March eighth marked the NASA Norcal Spec E-30 series return to Thunderhill Raceway in Willows California for the first time this season. Six cars were entered into the field for Saturday’s race. The lineup consisted of A.J. Goldsmith, Scott Neville, Elliott Taylor of Brimstone Dynasty, Steve Krshul, Ron Harness and I (Kevin Borchers of Valley Motorwerks). Qualifying went without incident and I managed to get the #36 car on the pole for the race! Directly behind me was Scott Neville, followed by Steve Krshul, A.J. Goldsmith, Elliott Taylor, and Ron Harness, in that order.
The Norcal series race director Steve Krshul has decided to make all of our starts standing starts for the entire season. I am a huge fan of standing starts so I am very happy that this decision was made! It adds a lot more excitement and is much more of a challenge than the normal flying starts. We were gridded directly behind the Honda Challenge field for the start of the race and were slated to start with the same drop of the green flag. This makes the starts quite interesting because we can usually get a better launch off of the line than the front wheel drive Honda’s, so we end up passing quite a few of them out of the gate only to give the positions back a lap later after they come up to speed.
The green flag dropped and we all took off. Scott and I both got pretty good launches but I was on the inside going in to turn one so I held the lead. I managed to weave my way through the slower Honda Challenge traffic very easily and efficiently and probably had a good ten car length lead going into turn eight, but there was a problem. When I had shifted in fourth gear coming out of turn six my clutch pedal decided to slam against the firewall and not spring back up! In practice and qualifying the clutch was pretty soft and was disengaging really close to the floor, but I thought it was normal from wear and tear on the clutch and after all I had just replaced it at Nationals last September, so I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. I was still going pretty fast into turn eight but I got rattled trying to figure out when and how to get the clutch pedal back up, so I apexed early and went for a wild ride on the inside of turn eight. I gathered it up brought it back on the track (nearly making contact with a Honda as I came back on), managed to pull the clutch pedal off of the floor with both of my feet, pumped it a few times until it came back and watched Steve Krshul and Scott Neville blow past me as I got her back under power. I started to hammer down hard to get back to the front. I caught up to the second place car of Scott Neville within and lap or two and managed to make a pass on him coming down the front straight, inches from the K-wall. The first place car of Steve Krshul had managed to put a pretty good gap on me by then so I had some work to do. I got focused again and started reeling him in very quickly. Just as I regained my composure, I came over turn nine attempted to shift into fourth gear again when the clutch pedal once again slammed to the floor. This time though, it was slammed to the floor and disengaged the clutch so I had no power! The engine redlined and I was a sitting duck as Scott again caught up and passed me for the second time. I once again used my newly patented technique of two-foot reverse clutching and pulled the pedal off the floor and went back at it. I caught the second place car of Scott Neville again and within a couple of laps I was right back in his rear view mirror. Scott led me into turn five a little too hot, spun and I managed to get passed him cleanly and regained my second place position. Now I had a clear look at the lead car that was at least 20 seconds ahead of me, but I was determined to catch and pass him for the lead. Time was running out so I had a lot of catching up to do in a short amount of time. I started driving like hell and quickly got within five car lengths or so of the lead car when I cam over turn five and decided to practice my drifting skills. I got completely crossed up sideways and checked out the scenery on the inside of turn five. I gathered the car back up and started my hunt for the lead again. At this point I started to drive way too hard and pushed the car beyond its limits and finally spun her coming into turn five. I knew there wasn’t enough time at this point to pull off a win so babied her for the next two laps and brought her in for an easy second place finish.
I brought the car into the paddock after the race and did a quick inspection on the clutch master. I immediately saw clutch fluid running down the pedal and found the top part of the factory clutch pedal stop broken off on the floor. I pulled the boot off the clutch master cylinder and fluid poured out. Lessons learned: install a legitimate clutch pedal stop and if anything is iffy before a race at least inspect it and replace if necessary!
I should have the in-car video up by later today
Going through turn 8 and fiddling with clutch pedal is something else …