News : 2011 June Sprints
SCR Performance: 2011 June Sprints Champions
JAKE LATHAM WINS RAIN-SOAKED WEATHERTECH JUNE SPRINTS IN ELKHART LAKE
June 16-19, 2011, Elkhart Lake, WI:
The pictures make it obvious: Torrential rain. Jake writes of his experience on race day, ending up first to the checkered flag to take his first win at the June Sprints:
Somewhat of a portent of things to come was a chill in the air Saturday night when I finally wandered back to our RV in the trees. For the first time since arriving on a rainy Wednesday,
I had to don a long-sleeve shirt to stay warm. Sunday morning, while we waited for our session, a small cloud stopped by, wetted down the paddock for a few moments, then ambled onward,
unaware that it'd put all of us into a whole new state of mind.
Soon enough, all of us in the paddock were checking, checking, and re-checking the radar and the skies leading up to the race. I was pacing around with my iPhone, looking for the
best of the all but nonexistent signal out there in the Wisconsin countryside. Green belts seemed to be splitting on either side of Elkhart Lake. 9:00 came and went, then 9:30, then 10:00. 10:05. 10:07. 10:08. Soon enough, we had to make the call,
and climb into the car.
In the end, despite all the hand-wringing, sky-checking, dead reckoning, refresh-button-clicking, and divining-rod consultation, every single car came to grid on dries...whereupon
the heavens opened and began drenching us all.
As soon as it started raining, we all scrambled to try and get everything changed in time. Instead of the usual calm wandering around on grid with the occasional crewperson chatting
on his radio to his driver, there were dozens of folks scrambling, falling, slipping, squatting and milling around in the effort to get cars up, tires changed, and back on the ground.
In retrospect, though we didn't know it at the time, I think they gave us all time to get everything changed, since the rain was just pouring down.
Eventually the 5, 3, 2 and 1 minute signs were given, and I reluctantly surrendered my umbrella. There was so much water I spun the tires just trying to get moving. Visibility
was perhaps 10 feet, and the faster we went, the more spray we all kicked up. The rain lights were laughable - visible maybe at 20 feet, but beyond, there was nothing but a wall of spray.
At the big bump near the pit-exit, I felt the cold water run in and start soaking the backs of my legs, and as it turns out, that's about the time the camera quit working. So sad. My visor
was instantly covered with water from Doc ahead, despite a healthy coat of Rain-X. Little drips from the upper surface of the visor started falling into my eyes.
After we were out of pit lane and onto the track, as far as I knew, my universe shrank to about the nose of the car and the visible 20 or so feet ahead of me. I couldn't even see Doc's
rain light for all the suspended water. I spent some time on the opening lap trying acceleration ( surprisingly good ), braking ( also not horrible but let's wind the bias back a few
thousand turns ), and cornering ( don't even think about it ), and concluded that the car was OK in a straight line, but managing the back in the turns was going to be really tough.
The start was a complete mess, as we never really formed up into a grid that I could see. I never did see the green, but Tom went screaming by me, as did a pink-ish CSR, so I hit the
throttle too...a little. I spent the first few laps just trying to keep the car on the island and see where I was going. The amount of spray kicked up from the tires, tunnels,
and wings was staggering. Just like the books say, the racing line was a disaster. Big puddles were at most of the apexes, caught by the curbing, as they were at corner exits. I found
myself driving in the middle of the track and squaring off the corners. For the first few laps, during which traffic was heavier, I constantly had my left foot covering the brake pedal in
case a wreck appeared out of the spray. Once the field strung out a bit, I went back to using my right foot, since it has so much more finesse in these tricky conditions.
As I gained confidence and started using more and more throttle on the straights, and each lap it seemed like there was something - braking a tiny bit too late and feeling like
"is this the lap where I throw it off track?", finding
certain spots wetter or drier than the lap before, and constantly feeling the car twitch and lurch when the rear end started to slide. Even worse is when I'd start to get closer to another car,
and all thoughts of trying to find the best line would go straight out the window, and my only priority would be finding a way to see where I was going.
Eventually I noticed that I was passing cars pretty regularly - first a few CSRs. I tip-toed by a small crash in T8, so I snuck by as they got moving again. Eventually I came up behind the 2010
Runoffs champion
around T13, who looked like he was holding on for dear life. I followed him through 14, 1, and 2, keeping
about a car-width to the side so I could still see where I was going. In T3, he got his outside
wheels in the large puddle at exit and I was able to accelerate by down to T5.
In the final few laps, I began to lap more and more backmarkers, so I kept running as I had been, looking for the more-and-more drier areas that developed, and began to even be able to carry some corner
speed and put some lateral load on the car. I caught what turned out to be the leading DSR, so I snuck by him on the
inside in the carousel, in which he made plenty of room for both of us.
I ran the next two laps just as I'd run the others, looking for the least wet spots I could, which turned out to be nearly 8 seconds a lap faster than the next closest car. I drove down the pit
lane having no idea that I'd won the race, but the guy at the end of the pit lane started towards me with the flag and I thought "well, one of the black Stohrs, he probably has me confused with the winner".
He handed me the
flag and I said something like "Isn't that for the winner?" and he replied "Yeah, that's you!"
The rest of it was wonderful - a nice slow victory lap, podium celebration, and of course liberal spraying of champagne. On to the Runoffs!
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