And now for the next installment in the continuing saga of two fools
under the impression that 20 year old British machinery can be
pushed around a strip of asphault at racing speeds: (This is the
same posting as sent to rec.autos.sport. I don't currently have the
time or the imagination to create separate descriptions for each
place people might be interested)
The second time is always better, right? Well, almost. Sam and I
just finished our second weekend of SCCA driver's school. For those
of you unfamiliar with this story, we're both going for SCCA road
racing licenses. I'm running an E Production MGB-GT. Sam is
running an Improved Touring B MGB.
Once again, packing and whatnot started late Friday morning. Friday
in the bay area was miserable. Heavy rains and wind. At times
visibility was down to the taillights of the car in front of you.
Larry, one of our crew members finagled a motorhome for use this
weekend. I headed over to his place Friday morning, helped him
pack up stuff and caravan back over to my place with it. Don
Wilson, another crew member met us and came along. On the way to my
place, we stopped to pick up a Uhaul truck I had reserved for the
weekend. Anyway, we got to my place and loaded the truck with
tools, spares, a generator, compressors, welding tanks, a bicycle,
patio furniture, and whatever else we thought could possibly be of
any use on the paddock. The camper got loaded with food and living
supplies. Get my car on the trailer, hitch up the trailer, kick
back and wait for Sam.
Sam shows up and we have a reasonably uneventful trip to Sears
Point, arriving around 10:30. We start setting up the paddock, fire
up Jeffie's new generator and charge up our air tanks. I get in my
car and fire it up to get it off the trailer. Oops. The
supplemental regulations are reasonably clear on when you may and
may not run a race motor. 11:30 pm is definitely out. A scrutineer
comes running out of one of the tech trailers and gives us a sound
chewing out. As it turns out, he was actually a little more upset
about the generator than the car, but either way, he's not happy.
We apologize, and try to quietly get the car off the trailer (with
no engine running). Scrutineers are not the people to piss off,
since they hand out okey-dokeys to get your car on the track.
The night is spent in a nice warm camper, much nicer than the tents
of two weeks ago.
Morning comes early, cold, and wet. It has rained considerably, and
the prospect of getting out of the motorhome is not a nice one. We
manage to get out, pick up suits, register, and get in line for
tech. Sam has to put numbers on his car, and various other minor
preparation things, but this goes fairly smoothly. I get a tech
inspector who has not yet heard of the previous night's incident,
and tech is painless.
My first session is at 10:15. Suited up, I head out on track. It's
not raining, but there are definite puddles on the track. The car
feels a little squirrelly, but good overall. I try to remember the
puddles during the warm up lap. The green falls on practice, and I
accelerate away. I very cleanly and confidently dispose of a
Corvette in turn 4 (sorry, I just LOVE saying things like that).
Clear track! The car seems to be doing fine up until turn 8. At
that point the back end breaks lose. I get to see, as I pass
backwards past it, that I missed the apex of 8 by a sizable margin.
The car proceeds off the track and scales a hill of mud with its
back end. Enter the weekend's first tow truck. I get pulled out of
the mud and limp back to the pits. The car gets impounded. By this
time, most of the scrutineers have heard the story from the previous
night and say "Oh, the one with the generator!" A friendly
scrutineer looks it over, tells me it looks pretty muddy, and sends
me on my way. No damage.
During Sam's first session, his car had a problem of losing some
coolant. On the paddock, during lunch time, the engine is a little
grimy and he decides he wants to "hose it off", Jeffie, who has
shown up to crew for the day volunteers. Sam accepts his offer.
Jeffie proceeds to drop trow and, after several seconds of
performance anxiety, "hose it off". Sam's car was running number 6,
so for the remainder of the weekend a restroom break was refered
to as a "Number 6". The smell following the incident wasn't
terribly pleasant, so Sam found a proper, garden variety hose, and
completed the job.
My second session of the day is done in granny mode, and I have no
problems.
The third session was exceptionally nice. Drying track conditions,
slightly lower tire pressures, and a cocky attitude. (Talk to
anyone who's raced. This is not a good combination.) We get to do
a practice start, and race for half a lap, at which point the course
went back under yellow and practice started the next time around. I
end up in about the middle of the pack in unarguably the slowest car
in the field. It's pretty ok, since the track is wet. Nobody can
get much more HPs down than I can anyway. I pass a few cars. A few
cars pass me at the start. I take a defenisve/passing line into
turn 4 (The defensive and passing lines are roughly the same in that
corner). For the second time that day, the back end comes around.
I'm staring at 5 cars racing at my car. My car continues to go
around, and I get it back under control upon completion of a 360.
No body contact, but by far my scariest spin to date. The rest of
the session, wet track conditions and worrying about previous
mistakes results in me spinning on the exit of 5, the exit of 6, and
the entrance of 3a. Very frustrating, but no damage to the car.
Saturday night is boring details at this point.
Sunday morning dawns beautifully clear and cold. I hose the mud off
my car and get ready for another day. Hopefully this one on dry
track. The morning practice has another practice start, and dry
pavement shows the true difference between GT1-4's, S2000's, and my
EP MGB. Again, I'm in middle of the pack. After the yellows come
out at the end of the half lap, three cars are still
behind me. I have passed nobody. This is a long practice session,
but I manage to stay on track, although being cautious ends up
costing me lap time.
Meanwhile, Sam's car has developed a loss of power. Over lunch, we
do a compression check, which shows cylinder #3 producing 30 psi.
Did we bring a head gasket? Shit! Nope. Huffaker racing can't
help either. One of the other competitors running an MGB does,
though, and Sam buys it from him. Sam and Larry pull the head and
discover that a leaking head gasket isn't the problem. The exhaust
valve seat is loose and has managed to bang up the head in the
process. None of the machine shops at the track could handle it
immediately, so we retire Sam's MGB for the rest of the racing day.
Since he and I are in different run groups, he borrows my car for
the afternoon.
My first practice race, a 4 lapper starts. I'm near of the back of
the pack, so I get to see lots of carnage ahead of me. In the
opening lap, I manage to squeeze by a couple people in turn 2. By
the end of the first lap, there are three people behind me. The
second lap, I make the mistake of taking a qualifying line through
turn seven and the three cars duck underneath me and go by. Oh
well, back to practicing my line. I do keep up with one of them and
eventually end up with a better best-lap time than him. On the final
straight of the third lap, the leader laps me. I guess it's only
three laps for me.
Sam takes the car out for his 8 lap race and does fairly well. The
car isn't terribly competitve against GT cars, but holds it's own
with IT and smaller production cars. He does a lap in 2:22.
In my 8 lap race the instructors decide, through some twisted sense
of humor or logic, to grid the cars in reverse qualifying time.
This puts me on the pole. The pace car leads us around the pace
lap, and exits into the pits at turn 11. I'm charged with pacing
the field until the green flag drops. No problem there. I maintain
the same speed as the pace car did until the starters stand comes
into view. He waves the green, I stand on the throttle, and am
immediately engulfed in a sea of cars buzzing past. By turn two,
about half the field has gone by. Turn 3, I turn into what looks
like an open space for a reasonable line through the corner. I hear
a clunk and turn to see a Spec 2000 going through the grass on the
inside of the corner. He pulls back onto the track ahead of me and
neither one of us is any worse for wear. For those unfamiliar with
these cars, they are open cockpit, purpose built cars. From a
sedan, these cars are invisible unless they are a distance behind
you or in front of your doors.
On with the story: By the esses (the back portion of the track)
all but four cars have gotten by. In the straight between 10 and
11, one of these, a Mustang, goes screaming by. I pull to the
inside of the track, and set up a fairly nice passing line for turn
eleven. Under braking, I get side by side with him and through the
corner, I end up with my nose probably 2 or 3 feet in front of his.
We both get on gas at that point for the start/finish straight, and I
watch as the back of his car heads for the vanishing point. The
other three cars get past me during the second lap. About half way
through that lap, I start getting standing yellow flags. The
start/finish flagger is displaying the pace car sign. Someone has
dumped his radiator in 1a, and his and another's cars are mating
next to the tire wall on the outside of the corner. While cleaning
this up, with the pace car on course, my instructors are standing in
the pit lane waving for me to speed up, presumabely to catch up to
the pack. The corner workers, on the other hand, give me a slow
down sign. Sorry, instructors, I'll take the corner worker's
signals over yours. After 3 laps of yellow, we go back to racing.
Sort of. The car that caught me up under the yellow whizzes past
and I stroll around open track for another 2 laps. The checker
falls. I find out later my best lap was just under 2:27. Oh well.
I pull in after the cool down lap. All cars get impounded, and we
are congratulated on completing school. After getting a little
scrutineer talk about impound, we're sent on our way. I head back
to my paddock area.
The idea at this point is to pull the head off my car and slap it on
Sam's so he can drive home. This is a fairly painless operation,
and after all the connections are made, his car fires up second try.
We're close to packed and about ready to go. Except the UHaul truck
has decided it wants no part of this. The truck is dead. Turning
the key gives no click or whir. The dome light inside does
absolutely nothing. Attaching jumper cables does nothing. After
poking around under the hood, we find a very fried wire. Nothing we
try makes any difference, so Uhaul is called and a tow truck is
sent. My second experience of the weekend with a tow truck gets
the Uhaul, with my car on a trailer behind it towed from Sears Point
to San Jose.
We get in late and tired. Very excited, novice permit in hand,
capable of going racing, and tired. I'd do it again in a second.
My thanks to Larry, Craig, Don, Jeffie, Jill, John, Diney, Akkana,
Soctt Fisher, and Sam for a fantastic job of crewing this weekend.
andy
uunet!sco!banta
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