Btw, what's the best place to stay? The Best Western? Been a little slow getting my reservations.

 

That's where I'm booked, but they are all similar.

 

I prefer the Amerihost

 

 

^Don't we all!!

How's the weather up there boys?

 

Cold and windy, but generally nice. Wide open track. I got in about 7-8 sessions today and Jerry Petersoned my brakes. Must post pictures....

 

Well, depletedUfoot has the pictures, so I'm sure they'll be up soon.

I need to thank everyone (again!): Rylan for fielding an endless supply of questions, a set of brake pads on my useless credit, and the knowledge needed to undo my stupidity. Richard for a set of rotors (again on my useless credit), a helping hand, a sanity check, and a (few) gentle reminder(s) that sloppiness is deadly out there. Stewart for some much needed light for our night-time wrenching.

The short version of the story is that I let my front pads wear down to the backing plates to the point that the piston punched through the backing plate. I lost all brakes heading into T14. Luckily, I had come to an almost complete stop after the S's to let a couple cars by and was going slow enough to scrub off speed and not test the new tire wall.

Despite that incident and the double-180 at 120 on the front straight, I still can't wait to go back to ThunderHill. Too bad SV won't be back for a long time

 

Glad everything turned out all right, Tony! That's one big advantage of running with Speed Ventures: always lots of trackside help for S2Kers in need...

 

Well it was a great weekend, and well worth the drive despite the over 10-hour drive back home in stop and go traffic on I-5 in many places.

Of course, spare front pads, rear pads, new front rotors, motul fluid, zip ties and an assortment of tools etc, all came into good use, but not on my car! Fortunately my car was almost perfect and problem-free for the 1,200 road and 325 track miles in 3 days. Stock seat and exhaust made a world of difference for the long trip.

Great driving Stewart (depletedUfoot), and thanks for the ride. I didn't say it at the time, but I'd be too scared to drive a stock-suspension, sans-wing S2000 that fast. Did you break 2:10? You other guys with stock suspension are lucky Stewart doesn't come out to more events.

This was actually my first time at Thill on R-compounds (yes, it's true!), so it was like learning the track all over. I was constantly improving my laptimes each session on Saturday, all the way to my last lap of my last session, but knew there was still lots of time left out there because I was to chicken in turn 8 etc. I was still happy that I got to 2:07.9xx, but of course, Aaron spanked me by about 1.5 sec in the ladder challenge! So at dinner he tells me where I can make up time, and so on Sunday morning, with the bypass, I let it fly and got down to 2:03.2xx in two sessions! Felt I had it down close to perfect for my abilities except that I was still slowing too much for the bypass, but I challenged Aaron anyway and, of course, as expected, he goes out the next session and beats me by 0.45 sec. (shouldn't have told him what my time was that he had to beat!). So I was all ready to go out to try to beat my earlier time and possibly his, but Turbo decided to shut down the track for lunch and I had to leave early so didn't get a chance. So I challenged Aaron again for Cal Speedway. (my poor car...the steering is a little crooked again!)

It's really too sad that we aren't going to Thill next year, and I now also regret missing the previous two weekend events there. Such a nice track.

 

I don't think Stewart was able to improve on his lap times. Unfortunately for him, I tailed him on a couple laps, learned some tricks (especially in turn 2) and got my times down to 2:08.6