April 2007 Races

I was at Sears Point racing again this past weekend. It's my first race of the season since last Sept/October, and I appear to have forgotten how to drive again. Driving a mid-engined car is very different from a front-engined car, as there's huge chunk of weight (aka the engine) behind you. So you really have to be smooth with your inputs (steering, gas, brakes), especially entering corners. Sometimes it's counterintuitive too - At the entrance to some corners, you need to get the weight back, the car "set", and then turn in. But the natural instinct is to touch the brakes... then turn in. But doing this (with less weight on the rear wheels) results in a large polar moment that will often spin the car... So the mind just has to override the instinct and keep the foot on the gas - especially scary on some of the faster corners.

There were quite a few accidents this weekend. Mostly on the practice on Friday due to lots of wet patches all over the track. The worst one I've ever seen in person had one car hitting a second, lifting it up and sending it skidding sideways on its side. Fortunately it did not flip over, but it did slam back down quite hard. Both cars were coming out of Turn 11 (the slowest corner on the track leading onto the longest straightaway) when the first car closest to the wall touched the wall, sending it into the second car. Apparently this is the danger of open-wheel racing, as when two cars touch wheels, it will usually shoot the other car up and over. Another accident during qualifying on Saturday involved a car crash into the wall at the exit of turn 10, pretty scary as that was a pretty high speed corner, and I was turning into that corner pretty fast when I saw the accident happen at the exit. After my race on Saturday it started to rain, so I headed home, but later heard the Pro cars had something like 39 spins on the track - without anyone having to buy any new parts... Some of the drivers were getting a good natured ribbing from each other - with only 1 or 2 drivers that did not spin at all - most of the others had 4-6 spins or so...


OK, OK - how'd I do? I did not do so well on Saturday - qualifying 6th. Late in the race, I ended up spinning out at turn 2, and got passed by 3 cars - I never recovered and finished 9th. Oh well. 2 points is 2 points. On Sunday, I qualified 5th, and pretty much had a rather boring race with the cars in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th taking off, and the cars in 6th through 10th dropping back. On the last lap - as I was preparing to finish in 5th, I passed a car that was off track at turn 9 - and I cruise into 4th! Later I found out the driver in 3rd (who had a really competitive race with the driver in 4th) had his seat belt snap -- on the last lap.

My friend Lee came up with me on Sunday and took some really nice pictures. Oh yeah - this guy was there too - something about his new wine or something... Someone said he drove for NASCAR... Anyone recognize him?

SIHH 2007...

Huh? What is that? SIHH stands for Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, and is one of two major watchmakers conferences that occur each year in Geneva, Switzerland (the other is Baselworld, which occurred last week in Basel, Switzerland). These conferences are eagerly anticipated by collectors & most watch forums are abuzz with posts of pictures & press releases by manufacturers of their latest models & special creations.

Some of the more interesting:

1) Girard-Perregaux's Vintage 1945 Jackpot Tourbillion (~$500K)

2) Bell & Ross Phantom - which uses Black Luminova to produce a completely black dial during the day.


















3) Panerai has used Ceramics to replace some of their older, PVD coated steel watches. This should be a great improvement, as the Ceramic is supposedly 5x harder than steel. (the old PVDs were notoriously easily scratched.) The Panerai Radiomir Black Seal Ceramic, ref. PAM00292