Willow Springs Major, Feb 20-21, 2016

Brian Linn

Brian Linn

Well-known member
Majors at Willow Springs is this weekend. We are again grouped with B-spec, STL and T4 with 2, 7 and 6 entries respectively. It's a quick two day schedule, qual & race Sat and qual & race Sun.
Weather looks to be good, highs in the low 70's and lows near 40° F. Crazy warm here now for this time of year.
Tom Tuttle and I are running GTL on Sat and FP on Sun while Huffaker is doing the opposite.

2 ..… Droese, Brandon … E Production … 1987 Mazda RX7 … Goleta, CA
9 ..… Graham, Wayne … E Production … 1973 Mazda RX3 … Santa Barbara, CA
196 . Hagerty, James … E Production … 1984 Mazda RX-7 … Santa Barbara, CA
50 … Jimerson, Anthony … E Production … 1986 Mazda rx 7 … benicia, CA
13 … Larsson, Toby … E Production … 1994 BMW 325is M-Technic … Anaheim, CA
23 … Martinez, Bernardo … E Production … 1992 Honda prelude … Redondo Beach, CA
96 … Swifts, Kale … E Production … 1990 Mazda RX7 … Surrey, BC
51 … Whiting, Paul … E Production … 2012 Honda Civic … Las Vegas, NV

77 … Huffaker, Joe … F Production … 1972 MG Midget … Petaluma, CA
21 … Linn, Brian … F Production … 1972 MG Midget … Hermosa Beach, CA
8 .… Murph, Gary … F Production … 1970 Opel GT … Bellflower, CA
66 … Parks, Michael … F Production … 1975 MG Midget … Benicia, CA
11 … Tuttle, Tom … F Production … 1975 MG Midget … Windsor, CA

31 … Carter, Craig … GT-Lite … 2002 Nissan Sentra … Long Beach, CA
38 … Ermish, Troy … GT-Lite … 1971 Datsun 510 … Tracy, CA
77 … Huffaker, Joe … GT-Lite … 1972 MG Midget … Petaluma, CA
95 … Linerud, Tim … GT-Lite … 1983 Volkswagen GTI … Belmont, CA
21 … Linn, Brian … GT-Lite … 1972 MG Midget … Hermosa Beach, CA
11 … Tuttle, Tom … GT-Lite … 1975 MG Midget … Windsor, CA

91 … Becker, Jon … H Production … 1967 Austin Mini … Martinez, CA
18 … Beyer, Bobby … H Production … 2008 Toyota Yaris … Mission Viejo, CA
32 … Cummings, Michael … H Production … 1964 Austin Healey Sprite … Martinez, CA
37 … Hussey, Steven … H Production … 1990 Honda CR-X … Los Altos, CA
99 … Isley, Jason … H Production … 2015 Toyota Yaris … Coto de Caza, CA
144 . Valentine, Ben … H Production … 1970 MG Midget … Fullerton, CA
33 … Wittman, Gary … H Production … 1961 Austin Healey Sprite … Costa Mesa, CA
 
BLinn said:
Majors at Willow Springs is this weekend. We are again grouped with B-spec, STL and T4 with 2, 7 and 6 entries respectively. It's a quick two day schedule, qual & race Sat and qual & race Sun.
Weather looks to be good, highs in the low 70's and lows near 40° F. Crazy warm here now for this time of year.
Tom Tuttle and I are running GTL on Sat and FP on Sun while Huffaker is doing the opposite.
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I thought they were going to break out FP and GTL so you guys could double dip?
 
Jason@SportsCar said:
I thought they were going to break out FP and GTL so you guys could double dip?
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They had changed the schedule for that request. But then at Fontana we started to think about how much running on these cars that would be. It's tough, especially with a tight schedule. It's not like a Spec Miata I guess. Maybe it's tough on the drivers too. Thunderhill will still have FP & GTL separated. Huffaker will use both his Mini and MG on that weekend. Since there is short time to learn the new half of Thunderhill, I was thinking running a 2nd group would be good up there.

Looks like we lost some BMWs from Fontana. Both John Longwell (EP) and his son-in-law Innes Eisele (FP) are not entered this weekend. Wayne Graham is making a return to EP in his Rx7 and Bernardo Martinez is back with SCCA after a long spell with NASA in the HAPSPORT Prelude of Keith Gillespie. Paul Whiting has run his Civic in STL previously, so that might be a typo that he is entered in EP. Is there an EP Civic?
 
BLinn said:
Jason@SportsCar said:
I Paul Whiting has run his Civic in STL previously, so that might be a typo that he is entered in EP. Is there an EP Civic?
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I think the STL car was his CRX, I think the EP entry is his World Challenge Civic - and there is a listing for the newer Civic in EP.
 
Yup, Paul ran his CRX in STL. The 2006-2011 generation Civic Si is in EP, which is what he's signed up in.

Wow, Bernardo Martinez is a name I haven't seen in a long time! Blast from my short lived NASA Honda Challenge past, like 10+ years ago.

Jealous of the Prod fields the west coast has been getting! Pretty good sized, competitive fields!
 
Not much time for a proper weekend recap right now, but here is the video from Sunday's race https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_HylhpGRro
Pretty busy race for me with Huffaker and Ermish running GTL and Oscar Jackson Jr in STL. Didn't get a split start on Sunday and Oscar paid the most for that as he was separated from the STL leader. Brief video moments for Bernardo Martinez in Keith Gillespie's matte black Prelude. He was having shifting issues, among other things, but really making that car go. Great to see him back out on the track.

Sat results: http://www.calclub.com/html/html2/archives/2016/group3_02_20_16.pdf
Sun results: http://www.calclub.com/html/html2/archives/2016/group3_02_21_16.pdf
 
BLinn said:
Not much time for a proper weekend recap right now, but here is the video from Sunday's race https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_HylhpGRro
Pretty busy race for me with Huffaker and Ermish running GTL and Oscar Jackson Jr in STL. Didn't get a split start on Sunday and Oscar paid the most for that as he was separated from the STL leader. Brief video moments for Bernardo Martinez in Keith Gillespie's matte black Prelude. He was having shifting issues, among other things, but really making that car go. Great to see him back out on the track.

Sat results: http://www.calclub.com/html/html2/archives/2016/group3_02_20_16.pdf
Sun results: http://www.calclub.com/html/html2/archives/2016/group3_02_21_16.pdf
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Brian,

That looked like fun but the track appears to be a bit rougher than what I remember. What happened to Tom? It looked like he had a great qualifying time on Saturday and then backed up from there.
 
michael heintzman said:
That looked like fun but the track appears to be a bit rougher than what I remember.
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It certainly felt rougher than I remembered back in 2013. And I could not get near my lap times from previous years.
 
Jason@SportsCar said:
michael heintzman said:
That looked like fun but the track appears to be a bit rougher than what I remember.
Click to expand...
It certainly felt rougher than I remembered back in 2013. And I could not get near my lap times from previous years.
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I agree with Jason, the track was rough.

Tom had ignition problems in the race on Sat. It was too bad since he had the fastest time of the weekend. I was real lucky to get the win in GTL on Sat when Tom had his problems and Ermish in his 510 had an issue with a suspension piece. They both seemed faster than me.
 
a also found the track much rougher than i remembered. so bad in fact i made some pretty big shock changes. i was not able to really get down to the lap times we expect based on past history. on the other hand i saw that track records were set in 12 classes so i assumed it was us not the track??
 
The track was a little rougher than I remembered but turn 1 was the worst for me. I lost an engine for the first time in over 20 years. I can't blame that on the track though.
 
As a fan in the stands (I raced a SM this weekend for the first time) I thought the Prod/GT/STL Group put on a great show. Lots of action at turn 1 with the front runners in the group Brian, Joe, Troy, STL drivers etc.. passing each other almost every lap. Great to see such clean and committed racing. Hats off to all.

Neil
#83 HP MGB
 
Jay,

I must say it was a lot of fun. My Nephews built the car (1.6L) over the last 10 months and this was it's first outing. We kind of went into the deep end going out at Willow Springs at a Majors event for it's initial run, ..so we got a pretty good spanking. We raced at the back of the pack some 5 secs off the new lap record pace, but it was exciting as you say (ran all Sat race in a cluster of 3 cars). Car ran all weekend w/o any issues although for some reason, we were down on power.. (cars just blew by on both front and back straights), but we were fast through the corners.. (made all my time here). Some tuning needed now. Nice group of guys, (like Prod/GTL) all willing to help etc... I'll get my MGB back together soon (missing NOLA as we speak) but I'll be periodically in the SM since I'm motivated to show improvement and move up the field into the "kill zone" (mid pack) as it is referred to out west.

Neil
#83 HP
 
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