In reply to metallitubby :
We heard about his wreck. We saw a flattened road sign near the start. Did he do that?
In reply to metallitubby :
We heard about his wreck. We saw a flattened road sign near the start. Did he do that?
In reply to llysgennad :
The weather was perfect.
David S. Wallens said:We heard about his wreck. We saw a flattened road sign near the start. Did he do that?
If it was on your right while heading down, then yes. Just before the timing line. He powerslid to driver's left right into the dirt/trees.
In reply to metallitubby :
Sounds like we saw it. The sign looked freshly crunched.
Still going through my Pikes Peak photos.
So we parked at Halfway Picnic Grounds but had to hike down to Engineer’s Corner. I figured if I carried my camera, I could maybe fit my sandwich in my bag....
So, I went for the first time despite having lived here for 20 years and thinking every year, "I should go." Mostly, I was motivated by the fact that my rally codriver, Jack, managed to get accepted to drive after 2 years of being wait-listed. He was driving the blue/yellow VW Golf pictured up there. He had enough folks on his crew, so I instead volunteered to help my friend man his taco truck at Devil's Playground.
This meant we were eligible to set up in Devil's Playground on Saturday afternoon before the spectators arrived. After the truck seemed to be in decent shape, I pitched a tent on the edge of the parking lot, put in some ear plugs and managed to mostly sleep through the not-so-quiet process of parking 425 cars in a tiny lot on the side of the mountain.
We took turns helping out in the taco truck in the face of crazy demand that apparently started around 3am. I showed up to relieve the early morning folks at 6:30am and we sold a lot of hot cocoa and breakfast burritos.
I watched one of the early cars just behind the barricades at the exit of the turn before the parking lot. I can't believe they were allowing people to stand there--the outside of an off-camber crest with the cars at crazy speed. Oddly, the organizers were preventing people from lining the road in the much safer straight section for reasons that cannot be explained. I found some place safer to stand.
Three broken cars ended being stashed in the Devil's Playground lot. The first one was, sadly, Loni Unser's GT3 Turbo. That was easily the best-sounding car on the mountain that day, and I was looking forward to watching her go by at full tilt. Instead, she unexpectedly spent the day watching the race with the rest of us after she stopped with, in her words, "a minor barbecue." Here she is taking a nap toward the end of the race.
You can see the trail of oil-dry from the cleanup after Oberg crashed his polo and continued up the next 3 switchbacks with about 20 degrees of toe-in on the right rear before he gave up and pulled over behind the safety trucks who extinguished the engine fire he had going on at the same time.
Folks said it was worse than usual in terms of the number of crashes and mechanical failures. We averaged something like a car every 10 minutes, which is fairly painful from a spectator's standpoint.
Jack had a great start, but got red flagged after the first sector because of a crash ahead and to head back down the mountain and restart. Unfortunately, they discovered a coolant leak while refueling the car and opted not to restart.
I'm glad I got to see it, but it's a brutal thing to try to spectate. And the weather was actually great this year!
In reply to Berck :
Glad you went and glad you had fun. Yeah, bummer on Loni. Her Porsche sounded killer as she ripped past us. Then we heard from the nearby crew about the fire. Glad she was okay. You’re there cheering for everyone, so the DNFs sting.
Lots of cars headed past us for a rerun. I counted a few making multiple trips back down the mountain. That has to play with your plans for the day.
Hey, that looks like us on up on the hill.
Official Pikes Peak results have been posted.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
Why does the lettuce appear to be holding up better than anything else on that sandwich?
The lettuce was good.
David S. Wallens said:That has to play with your plans for the day.
It does make things challenging, but when Paul (Acura Integra A-Spec) got a re-run, we were ready for him with tire warmers, pressure gauges, and some water for him. In the time he was turned around, some nice cloud-cover came in and gave us a break on tarmac temps. Note that he was 38+ seconds quicker than 2023 in the exact same car.
In reply to metallitubby :
Nice air beneath the rear tires.
David S. Wallens said:Nice air beneath the rear tires.
Katherine got more air, but the announcer did mention that Paul was airborne across the stripe on the live broadcast.
In reply to metallitubby :
I heard Randy Pobst talking about those bumps (and, really, whatever else came to mind) during the live broadcast.
I think we lost signal soon after that.
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