,
This is normally not a big deal for the teams to have to wait, but since the tires now had 15 minutes or more to cool off, the tire warmers became a non-factor and I would have to put in a warm up lap to make sure the tires were good to go before laying down a flyer.
25 minutes later, the session finally began and I made my way out on track. During my first lap past the hot pit, Ron Mathis informed me that you could see that the Brembo brake rotors were already glowing bright red. On certain courses where there are long sweeping turns, I essentially “ride the brakes” to help me rotate the car and it was apparent that this was one of those tracks.
On the first hot lap, I clocked a lap time of 1:20.810, which was good enough for first place in Unlimited GT FF, but still a little over two and a half seconds off pace of the 1:18. 603 overall record set by the WORLD Racing sponsored, GST motorsports Impreza “L” driven by Jeff Westphal in the earlier session and now a tad over three seconds off his 1:16.709 that he set in this session.
On the next hot lap my time slowed to a 1:22.877 and I realized the time wasn’t going to get any better. The track wasn’t in the best condition and I decided to head back to the paddock. As I pulled in to the paddock, I could see that the Brembo brakes were still glowing red and had taken some serious abuse due to the way I had been using them to rotate the car.
You will see in the comparison photos above that the Brembo calipers that were a bright gold prior to the session were now dark bronze and what was once a bright red Brembo logo had turned to a burnt, dark brown color due to the extreme heat.
