Mat
Moran Motorsports
Event Report
Infineon Raceway
May 31, 2004
Car # X157
First time
trial
13.68
Even though it was only about 8:30 in the morning, it was already warm
and the car was still hot from the drive to the race track so this is
probably reasonable.
Second and last
time trial
13.86 @ 99.6
mph.
0.010 reaction time.
It was 11am and already it was hotter than any other race I've done
this year so performance is probably reasonable but it's still getting
hotter so what am I going to dial in ?
Nice
reaction time.
First elimination
round
It was 3.30pm
and about 92 degrees. I decided to dial in at 14.00 thinking that the
car would go a little quicker than that. I was hoping to be able to hit
the brakes at the end and stay just in front of my opponent.
Unfortunately, my opponent was dialed in at 12.64 so it wasn't going to
be easy.
I got what I thought was a reasonably good start and my opponent didn't
catch me so I hit the brakes hard at the end but still crossed the line
about half a car length in front. A fairly well run race I thought.
Not good enough it turns out...
When I
picked up my time slip the story became clear.
I had managed a slightly better reaction time than my opponent (0.080
vs 0.106) but we had both broken out and I had crossed the finish line
0.065 seconds ahead. Since my lead was greater than the difference
between the two reaction times, I broke out by more and lost. In order
to win this, I would have had to brake earlier and cross the finish
line no more than 0.026 seconds in front. That's tough to do when you
have the slower car and they're catching you fast.
Better still would have been to have a good idea of how fast the car
was going to go in the heat so I wouldn't break out in the first place.
Final thoughts
Bummer.