West Coast Lotus Meet (Nov 5-9, Las Vegas, NV)

WCLM_2009_logo

Registration for the 2009 West Coast Lotus Meet is now officially open!

The Lotus Car Club of Southern Nevada will host the event from November 5-9 at the ultra hip Red Rock Hotel and Casino with assistance from other Lotus clubs on the west coast.

EVENTS

Drive, Drink, Play, Party. WCLM 2009 in Vegas has a sampling of the best car events and outrageous recreational events Vegas has to offer inspired by the old and new Sin City.

Friday and Saturday will offer drives to Lake Las Vegas, Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, Red Rock Canyon or Valley of Fire and the WCLM Autocross and Lotus Car Show (Concours). Sunday is the track event (optional) in Pahrump.

The schedule is now tentative, and looks like this:

SEMA ends 11/5
Thursday 11/5

  • check-in – reserved area around the pool for relaxing & cocktails – evening open

Friday 11/6

  • check-in – afternoon autocross (tentative – still working on this)
  • 6-8 informal meet n’ greet cocktail buffet in the VIP reception area
  • 8-10 Lotus Challenge Bowling Bash
  • 10 + whatever

Saturday 11/7

  • 10-12 Car Show (Casual Concours)
  • 2-5 Lake Mead Cruise
  • 7-8 Cocktails and entertainment
  • 8-9:30 Dinner, Awards, etc.
  • 9:30 + whatever – Just remember 8 hours Bottle to Throttle

Sunday 11/8

  • all day track event at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump

HOTEL
The Red Rock Hotel & Casino – Step inside and be completely immersed in the “Happy Endings” ambiance of ultra hip architecture, design and flavor of the Red Rock Hotel and Casino while playing or relaxing. Enjoy cocktails by the luxurious pool! Hot times in the nightclub! Win at the Tables! Relax in the Spa!

TRACK DAY (optional)

Drive fast, drive well and finish well. Enjoy an exciting day on the track at the most luxurious racetrack in the west. Spring Mountain Motorsport Ranch has it all – 2.2 mile twisty track run from the lower paddock, luncheon at the Member’s Club House, observation tower, pool, spa, weight room, jacuzzi, massage rooms and more. The track event is on Sunday, November 8th and if you want more stay for a 2nd track day on Monday, November 9th using the 3.1 mile course!

Take your Lotus out on the track with challenges for the most advanced drivers and expert instruction for beginners. Never been on a racetrack before? We will have coaches ride with you to get you acquainted with the track and help you withg high speed driving techniques, all with safety in mind.

INFORMATION
For the most up-to-date information about the 2009 WCLM, please visit the official website at www.westcoastlotus.com

WCLM Contacts:
Cory Newberry (Southern Nevada Lotus Car Club)
zzyzxco@earthlink.net

Kiyoshi Hamai (Golden Gate Lotus Club)
webguy@gglotus.org

GGLC/Lotus Talk South Bay Lunch (Mountain View, 14-Jul-2009)

Its time for another GGLC/LotusTalk South Bay lunch. Meet us on July 14 (Tuesday) for some excellent Mexican food at Vive Sol in Mountain View. There is a plenty of parking in the rear of the building and if we get enough people I’ll see if I can get a section of the lot reserved for us.

What: Lotus Talk South Bay Lunch
When: 11:45 am on 14-July-2009
Where:
Vive Sol Restaurant
2020 El Camino Real.
Mountain View, CA 94040
http://www.vivesol.biz/

Please RSVP before July 7th by either leaving a comment below or by posting in this thread on LotusTalk. I will update this post with an attendee list and more info as we get closer.

Lotus to sponsor the Lotus Challenge Series

Lotus Cars USA has become the title sponsor of the Lotus Challenge Series for the 2009 season. Head on over to Lotus Challenge Series website to sign up for one of their 5 remaining dates this year including Laguna Seca (July 16-17), Infineon (Oct 8-9) and Spring Mountain (November 8–9, during WCLM 09)

PRESS RELEASE

Lotus Cars USA, Inc. Announces Title Sponsorship of Growing Lotus Challenge Series

Duluth, GA, June 25, 2009 – Lotus Cars USA, Inc. is pleased to announce that Lotus will be the Title Sponsor of the growing Lotus Challenge Series.

The Lotus Challenge Series was begun in 2008 by long-time Lotus enthusiast Jim Navarro along with critical support from other Lotus aficionados Jack Fried and Robb Bonanno. To help expand the Lotus Challenge Series to the east and continually improve the series, Jim recently took on a fellow racer as a partner in the series – Tom Hughes.

“When the Series 2 Elise came to the United States market for the first time in 2004, I immediately bought one and drove it straight to the track,” said Lotus Challenge Series founder and President Jim Navarro. “I decided it would be great to have a time trial and club race series where like-minded Lotus enthusiasts could enjoy their cars and improve their driving skills together, so Jack, Robb and I worked hard to build up the series last year. I’m proud of what we’ve built thus far in the Lotus Challenge Series and I particularly appreciate that all of our participants understand our series emphasizes safety and intelligence on the race track and they all drive accordingly.”

The inaugural year of the Lotus Challenge Series in 2008 was comprised of eight events with six at various California tracks and two events at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump, Nevada. The first year of the series was a great success with full grids and a lot of fun and camaraderie enjoyed by all the Lotus racing participants.

With a good, solid first full year of learning and experience under their belt, the Lotus Challenge Series has been expanded for the 2009 season to 10 western US events (see included schedule), initially, and is now in the process of expanding further with an additional 4 events being planned for Lotus owners to enjoy in Texas. As the race schedule is expanding for the series, the variety of the venues is as well with upcoming events scheduled at the revered Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey and famous Infineon Raceway in Sonoma.

“The Lotus Challenge Series is a very well run organization that’s expanding through providing Lotus owners a fun, safe and positive environment in which to enjoy their Lotus vehicles and improve their driving skills,” said Lotus Cars USA, Inc. Director of Operations Arnie Johnson. “What Jim Navarro, Tom Hughes, Jack Fried, Robb Bonanno and all of the participants in the Lotus Challenge Series are doing is fostering tremendous enthusiasm and goodwill for our treasured Lotus marque. We’re extremely proud to support the expansion of the Lotus Challenge Series as the title sponsor and show some of our most devoted Lotus owners how much we appreciate them.”

The full array of Lotus’ current North American product offering competes in the Lotus Challenge Series including various Elise and Exige models and the track-only Exige Cup Car 255 and the current ultimate track-only Lotus 2-Eleven.

Lotus Challenge Series 2009 Competition Schedule:

* January 23 – Streets of Willow, Willow Springs
* February 21 – 22 – Streets of Willow, (SCCA School)
* March 28 – 29 – Spring Mountain Motor Sports Ranch
* April 23 – Willow Springs International Raceway
* May 30 – 31 – Buttonwillow Raceway Park
* July 16 – 17 – Laguna Seca Raceway
* August 8 – Streets of Willow, Willow Springs
* September 3 – Buttonwillow Raceway Park
* October 8 – 9 – Infineon Raceway
* November 8 – 9 – Spring Mountain Motor Sports Ranch

As the Lotus Challenge Series continues to grow in participation and expand into other parts of the country, the dates and details for new events in the south and on the east coast for 2010 will be announced in August 2009.

Registration for GGLC Autocross Points event #3

Registration is set to up open first thing tomorrow (June 18) for the July 18th, Saturday points event #3 (of 6) autocross.

http://www.motorsportreg.com/index.cfm/event/event.advert/uidEvent/EB52BFDE-B462-4DC9-E41A05DD70AF48DA

The usual drill. Club members only can sign up in the first week, then it opens up to everyone. Limited car count and at least 12 runs for everyone with lunch being brought on site. Coaches available for pretty much every session to help out if needed / wanted.

Running in the points series is not required, you can simply treat this as a excuse to take your car out for a *spin*.

Photos from the May event can be found at:

Tony L:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lint666/sets/72157618300061170/show/
Marc:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/terra-incognita-pics/sets/72157619175050016/

And a video clip, from a couple of earlier autocrosses:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o07e7lyVhwI

Thanks,

Larry & Alex
Event Chair

GGLC Open Track Day at Thunderhill Raceway Park July 14, 2009

Registration is now open for the Golden Gate Lotus Club’s second open track day of the year at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows, California. This event will be held Tuesday, July 14, 2009. Schedule your PTO, sick day, or whatever you want to call it, and come out and enjoy the fun. Take note that for this event, we will be running the bypass.

Start prepping your cars and we’ll see you at the track!

Scott & John

Going for a win – GGLC Members compete in the 24 Hours of Lemons

Story originally posted on the Racing geek:

Pink Pig E30

The Goin’ For Broken race at Reno Fernley raceway was the 5th 24 Hours of LeMons race for the Formula BMW team and the debut of our new Pink Pig race livery. Additionally the car was quite a bit lighter than the last race with the sunroof, dash, heater core and inner door skins being removed. We cracked our windshield during the dash removal which we replaced with a sheet of lexan to further drop weight. We were going with our regular driver lineup of Guy Argo and GGLC members Gabriel Matus, Rob Dietsch and myself. Since the racedays were of unequal length (8.5 hours Saturday, 5 hours Sunday), our plan was to have Guy, Rob and myself run a single 3 – 3.5 hour stint with Gabe splitting his stint between the two days. The long stints would minimize our driver changes and would allow us to pass people in the pits and finish higher than the 10th place we recorded at Thunderhill 08.

Emergency Wheel Spacing

I was driving the first stint for our team and got off to an inauspicious start when I had to pull in to the pits just before the green flag (Lemons has a rolling start) because of a loud noise and vibration from the right front on right hand turns. It turned out that our new wheels were rubbing against the right front strut while at speed. We had test fitted the new wheel on the left front tire where it fit with no issues but we had forgotten that we had bent our struts for extra camber at Altamont 07 which meant that while they fit fine on the left there was rubbing on the right which was aggravated on right hand turns. Luckily we were able to borrow a wheel spacer (Thanks Squirrels of Fury!) but by the time we put that on we were already 2 laps down on the leader without having driven a single lap. 🙁

When I first went out under green my immediate impression was that we were waaaay faster than most of the cars out there and was passing several cars at each turn. This was probably down to my familiarity with the track and the car because after about 5-10 laps the cars became more difficult to pass as the other drivers became more comfortable with the track. About an hour into the race I noticed that the fuel gauge on the car was still registering full despite having plenty of hard racing laps in that time. This meant that our gauge was broken and we would have to time our pitstops based on fuel starvation. At about the 2 hour mark the car started fuel-starving on the fast right of turn 14 but was still doing pretty well elsewhere on track. We decided to keep going as long as we could and/or to wait for the next yellow. I kept driving the car in higher gears to help with the fuel economy but after about 5-6 laps the fuel starvation was getting bad enough that we were sputtering on the straights after right handers and i brought the car in for a green flag fuel and driver stop. It was about the 2.5 hour mark when I came in and despite the fact that my long stint had put us back on the lead lap (9th overall), we were still well short of the 3+ hour stint we were originally planning on. The good part was that we knew that we could use the right hand turn fuel starvation as a gas gauge to decide when to time our next pit stop.

Pink Pig at Reno
Photo by Jeff Balliet/ASK photography

Guy drove the next stint and kept in touch with the leaders. At this point we knew that we were in the top ten and were basically trying to put in reasonable laps without doing anything crazy. Guy drove for about 3.5 hours before the fuel starvation became bad enough that we were forced to do another green flag stop. At this point we were 4th overall and just 5 laps behind the race leader despite having the slowest “fastest lap” of any car in the top 15. Gabe got into the car with about 2.5 hours left in the day and was putting in some excellent lap times when he had an unfortunate spin at turn 15 which brought us in for a black flag penalty. Since we had been good racers for most of the day (and bribed the judges with some excellent Guatemalan rum 😉 ) we were let off with a driver change penalty which put me in back in the driver seat for the final 10 laps of the day.

At this point the traffic had thinned considerably and I was able to able to drop my fastest lap down from a 2:51.844 to a 2:46.177. Right about this time the #72 E30 of the B-Team (who I knew from Lotus Talk) pulled up right behind me and tried to get past. I knew that I wasn’t racing them for position so I did not try to block, but I certainly wasn’t going to move aside and let them past either. They tried a few different attempts at getting past but I hung onto the inside line and was able to stay in front. About 5 laps into the battle they came right alongside me on the front straight which led to the action you see in the image below.

reno-animated-small
Source photos from Jeff M/The B-Team. Animation by Rahul Nair.

This moment started as we were coming onto the main straight when I got a bad run into the corner while the B-Team got a great slingshot out and pulled alongside me down the straight. This had happened a couple of times before but since I always held the inside line into the esses they had had to lift in the end and tuck in line behind me. On this particular lap the #26 Team Carpet Pissers CRX was pulling out of the pits and made it into the first bend of the esses right just before the two of us. Normally I would have tucked in line behind the CRX and passed them going into turn 2 but on this lap I spotted an opening and decided to pass them between the 2nd and 3rd esses expecting that the B-Team would get boxed in behind them which would give me some more breathing room. As luck would have it the B-Team driver decided to do the exact same thing on the outside and suddenly we were three wide through the turn at about 95mph. I was up on the rumble strip on the left while the B-Team was on 2 wheels in the gravel on the right. At this point the driver in the CRX sees the B-Team on his right (and I suppose didnt see me on his left) and jinks left to avoid them. The front bumper of his car hits my right front wheel and leaves a black line down both doors. The impacts pushes my car to the left but I am able to maintain control while the CRX unfortunately spins out. Amazingly both B-Team and I are still side by side entering turn 2 and I am able to get ahead under braking. While it looked (and was) pretty exciting it was still a dumb move on my part especially since we were not racing for position and the next day both B-Team and I went up to the driver of the CRX and apologized for putting him in a difficult spot.

At the end of day one we had completed 129 laps and we in 4th place overall, 6 laps behind the Eyesore Racing FrankenMiata. We were still the second slowest fast lap in the top 10 but we used our long stints to make up for our wheel issues at the start as well as 3 green flag pit stops. Now we just had to keep on doing more of the same for day 2 and hope that the leaders would trip-up enough for us to pass them in the pits.

Day 2 started with Gabe driving the car. It was obvious from the lap times that we had no chance on catching the FrankenMiata with speed alone. They were pulling away from us at 10 seconds a lap when they suddelny spun and stalled on course on lap 5. As they were being towed in we began to push like hell to make up laps and we got back 4 of the 6 laps before they got out on course again. Gabe kept putting in consistent laps but the FrankenMiata was back on pace and was consistant pulling out 8 seconds or so per lap. Both teams came in for a driver swap just a lap apart which kept us 3 laps behind with 3 hours to go. Rob put in some stellar laptimes including our fastest race lap of a 2:42.809 but in the end it just was not enough to catch the FrankenMiata.

Class win at Lemons Reno

We ended finishing first in class and 5th overall just 4 laps behind the FrankenMiata which hung on to win the race. We did get a nice trophy to stick on the mantel place but I personally am still annoyed at some of the mistakes we made which cost us a possible win. The good part is that we know what to fix and we know what we need to do at Buttonwillow in 3 months. We wont rest till we get some nickels (Lemons cash prizes are awarded in nickels 🙂 )

Rahul Nair
GGLC Blog Editor
www.rahulnair.net/blog

GGLC Autocross Points Event 2 registration is now open

The Golden Gate Lotus Club 2nd Points event of the season is June 27 (Saturday). Registration is now open. Club members only for the first week:

http://www.motorsportreg.com/index.cfm/event/event.advert/uidEvent/6F77EFFA-A2CC-9A7C-9768EF6A67DC38A9

We are counting the best 4 of 6 events. If you are participating in the series, please make sure your vehicle details are up to date.

The standings as of the first event can be found at:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd7xn2fv_13gh3kst4n

Thanks,

Larry and Alex

Registration for Autocross Points Event now open

Registration for the May 16th (Saturday) GGLC autocross is now open. It is a full points event and registration will be restricted to club members only for the first week. Click the following link to sign up: http://www.motorsportreg.com/index.cfm/event/event.advert/uidEvent/6FB47AE4-B961-A2CE-2F39ABAA19A997AE

We have also added a sign up option for setup (unloading equipment and setting up the course). You will need to be on site and ready to work by 7:15-20. And I will hold a drawing for the setup crew. For the winner, we will open a spot, so they can have double runs (at no extra cost).

GGLC Monterey Historics Lotus Corral

The GGLC is once again arranging for a Lotus Corral at the 2009 Monterey Historic Races at Laguna Seca Raceway on August 14-16, 2009. Purchase your Monterey Historic ticket from the GGLC and get a free corral pass to the GGLC Lotus corral. To get the Lotus Corral parking the GGLC must sell at least 35 tickets. Please order early and reserve your spot in the corral. GGLC membership is NOT required, but you must drive your Lotus to the event to park in the GGLC Lotus Corral.

Click here to buy your Monterey Historic tickets. Typically the tickets are sent to the GGLC 2-3 weeks prior and we will then immediately distribute them to you. Expect your ticket(s) and corral passes approximate one week prior to the event.

Corral parking on Saturday is separated by Club/Marque. Sunday corral parking is mixed marques.

Order on-line at www.gglotus.org or mail check (made to Golden Gate Lotus Club) to:

GGLC – Monterey, 775 Paul Ave, Palo Alto CA 94306

DEADLINE TO BUY TICKETS & CORRAL PASS: JUNE 10, 2009!

Ticket prices, ticket includes corral pass for Saturday:

Saturday, Aug 15 ONLY: $66.00 ($75 at gate)

Sunday, Aug 16 ONLY: $51.00 ($60 at gate)

2-Day, Sat Aug 15 and Sun Aug 16: $97.00 ($115 at gate)

3-Day, Fri Aug 14, Sat Aug 15 and Sun Aug 16: $127.00 ($145 at gate)