Viper Days racers to team up against Porsche

[Frank Parise]

Even though we may be arch rivals in the Viper Days wheel to wheel series, a few of us will be teaming up to kick some serious Porsche butt in the NASA Pro Series scheduled for Feb 23-25 at Firebird International Raceway in Phoenix.

Dan Downs, Rob Foster, Johnny Yuma, Phil De La O, Fat Albert, Bob Stevenson, and myself will be racing against a bevy of Porsche Supercup and GT2 cars. There will also be an ARCA stock car and many other formidable opponents in the Super Unlimited Open class.

We expect a starting grid of 30-35 cars. If interested, please come and support our effort. We'll treat you right. The weather in Phoenix will be beautiful.

 

[GTS Dean]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Frank Parise:
Fat Albert

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Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while.

an ARCA stock car

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Set the course up clockwise and he'll never get it figured out.

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Go ahead and let him run a bigger carb too. He'll need it against the 8.0 motors. At Cabaniss NAS last fall (3.5 miles & 13 turns), a guy showed up with a very competitive short track car for time trials. Without a doubt, it had the best sound of anything there, but it was like 15+ seconds down from my car with a 390 cfm carb on it.

That sound really fun Frank. Have a great time!

 

[Frank Parise]

Thanks for the well wishes Deano. The driver of the ARCA stock car was the NASA Pro series champion in 2000 in our class. He has a 6 cylinder motor that puts out 560 HP. He wieghs 2900 pounds with fuel and driver. He bettered both Phil and I at the last event at PIR. He ran a high 1:04 versus Phil's 1:05.5 and my 1:06.1. He, however, was on brand new G/Y slicks while Phil and I were on crusty old Hoosiers. We are considering running slicks next event since the rules allow it.Ijust hate spending 1600 bucks on tires that will be completely dried up and useless to me after 2 days of racing. I tried the G/Y at PIR last year just for testing. Times were 1.7 seconds better than my personal best on Hoosiers, however, after 2 hours of track time, they felt no better than a set of Hoosier scrubs. One thing I'll do for sure is get rid of the 2 50-pound sand bags I had to put in my car to make weight at the last Viper Days event. Dan Downs can get rid of 150 pounds of rock salt that he used as ballast.

 

[GTS Dean]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Frank Parise:
I tried the G/Y at PIR last year just for testing. Times were 1.7 seconds better than my personal best on Hoosiers, however, after 2 hours of track time, they felt no better than a set of Hoosier scrubs.
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When I ran the Finals in 99, I ran both Club Slicks and Hoosiers in the same tire sizes for the first time each. What I found was that even once I got the pressures right, felt comfortable and drove the snot out of the Michelins (6 heat cycles), the Hoosiers (overinflated and greasy as hell) were within three-tenths of the Michelins after only 2 cycles and about 11 total laps.

I read a quote from Alan Mertins (Galmer Engineering) the other night that talked about "driver feel." He said that Al Jr. couldn't really tell the difference in raw speed at PIR as long as the car was balanced correctly. Ultimately, it's the stopwatch that counts (literally).