Formula D Diaries - Hankook Porsche - Import Tuner Magazine

Englishtown Diaries Bridgestone Pontiac Gto

I had the exact same result as the last round in Atlanta. I finished Fourth Place, lost twice in the same day, and got beat by my boss. WTF! On a positive note, I qualified First, and that was a big improvement for me.

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Tyler McQuarrie
Sigh. Poor Mr. McQuarrie. A veteran driver with years of experience, he's had a whole other kind of experience in his new-for-the-season Porsche GT2. Thanks to transmission and engine mount issues, Tyler's been on the Top 16 sideline collecting a whopping zero points.

The season up to this point has been a nightmare for us, but now that all the bugs were worked out of the Porsche, it was time for us to take control in Round Three. Englishtown is a new track for everyone, so we had to guess on the gearing and setup from a video we were given of JR and Ryan testing the track. But, when we got to the track on Thursday for practice, it looked much different from the video. Turn 1 is fast and the elevation change is much greater than I expected; I hadn't been in the Porsche since Atlanta, so it took a few runs for me to get back in the swing of things. Much to my surprise, I really liked this track. I like faster tracks and Turn 1 is fast. The Porsche ran well all day, but for some reason we were only boosting up to 1.1-bar. We normally run around 1.4-bar, so the crew pulled some tricks out of their bag to loosen up traction to compensate. Problem solved-for now.

Friday's practice went well, but the car felt a little different because of the higher track temperatures. Still, I felt comfortable going into unseeded qualifying, and I knew I just needed to get one solid run in to advance to the top 32. I ended up qualifying Third with the highest entry speed in the group!

We didn't practice much on Saturday, since we wanted to minimize wear and tear on the car. I qualified in Fifth Place, with a 96.75 and 82 mph entry, which was 4 mph faster than anyone else. I was in the Top 16 and thinking that buying that voodoo doll was the best money I ever spent. My only concern was Turn 1. Since the Hankook JIC Porsche has so much grip and we were unable to get full boost, my only way through Turn 1 was to be fully committed, which meant I'll either end up drifting around the corner very fast, or...I didn't even want to think about what else could happen!

I went up against Tony Angelo in Round One and our qualifying speeds were separated by 10 mph. I knew I needed to gap him, because if I caught him in Turn 1 and had to lift, the Porsche would straighten out. Tony was faster than I anticipated, so after two rounds, we were forced to run again. It was a close battle, but in the end I advanced. Next up for me was Sam in the Viper. I followed on the first run and was a little shallow in Turn 1, but I was able to suck up on his bumper in Turns 3 and 4. Sam won the run, but I made up points in the second, and was faced with another One More Time run, where I eventually moved on.