With just a handful of Thickos present, it seems we had a quite a few
mechanical gremlins poking about this past weekend. Overall, though, I'd say
it was a pretty good weekend of racing. Bringing an MGB instead of a street
Midget put me in a group where I actually had a couple of cars to dice with.
What a change from driving around alone and counting how many times I get
lapped by Thompson, Donato, Kansa and Kropf! Unfortunately, I started to
develop a lot of understeer about half way through Sunday's feature. Two
4-wheel off high-speed shunts across the grass and back on the track got me
to thinking maybe something's amiss with the station wagon. I pulled the
plug and once back in the paddock discovered my left front tire was a
shredded mess of core fibers. Some speculated it was a combination of heat
and lots of right turns. But I suspect the puddle of Gunk Engine Degreaser
that had accummulated in the grass next to the Southwind Bakeries delivery
van where I was paddocked had attacked the rubber on the tire surface and
literally eaten it away. I did not want to tell Kansa about this because I
know how good those fumes make him feel between his run sessions. (He tried
to convinve me he was cleaning up an oil leak every 20 minutes! But I know
better! A boy, a bag, and an aerosol can. What a cheap date!
By the way, perhaps some of you longer standing members of the vintage racing
community can set me straight on this: GingerMan this past weekend had more
than it's share of "incidents." Running in Group 8, I was most surprised at
the mess around Turn 1 that I narrowly missed by cutting into the grass and
crossing the infield on the short side of Turn 2. I almost had some yellow
GT-6 paint in my left front head light. Several folks swapped more than just
paint. But interestingly, after some banging and duct taping, most of the
"participants" were out racing again. Isn't there a "touch and your weekend
is over" rule? Perhaps it's been repealed. Exactly what ARE the rules
around car-to-car contact in VSCDA? And does it seem that the rules are
inconsistently enforced dependning on who the transgressors are?
Mr. Trauma
///
/// team-thicko@autox.team.net mailing list
///
|