143.8! I was hollering so loud the car was bouncing on it’s springs.
It was lap 6 of qual and I’d just passed the checker at S/F. And the Traqmate said 143.8. That’s a PR for me by almost 2 seconds. I’d been visualing turns 3, 5 & 7 all week. I was determined to get them done just as fast as RA1’s could possibly allow. And I’d just did a time in the neighborhood of the track record. I was damned pleased.
When we got back to the paddock there was no way I was going to be able to maintain a stoic facade. I couldn’t help myself. I was leaping around and dancing like some idiot that just gave the track record a run for it’s money. It was a good day.
So I ran up to a bunch of the other guys and hollered that they could kiss my ass because I just did a 143.8. They stood there in stunned disbelief. And I savored the moment. “That’s right boys and girls, 143.8”. Then Julio-the-doubter-Palacio says “I’d have to see the time on that one”. So I go to my gear and get my reading glasses (it sucks getting old), then jump in the car and start hitting buttons on the Traqmate display. “I’m going to revisit the glory of that 143.8”, I thought to myself, and there it is…147.0.
Wait? WHAT? THERE MUST BE SOME MISTAKE!!! I’m in the wrong session, I’m in the wrong lap…where’s my goddamned 143?
It was very sad.
From now on I go grab the reading glasses before I get all excited.
After qual it started raining. The rest of the day was 40deg and light rain. It reminded me of growing up in Oregon. Since rain had not been expected, few of us had rain tires. I didn’t.
That 1:47.0 qualified me for 10th out of 19?. There was around 10 of us within a second of each other. It’s a helova series when 1sec separates the guys fighting for a podium position and the guys fighting to not be last.
A Honda ended up in the wall on the back stretch because of someone screwed up scrubbing tires. Anyone ever get the details of that? I gotta tell you, some folks do seem a little whacked about scrubbing the tires. It’s “scrubbing” not “heating”. How much debris are your tires likely to pick up in the paved RA paddock? You want to heat up your tires on the outlap? Use your brakes. I start snickering whenever I see someone scrubbing tires so hard you’d think that a rat had their tail.
Fish broke both #5 intake and exhaust rockers. In SpecE30 tradition, we loosened all rockers, pushed both rocker arm retaining shafts forward, replaced the busted pair and tapped the rocker arm shafts back in place. Fish put the radiator back in, dist rotor back together, and redid all the valve lash. Start to finish no more than 90min.
I drove conservatively during the race and had almost no drama. I had a lot of fun watching other folks go off here and there tho. I did learn that when it’s wet at RA the turn 5 exit gators are slick as ice. I’d made a choice to go ahead and use the gator instead of trying to tighten the line and requiring additional traction from the asphalt. I figured that I’d just “go easy” when I got up on the gators. Well, “going easy” isn’t enough on the turn 5 exit gators. A better plan would be “coast up the hill”.
Towards the end of the race I passed Walsh who was spinning donuts in the grass at the exit of 1. The race was getting pretty close to over so I resolved to keep him behind me. A couple laps later we got the white flag and he was getting within striking distance. By the time we were approaching turn 10 I decided that I had to take a defensive line in order to keep him from getting ideas. But that hosed my exit speed on 10b and he’d gone thru on the school line at gotten a much better 10b exit.
So there I was heading up the hill and it was looking grim for the kid. We were a couple hundred yards from the checker and Walsh had managed to get some overlap as we headed up for the crest of the hill.
I moved right a little trying to make it a little more difficult for him, but, ahh…well, this is Walsh and even if I push him so far over that he is pushed into the pit entrance, he was unlikely to lift. Trying to intimidate Walsh is, I think, futile.
I didn’t have the meanness in me to press him too hard so I gave him enough room to make it work if he could. And the problem was that he was indeed making it work. We ended up heading into 12 and he had the far drier line. I was going to to have to take the standing water that had formed on the outside of 12 on my shaved tires.
I took the outside line on 12 as fast as I dared and we seemed to me to be a dead heat at the checker. Which was a real pisser because that really meant that I’d played turns 10 poorly and done this to myself. Shit.
We ended up with the same time to a thousandths of a second. But Walsh got 8th and me 9th.
The Sunday race was a lot more fun. At least the first half that I was in. Many of you know that the start positions are established randomly in the Toy Race. But someone had the good idea that SpecE30 would instead start as a group at the rear. So we drew #'s to make that happen. I ended up in pos 2 with Stroup on Pole. And we fixed it with Jim and the Starter Chick to give us our own Green as a separate group.
There was some confusion tho. Stroup didn’t get the word. In the seconds before I had to jump into my car I told him what the plan was and hoped that I’d made sense.
When we came over turn 4 I grew a little concerned because we couldn’t see any of the 80 cars in front of us. It would be bad, I thought, for them to be far enough ahead of us that they would get green, come around the track and then plow into the rear of our group because we had dawdled. So in Pos 2 I pressed the pace and hustled, hoping Stroup would understand what I was up to.
We hustled down the back stretch and we still didn’t see any of the 80 cars that were supposed to be in front of us. So I hauled ass trying to drag everyone else with me. I got to the top of the hill after 10b and slowed up so we could reform.
Stroup cames along side and we headed down towards 12 and then the front straight. The flagger chick was down at the end of the front straight and I watched her like a hawk. And no green. Finally we were practically along side of her and I thought “Ah, they’re going to make us do another lap of FCY”
Which is when Stroup and all the odd #'s behind him floor it and go flying into turn 1.
Furious that once again I’ve f**ked up a start, I looked to starter chick and she’s still got the flag behind her. I then looked to tower 1 and it’s showing FCY. Ahh. “Maybe I didn’t screw this one up”, I thought. So I hustle up to Stroup and execute the international hand and arm signals of “tsk tsk shame on you”.
So then I refocused on the fact that we still haven’t seen the tail end of the 80 cars in front of us. “ok”, I thought, “time to catch up”. Stroup and I then hauled ass side-by side like a comp school drill all the way thru the rest of the lap. When we crested the hill before 10a we found the rest of the cars.
The start went fine. My recollection of it is a little vague. I figured that I’d be able to press the outside of 1 hard and try to cut Stroup off in 3. He’s a really nice guy so of course try I’d use that against him and pinch him out of 3. Too bad I can’t recall what actually happened.
It didn’t take long for the high hp cars to come around. Having so much traffic really made it fun. Some of those Thunder guys tho…they really have issues. It didn’t really become clear to me until today…you are pretty much forced to learn how to drive when you race a low hp car. But high hp car drivers are under no such pressure. So some of those thunder guys are just awful. There’s some AIX cars that are a menaces. They go flying down the back stretch with their eXtreme hp, and then they tip-toe thru the turns on their Hoosiers. I spent 4 laps behind some AIX goober that would leave me on the straights like I was sitting still. Ok, compared to him I practically was sitting still. But no matter how fast a guy goes down the straightaway, if he goes thru the next turn at 40mph, the SpecE30 is going to catch him. 4 laps I spent behind him. Each time we got to a turn I’d yell “OH FOR GOD’S SAKES, GO GO GO”.
In the same vein, Turnipseed raced GTSU in his SpecE30 and apparently got 3rd out of 6th on Saturday. I shake my head with wonder.
I only made it about half way thru Sunday’s race. My brakes started acting weird such that they’d throw me left under braking. I did two laps of that to ensure that it wasn’t my imagination and decided that something was wrong and that brakes were the wrong thing to take a chance with. So I came in. Most of the rest of the race was FCY anyhow.
The bummer from the weekend is that it seemed to confirm that something is going on with my engine. The damn thing is weak. It’s almost for sure an engine management issue since the A/F gauge is showing way too lean. Everyone was pulling away from me on the back stretch all weekend. And not just the AIX guys. E30 engine management is just not that complicated so it’ll get figured out one way or another.
I decided that the brakes problem was the excuse necessary to rebuild all the brakes. After I got home from RA I pulled the brakes off and removed the pistons, seals & boots. My fronts have 2yrs on them and my rears 3. Tomorrow I’ll put new seals & boots in the calipers and hopefully they’ll be ok for Roebling next weekend.
My thanks to the Palacios for letting me hooch up in their RV. Cold wet and windy are not ideal conditions for racking out under a tarp.
I acknowledge that although I titled this as a results thread I didn’t provide any results.
