Innovative cage design ideas

There are so many good cage design ideas here it's hard to know where to start.

I'm certainly going to copy that upper windshield bar so close that it touches the drivers head. It's important that the head firmly contact the cross bar before the belts have a chance to tighten up. Also during heavy braking, the driver can rest his neck, important for those long enduro races.

Note how close the knees are to the ironically names "knee bar". Again, important to have solid contact before the belts begin to tighten.

Now note the creative bends in the main hoop, sure, some sanctioning bodies may not approve of such creative design, but they are simply behind the times and don't understand how important looks are inside a race car.

Maybe this guy is looking for a co-driver for some upcoming event. Where do I sign up?

Fender Rollin'

The snow is just starting to fall, tomorrow's lapping day at HPR is a long-shot now. So I'll add a couple of pics of the fender rolling last weekend. I rolled the first side with only the tiniest crack in the paint. I took the same care on the second side and instantly caused a 6" crack.

Most of the focus is on the back half of the arch. This is where the tire is closest to the fender. I scraped all of the body-filler out and rolled the lip almost completely flat.

As you can see, even a large 255 R-Comp fits a full compression on both sides. It took about 2.5 hours. I helped to have two floor jacks when confirming that the tire fits as full compression.

This isn't good

A Winter Storm Watch predicting 10-20 inches of snow on Friday. Looks like the lapping day may be at risk.

Statement as of 6:39 AM MDT on April 15, 2009

A Winter Storm Watch remains in effect from Thursday evening through Saturday morning.

A chance of mixed snow and rain is expected for much of Thursday night before changing over to snow by early Friday morning. Heavy snow is possible over the urban corridor Palmer Ridge and western Weld County on Friday continuing into Saturday morning. Possible accumulations could range from 10 to 20 inches of heavy wet snow. Strong north northeast winds of 15 to 35 mph are also expected late Thursday night into Saturday morning.

High Plains Raceway

I drove High Plains Raceway a couple of weeks ago. I did their Friday Lapping Day the day before the first SCCA Regional.

What a great track. It is really technical, lots of elevation change and beautiful new asphalt. I drove over 5 hours including one 2+ hour session that was a tank of gas from full to empty. All this track time really killed the consumables. I burned through half a set of tires and half a set of front pads. I took the opportunity to change both -- I'm going to Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Spec tires to gain better wet weather performance and instead of the Performance Friction 01 Compound (Which I love) I'm going to try the new 06 compound to get a little better wear and shift the brake balance to the rear by continuing to run PF01 in the rear.

I'm headed back for a full three days this weekend. I've got a new set of 255 Nitto NT01s if it's dry and a set of 245 Dunlops in case of rain.