folsomlarry

We were invited, along with over 340 other cars, to participate in the 2014 Sonoma Motorsports Festival at Sears Point (I refuse to call it anything else) on May 16-18. According to the site they are working on some car corrals for the event. Steve Earle was the founder of the Monterey Historics, and this is now his main event. Official practice starts on Friday, qualifying on Saturday and Sunday is a full day of racing. Here is the Sunday schedule, which includes the Saturday night show in Sonoma:



4:30PM Stage Parade Cars at Front Gate

5:00PM Parade to Sonoma departs track.

5:30PM - 8:00PM Sonoma Valley Race Car Festival in Sonoma Plaza

SUNDAY, May 18, 2014

7:00AM Raceway Gates Open

7:00AM - 12:00PM Registration/Will Call : Sonoma Raceway

8:30AM Race 1 8 Laps Group 1 Pre-1927 Sports, Touring Cars (A1/A2)

9:00AM Race 2 11 Laps Group 2 1925 - 1941 Racing Cars (A3/A2)

9:30AM Race 3 11 Laps Group 8 1963 - 1973 Grand National Stock Cars (O)

10:00AM Race 4 11 Laps Group 4 1956 - 1963 Formula-Jr., F-2, F-1 Cars (E1/E2/E3/E4)

Break (10 Min.)

10:40AM Race 5 11 Laps Group 3 1946 - 1955 Sports Racing & Production Cars (B1/B2/B3)

11:10AM Race 6 11 Laps Group 7 1955 - 1962 Production/GT Cars (G1/G2)

11:40AM Race 7 11 Laps Group 6 1959 - 1966 Sports Racing & 1964 -1970 FIA Cars (D/H1)

LUNCH BREAK 12:05PM - 12:55PM

12:15PM - 12:30PM Club On Track Parades

1:00PM Race 8 11 Laps Group 5 1955 - 1960 Sports Racing Cars (C1/C2)

1:30PM Race 9 11 Laps Group 9 1962 - 1966 Production/GT Cars over 2000cc (G4)

2:00PM Race 10 11 Laps Group 10 1962 - 1967 Production/GT Cars under (G3)

Break (10 min.)

2:30PM Race 11 11 Laps Group 11 1966 - 1972 Historic Trans-Am Cars (L)

3:05PM Race 12 11 Laps Group 12 1966 - 1974 Historic Can-Am Cars (J1/J2)

3:35PM Race 13 11 Laps Group 13 1970- 1979 IMSA GT & 1971-1979 FIA Cars (I1/H2)

4:00PM Race 14 11 Laps Group 14 1982 - 1991 Historic IMSA GTO/SCCA Trans-Am (N)



4:45PM Prize Giving


File Downloads


File

Description

File size

Last Modified

redtopz

Sounds awesome Larry! How many spectators do they get at this event?

folsomlarry

I tried last week to get some spectator counts from previous races, but could not get any. We are heading down on Thursday, to set up our pit area, a motorhome on the hill above the pits and go through tech. Should be an interesting weekend, and hopefully we can keep lowering our lap times.

Here is a video from two weekends ago. This was the first time out on new tires, and I didn't want to be too aggressive on the passing, as it was my first race with CSRG.

50 4Ever

Awesome video....

folsomlarry

Thanks Doug

moose.b3

That looks like a lot of fun, might have to go and watch.

folsomlarry

A new press release for next weekends races. Looks like the Can-Am cars will be featured:

http://www.racesonoma.com/tickets/so...a-raceway.html

folsomlarry

Meet some great people at the races this past weekend. They tried to pit everyone by groups, so we were around 4 other C2 drivers. Weekend was going good until the qualifying race Saturday afternoon. Entering turn #6 heard a very loud bang and shut it down very quickly. We took some of the engine apart Saturday night, and it appears that a rod is probably no longer connected to the crankshaft. We will know more next week when we pull the engine. Not what I was looking forward too, but it's racing and things tend to break.

l8te apx

Nice job in handling the passes.

folsomlarry

We are about ready to pull the engine on the race car today, as we broke something in it at the last event, hopefully only a rod. We will know the extent of the damage hopefully in the next few day. There is another problem that is bothering us. Some of our competitors are claiming 500 hp from there "legal" 327 engines, compared to our 445+/-. My brother has talked to several cam companies and cylinder head companies and they all say that you can get that much horsepower with a legal engine. This presents a new problem of do you want to stay legal and spot all that power, or make a engine that is illegal and hope you don't get caught. Apparently the Monterey Historic races really go through the engines, but at other events people put in different engines and figure they will not get caught.

redtopz

My advice would be don't even worry about the 50 hp. Make your engine reliable and then focus on handling, brakes, and tires. People will get hung up on power, but it's way over-rated on a road course. I've run the same lap times at T-hill 2 years ago with 366 whp as I have with 420 whp just by very slight differences in driving technique in the brake zones, corner entry, and throttle application in the turns. You might even have an advantage with less power if it's hard to put the power down in your vintage cars in the corners. Maybe you can get back to full throttle earlier than the other guys. Plus staying legal makes winning mean something as opposed to beating others with a cheater car.

trackboss

There are some ultra big buck guys in vintage. Don't be fooled. I've heard of some that spend huge amounts of money to make things appear legal yet are not and they will never be caught. The hp some of those cars make is something that was impossible in true original form. Just look at some of the rpms some motors are turning. Heck, just listen to them.

folsomlarry

You guys are both right. There is a ton of money being spent on engines, and I know some of them have pushed the rules past legal. We are planning on building a 327 legal engine, although it would be cheaper to build a 350 and hope we don't get caught. A rod let go and took out just about everything, so we will be need a complete new bottom end. Contacted the engine builder in the area who seems to have the best reputation, and there is no way I can afford one of their engines. We are going to follow a couple of leads and contact a few other engine builders in NorCal, but I have a feeling we will be building it ourselves.

tunaman

Sorry to hear that Larry! Good luck finding a block and getting the new slug back together!!!

folsomlarry

The picture tells the story:

don hall

Why? Any clue yet?

folsomlarry

Not really sure, we are guessing that it was rod failure. A couple of engine builders we have talked too say they will not run Eagle rods in a race engine, which is what these are. Another engine builder says that he has had no problems with them. Oil starvation has been mentioned, but all the rest of the bearings are in perfect condition. The bearings for this rod are totally burnt, but we tend to think that it was caused by the rod starting to break and putting a load on the bearings. I still had good oil pressure and it was not running hot. One engine builder we have talked to in Chico, has built a lot of these engines, and has given us a good price to build a new one. He wants to take a look at everything we have, so he might have a better idea of what happened.

folsomlarry

The engine builder in Chico, says that almost all problems like this are caused at first by oil problems. After looking at how are rod broke, he thinks that the rod may have had a nick or flaw that caused to it break. I guess we will never know for sure. It looks like they are going to build our new engine, as we should have a quote for everything within the next week.