dicing when you have to accelerate, from any speed.. On that drive back, 955 miles, at no time was my body getting sore, I could feel my hands as I do grip the wheel pretty tight ( ready for anything mode), but I was good the next day.

[2DoorJim]

That is nirvana. No other way about it.

[gooned]

Thanks for taking us along Keith!

[Idoxlr8]

Thanks for the stories Keith, great journey.

You need to get yourself to the historic races in Monterey......the diversity of cars is mind blowing.

[Tedman]

You guys actually polished off multiple 45 GALLON barrels of wine? By my calculations that's 227 bottles of wine per barrel! Was the entire paddock helping you I hope? Thanks for the excellent reporting and pics!

[bertvorgon]

WELL...there were 9 of us in the house.......

One interesting story...the Goodyear people of course work very closely with Collin, based on his input they make up the rubber compound for him. He is one of the rare drivers that can push a tire to it's theoretical design limit and then give the feedback required.

During the testing, both Mike Lewis and Collin chose different compounds to run, Collin chose harder and Mike the softer. When Mike came in the Goodyear engineers put the tire pyrometer probe into the tire....300 Degrees F !!!!!!!!!

Their comment was: " Well, that is a RECORD!!" Never seen a tire temp that high. Collin's tires were pretty much where they should have been, which is why he stuck with the harder compound for the race. Mike still went for the softer, then as it was, Mike's rear tires went off, but, Collin's front tires were nuclear too trying to stay ahead of Mike.

When I put my hand on Collin's front tire when he came in, it was like HUBBA BUBBA chewing gum left on a summer side walk in 100F degree heat, Holy Cow!

The amount of shed rubber through out the car(s) is just amazing and was a constant job to clean out.

[510rob]

Thanks for the pictures and the stories Keith.

[iceD]

I got a country name for your return trip “My tunes are in ruins”

Ice D

[2DoorJim]

Keith, some prior years coverage at another run off you also mention that Collin was running harder compound than his next closest competitor.

At this level of competition I'm surprised you folks don't hide compound info from other competitors. Isnt there risk that Goodyear techs reveal to the other party what Collin is using?

Does anyone abraid the compound info off the tires or is this all open info among the various teams?

[bertvorgon]

Not sure how to answer that, not at liberty of course on some things!

The compound is marked on the tire, but, what one chooses is what is key, managing the tires is what this is all about, run a soft tire and then try to flog them will only overheat them past their optimum, as you well know.

Collin is able to know exactly how hard he can push things and keep the temperature of the compound within design parameters.

[Danthewire]

Exactly right Keith. Ive seen drivers who get caught up in the moment burn all the good out of their tires in a handful of laps and rapidly fall to the rear. Come in and curse about the set up being no good. We ran a class years ago that said any tire. I got hold of a set of McCrearys took black rtv silicon and smeared it all over the tire lettering and numbers. The competition went beserk. Great Fun.
Another time we had to run Goodyear spec slicks. A friend made a Hoosier stencil and chalked the name over the Goodyears
Ha what a gong show that was.
300 degrees on a race tire pretty much has destroyed it, man that's hot.
Thanks for posting all this up Keith I really enjoyed it.

[bertvorgon]

That is funny...wwaaaayyy back, as I got my car dialed, I wrote all sorts of numbers on my struts and a few other places, made it look like suspension settings ( I think there is still some on my strut), drove a few of the 510 guys crazy...fun to mess with minds.

It is always best to have YOUR OWN game plan and stick to it... I even won the CDN National in 1991 by doing that, by the time they figured out what I had done..their panic made it too late to re-think the game plan..ha.

Collin is a master of tire care, seen in the second last Championship, the fellow just lost his tires, Collin preserved his .

[BillF]

Runoff videos are online: https://www.scca.com/videos?categories= ... 18-runoffs

[bertvorgon]

One last blast at this thread, then into the history files.

As I wandered around the track the four days before the race, I ended up talking to two of the "official" Sonoma photographers. They had keyed access to small windows around the walled section of the track, for both safety crews and photographers.

I was able to talk "equipment" with them as I have been a photographer and of course my son Matt is. The one fellow I said to him, "oh, you are using a NIKON D4S with 135MM lens" That caught his attention and we ended up talking about a few other things. He noticed the CDN flag I had sewn on the arm of my Specialty T-Shirt and asked If I was from Canada. Yes, and I was here to watch our driver, Collin Jackson. He asked what car # and then...said he would send me some Hi-RES pictures...for free...as long as I only used them for personal stuff. His name was Lance Guelfo

WOW! "No problem, I said I would give full credit for photos of course."

This occurred with another photographer, same scenario, said I seemed like a nice guy and would do the same. He was shooting with a Canon EOS-1DX with a 600 MM lens, which as you can see gave me the great shot in the hairpin with Mike right behind. His name was Mike Doran.

They both followed through and with Matt's help we cleaned up some stuff in the photo and sized them to 16 x 20 to fit an 11 x 14 Matte. I had some plaques made up and Saturday night presented them to Collin and Glenda, Andy and Tracey as thanks for feeding me, putting me up for 5 nights and of course, THE WIN!!!!

If you want to see some great race photography plus other events, check out their websites.

https://jdnicholsproductions.com/

This is Lance's

http://www.mikedoranphotography.com/

This is Mike's

[bertvorgon]

I was doing some copying of pictures for Colin today, seems GOODYEAR TIRE wants something for their 2020 calendar.

as I was doing that I saw the video's I shot of a couple of the races, just snippets of course.

Here is a link to TROY ERMISH going by in his 510, which he won with during the 2018 SCCA RUNOFFS at Sonoma Raceway.

I almost forgot I had an account on VIMEO.

https://vimeo.com/331682408

IF...you like this, I can post up the first few laps of the Spec Miata race..crazy...let me know