Was fun. It’d been so long since I’ve been at the track that I’d forgotten how fun it was. I was slow, but such is life.
This was the third weekend on my tires and they were struggling. I kept remembering Phil’s Tires saying a couple months ago that the RA1’s from 2010 and 11 that didn’t last very long were an aberration and the new RA1s last as long as the golden years, ’07-’08. They don’t. One of the tires has no tread grooves at all left….that was halfway thru it’s 3rd weekend
I’m still trying to sort out air pressures with the new car and it’s new sways. I kept over-estimating rear pressures so once the rear tires got hot the car got pretty tail happy. Colan was on my tail and I was a little faster at the kink and he was a little faster pretty much everywhere else. I was busy making him work for the pass that he’d get eventually. I just didn’t want to roll over like a patsy. So there I was doing not-awful and managing the tail-happiness…right up until I didn’t. I’d managed to catch some nice drifts up until then but then came a drift at the exit of turn 11 that didn’t “catch” and I ended up straddling the track. Colan made a very fine dodge and saved us both.
I’ve mixed emotions about the IFU. I’d been the pointman in this year’s IFU effort since Feb. I’d gone thru lots of ideas, chased down ScottM’s old Tshirt artwork and there’d been many dozen emails between me, Robert, Chuck and Jim. There was a “sort of” Lemans start plan that had us sitting on the back stretch waiting for our chick to run across the track and “tag” us before we could accelerate away…I couldn’t come up with a way to keep the chicks safe. Then there was the “finish in karts” idea where we’d stop short of the finish and be told that there were karts in the hot pits to do the last lap. CMP didn’t buy off on that idea…too hard on the engines they said. So in the end I came up with a more tame plan that still seemed like it would be fun.
Meanwhile I attempted a shirt design full knowing that I’ve zero artsy skills. I’m reasonably proficient with a one liner, but I couldn’t do artsy if my life depended on it. So I just used the art from the logo and added a one-liner.
Later, Johann would look at my IFU shirt and slowly read “It’s not chaos. It’s Genius. No Really.” Then he said “I don’t get it”. Sigh.
A couple days before the IFU I’d written several pages of guidance for the flaggers and volunteers, complete with diagrams, and also written a couple paragraphs for the drivers. Soon after I sent the guidance to the parties it needed to go to, I was informed that I wasn’t actually controlling the scheme of the IFU after all. Basically, I’d just misunderstood my role back in Feb and that misunderstanding had never been obvious enough to anyone else that the idea got expressed “Scott, you seem to be acting like you’re in charge. You’re not”. That was kinda irksome, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just some confusion at work.
Other excitement. Well, I had to rag on AlK for almost crashing into me on one of the outlaps. I don’t recall which race it was but I was to start on the left side and he on the right (on the forward pair, so right-front, I suppose). Before turn 11 I moved up to his left so I would be behind the person I was supposed to be behind. We were entirely along side each other as we went into 11. This is a race outlap mind you. Which is when he went for the apex that I was occupying. I hit the brakes and went 2 wheels off to avoid. Nice.
My biggest excitement was losing my brakes in lap 1 of the Sunday race. They’d been kind of soft all weekend so I was thinking that it was time for a new master cylinder. The pedal would, ever-so-slowly and barely perceptably, creep down if I held lots of pressure on it. At the green they were ok going into 1 but going into 4, on the outside Mark Skeen (Mike’s dad), the pedal went almost all the way to the floor at ~80mph. I pumped it a couple times and got some braking done but there was no way I was staying on the track. It was pretty innocuous tho…I just went straight off at 4 and drove up the hill. I parked behind a flag station and spent the race bonding with a flag lady. If I’d a been inside of Mark instead of outside I’d have felt really badly about destroying the Skeen car that has been such a part of our series.
Colan had motor mount problems and that took out his radiator hose. The Reverend Al worked his ass off on the car all weekend, often punctuated by farts. Right, to my surprise, in front of his girlfriend. Don’t get me wrong, there’s few crowd pleasures like a raucous fart, but in front of girls? I had a radiator hose, someone had a motormount, be we were in trouble for the 2nd motor mount. I fashioned a piece of 2X4 that would have done just fine and I was particularly pleased with myself for that idea, but sadly it never got used. They did, however, use a ratchet strap to hold the motor down for Sunday’s race, and since it was my ratchet strap I got some amusement out of that.
The diesel truck worked out very well. On the trip home I got 13.5mpg @ 65mph. Based on some test pulls with the F-150 before I sold it, I figure that it would have gotten 7mpg. Wow!
On the way out on Friday morning I weighed my rig 3x. Truck alone, truck with trailer w/o the weight dist hitch, truck with trailer w/ weight dist hitch. I don’t remember exactly what the #’s are, but I was surprised how fast one uses up the load capacity of 2x 3500lb axles. IIRC there was 6200lbs on the trailer axles and 800lbs of trailer resting on the truck. So race car with full gas tank + ~300lbs of stuff added up to 7000lbs.
I was pretty disorganized for the race. I’ve not raced for months and my spares and tools were scattered about as a result of numerous non-race car projects. Also, what spares and tools I will keep permanently in the new enclosed trailer is still evolving.
And that needs to evolve a little faster. Normally I’m a big source of spare parts. I didn’t have either spare oil cap nor gas cap and both were needed by . My starter that Jon needed was brokedick, I’d forgotten the battery for my impact wrench, and had to mooch a rotor and and pads from Fred. I had to change rear pads also but thankfully I’d brought a box of worn out rear pads that had one more race in them.
I need to pass on my gratitude to Andy Greenshields. #1 GF Lindsey, upon hearing that I was inbound to CMP while everyone else was eating at Gus’s Friday night, bought me a pizza and brought it to the track. Then she fed me high-end sandwiches all weekend. Man, that girl’s a keeper.
Andy, apparently, had an epic tow. It might be some kind of SpecE30 record. He’s a little short of comp school yet, but as soon as his GF started feeding me, he became “one of us”. He blew 2 tires en route to CMP, and then on the way home blew another tire. And then blew his (Tundra) engine. Wow, such a bummer. Imagine putting your GF thru all of that.
This weekend Andy also introduced his pristine e30 to the turn 8 tirewall. Something many of us, me included have done. The car survived, but the driver’s side is reminiscent of Brian Jones’ or any other BeerTech car…bashed to shit.
