BBQ, Beer and Better Finishes

Saturday evening gave us the chance to figure out what the legendary NASA-SE hospitality is all about. After all the on-track sessions were done and before the awards ceremony, they provided us with a delicious BBQ buffet diner from Kater Time. The food was great and the company was even better. Everyone stuck around for the dinner and the crowd was lively. Shortly after I had chomped down my last bit of pork the awards ceremony began. We found a nice, warm place to stand under a big outdoor heater and waited for our "trophies". One of the first things they did was to announce and give certificates to all of the rookies who had graduated from Comp School on Friday. I didn't know they were going to do that and it was a nice surprise to get up there and get a round of applause with the other 12 guys I went through school with.

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Then they started to give out the awards for Saturday's races. Awards were given for the podium finishers in every class, even if you were alone in a class, so one can't take a podium spot too seriously. Regardless, I had finished third in my first race and I was going to get that trophy. And by trophy, I mean a large mug with NASA and third place printed on it.

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My buddy Marty (from MH Motorsports) also picked up a trophy after he finished second in class in his first race. Good showing for the THSCC rookies! After some much deserved domestic brews and ribbing from others, we headed back to the hotel. We reviewed the day's video and packed it in for a night's rest...a rest that promised to be better than the one the night before since we didn't need to be at the track until around 9:00 on Sunday. I've never been able to arrive at the track that late in the morning, so I was sure to take full advantage of it.

We got to the track without issue the following morning and began getting the car ready for qualifying. The car had driven so well on Friday and Saturday that all I did was check the torque of the lug nuts, check the tire pressures, and get the video and data systems in. I decided I would be in my car early and get to grid as soon as the HPDE students rolled onto track. This would allow me to grid at the front of the field in hopes of getting plenty of open track to get a good time in. Little did I know, I was about to receive another free education from the veteran racers in my group. I parked and waited on the paddock road that ran parallel to the grid entrance. While I waited there, about 30 Spec Miata's and Spec E30's were lining up on the paddock road that lead right into the grid entrance. As soon as the HPDE students were out and the grid was open, all of those cars freight trained their way onto the grid. My plan was totally destroyed before I could blink.

My new plan was to head for the back of the grid. Even though there were still plenty of open grid positions, I pulled into position 35 and waited for everyone else to fill in. Several of my E30 buddies had the same idea and were lined up right in front of me. We discussed how we all planned to gap the traffic in front of us in hopes of a good run. After hearing this I knew what I needed to do...pass all of them on the out lap and then stay back with them as we all opened up a gap. We all got buckled in and set out. I passed the 4 E30's in front of me by turn 8 and set back to let the gap in front of me open up. One of my GTS-2 competitors had the same idea and was passing everyone behind me. I let him go by in turn 11 and held back to open up a gap to him. Hopeful I had left enough room between me and him, I got to turn 14 and let it rip. I caught the other GTS-2 car in turn 11. He slowed me up a little but it was still a decent lap. I only got the one shot because we caught a bunch of traffic after that. I even tried pitting for some more room, but came out right into more traffic. My time ended up being a 1:50.1. This ending being just 0.2 seconds off the GTS-2 pole time. Here's the lap (again, sorry about the quality):

We received the grid sheets for Sunday's race at the racer's meeting over lunch. This is when we learned that the Lightning group would again have a split start, this time with the Spec E30's by themselves in the first group and everyone else in the second group. This meant a somewhat inverted field as the front third of the second group were all capable of quicker lap times than the entire E30 field. While my qualifying time was 7th fastest of the Lightning group, I would be starting the race in position 29. This time I was going to be right in the middle of my GTS-2 competitors who were in 28th, 30th, and 32nd. I was looking forward to actually racing the in-class cars this time rather than just watching time from a distance. I got gridded up and ready to go. The nerves were getting to me quite a bit more than they had the two days before.

Here are the race videos:

Part 1:

Part 2:

The formation lap was entertaining as the guys in front of me in the Thunder Roadsters were "warming their tires" more aggressively than I had ever seen anyone do it before...ever. They continued it until after turn 13, meaning we had to quickly bunch up to be in the proper starting formation as we got onto the front straight. I had already heard the first group get the green, so I knew they would likely be giving us the green as well. When the green flag came out, the Spec Miata that was two cars behind me got an amazing jump and immediately passed the car behind me and got to my left rear quarter panel as we reached the braking zone. I was so surprised by his jump that I just kept it straight and let him have the inside line to turn 1. He went by and as I turned into turn 1 the car behind me hit me in the left rear corner. The hit was enough to start rotating the car counterclockwise, but I caught it and continued on toward turns 2 and 3. All this fun had allowed the 3rd place GTS-2 car to scoot by and I was two spots down by the time we exited turn 3.

I got a good run coming out of turn 8 and was able to blow by the Miata between turns 9 and 10. As I went through the kink (turn 10), a Honda S-2000 lost it and went off track left into the sand trap, spinning. He through a massive cloud of sand and gravel back onto the track and I fired through it totally blind. I didn't want to slow and get rear ended in it, so I just hoped no one in front of me slowed either. Thankfully they didn't and we continued on. Now the two cars in front of me were the 2nd and 1st place cars in my class, so I set my sights on them. The Sneed Speed Shop car had a big off-road adventure in front of me in turn 14, but I wasn't able to get by him into turn one. A full course yellow came out as we got to the carousel (turn 6). One and half laps before the full course caution was out. Yay.

The restart was yet another butt kicking handed down by a couple veterans. Restarts are done in single file and I something like 30 cars back from the front still. I stupidly assumed that the green flag wouldn't come out until I was back on the front straight. Rookie mistake. The green came out as I was in the braking zone for turn 14. I wasn't ready at all and the Miata that had gotten by me at the start blew by me yet again. The second place GTS-2 car also got a good jump on the first place car and they fought it out going through turn 14. I would find out later that they touched and the valve stem was torn out of the lead car's right rear tire. As a result the lead car spun at the exit of turn 1. The second place car, the Miata, and I narrowly avoided it. I got by the Miata into turn 8 and went after the now first place GTS-2 car in front of me. We caught all of the E30 traffic in turn 11 and I knew I'd have to stay with the first place car while working through the slower traffic.

Things got exciting when we got back around to turn 14 two laps later. I had been trying my best to stay on the bumper of the lead GTS-2 car and get him to make a mistake. As we exited turn 14, he lit up his dying Hoosiers and started to spin. I stayed to the left with the hopes of going behind him as he spun off to the right. He managed to catch the spin, but some over-correction brought him back around to the left and headed for me. I went into the grass on the left side of the track and managed to narrowly avoid contact with him. A buddy of mine had to take equally evasive maneuvers (watch for him in my rearview mirror). I gathered everything up and got the car back on track. I knew I was now in first place in my class. I checked my mirrors for the now second place car and realized he wasn't anywhere to be seen. I instantly switched my mind into "stay smooth, don't take any chances, this race is yours to mess up" mode. A couple laps later another full course caution came out for a car stuck off track in turn 14. There was still plenty of time left so I assumed we would have another restart in our future. However, on our second or third caution lap, the black flag came out and the race was over. First place! While the race totally fell into my lap, I felt good about being in position to be able to take advantage of what happened around me. I was awarded three things for my efforts:

A skinned up bumper (at least the orange fits my color scheme)

A marked up wheel and tire (so lucky it didn't tear out my valve stem)

And the best prize of all

I had successfully completed Comp School, scored a 3rd place in my first race after starting from the back, and pulled off a win in my second race. Not a bad way to start. I know most of my weekends aren't going to go that well, but I couldn't have asked for a better rookie weekend.

Eye-opening experiences

Despite my best efforts at wearing myself out Friday evening, I didn't sleep well Friday night. This didn't come as much of a surprise to me considering what was about to take place on Saturday. We got to the track nice and early in the morning for yet another all-hands meeting. The different feel of a "race day" was apparent from the very beginning. Several of my buddies who are already racing were there now as well, so I could feel some pressure beginning to build.

We hit the track for a short practice session around 9:30 in the morning. This was my first opportunity to realize just how big a 46 car grid is on a track that is less than 2.3 miles in length. The session came and went without any issue and I began to focus on qualifying. Since the race that afternoon was going to be my rookie debut, I was going to be forced to start at the back of the pack. Therefore, my qualifying position didn't really matter. I still wanted to use the session as a learning opportunity and hoped to put down a decent time.

I went out about 10th in line. My plan was to fire out of the pits and go hard to the turn 13-14 area. From there my hopes were to allow the cars in front of me to take off and develop as big of a gap in front of me as possible. This played out exactly as I had planned and I was able to get two free laps before catching traffic.

Here are those two laps (sorry video quality is poor - had to use backup camera):

My first lap was a 1:50.2. The second lap was a 1:49.9. I was using the RaceChrono from MH Motorsports during qualifying, which was extremely helpful because I knew exactly what my times where and whether I was doing better or worse on each lap. Without onboard data, I would have just been firing around senselessly. While I was pushing pretty hard, I didn't feel like I was going 100%, so I was very pleased with those times. The 1:49.9 would have been good enough for 3rd in my class by 0.2 seconds behind 2nd place. This meant I was at least in the ballpark with those guys in terms of speed - something I was unsure about until that moment.

The racer's meeting took place during the lunch break. This meeting is where you find out your starting position and how the race start is going to be split up. Since I was a rookie I was going to be starting the race in 25th place, 15 places behind my nearest in-class competitor. I didn't really have any hopes on catching up to any of them, but with a pile of slower cars in front of me, I knew it would be an interesting first race. My wife had to capture the moment with the obligatory "before the first race" photo:

By about turn 3 of my formation lap for the race I finally got the "umm...Sean...what exactly are you about to do?" feeling for the first time. We all hustled around, scrubbing tires, until the area around turn 11 where we began to bunch up in double file formation. Next thing I know, we are on the front straight and the green flag is coming out. Here are the race vids:

Part 1:

Part 2:

I took it extremely cautiously through the first 3 turns and basically let everyone settle into single file. I found out quickly how much of a difference there is between driving quickly and driving quickly when trying to pass and be passed by others. Two totally different worlds. I was given quite an education by those guys in the Spec Miata's. They are relentless. They will race you as hard as they can for every position, regardless if you are in their class or not. I was more than willing to let them have what they wanted if they pushed it. I was able to pass a few cars and settle into a bit of a rhythm before the full course caution came out and bunched the field back up. When we all get back together, I realize I'm somehow in 10th and my in-class competitors are just a couple cars away! On the restart the car in front of me dives into the pits as soon as we are taking the green flag. Then the 2nd place car in my class goes off track and spins in turn 2. Just like that I'm in 8th overall and 3rd in class! Unfortunately, another (and this time race-ending) double yellow comes out by the time we turn turn 8 and all the fun is over. There wasn't a whole lot of racing to do, but I picked up 17 spots overall and ended up on the podium. For my first race ever, it was a great result and more than I could have hoped for.

Learning by doing

Comp School. I've likely used this phrase more than any other two words during the last 4 or so months. I've been looking forward to it with so much excitement and fear...typically leaning toward the fear side. All the stories I've been told have led me to believe that it can be very taxing on both student and car, and that there isn't any time to deal with any "hiccups" along the way. Since I would be attending with a newly built/rebuilt car, I knew that the chances for failure of the car and failure of the school were possible. Still, the car seemed ready to go and so was I.

A good friend of mine offered to help me out with the car through Comp School, so we arrived at Carolina Motorsports Park just after the gates opened Thursday afternoon. I found some prime real estate parking and unloaded the car. There wasn't much to do after that, so we got the car covered and got ready to hit the road. Before leaving the paddock, there was quite a bit of discussion about the temperature dropping into the lower 20's that night. Since race cars are not allowed to have any antifreeze in their cooling systems, cold temperatures can present quite a problem. I had never had to deal with this before and began to freak out a little. We decided to try to find something we could use to keep the car's engine bay above freezing during the night. The "typical" thing that folks do is to leave a halogen work light on and wedged between the engine and radiator. With this technique in mind, we set off for Kershaw, SC.

Unfortunately, almost every retail store in Kershaw closes at 6:00pm. This meant all the hardware stores, auto parts stores, and the like had been dark for over an hour. It looked bleak until we decided to swing into the RiteAid drug store (the only thing open besides the Dollar Store). There on the same aisle as the light bulbs and extension cords was a plug-in cook top. It was basically a single electric stove eye. It was either going to be cheap insurance that I would have a functional car in the morning, or a $19 method of burning my car to the ground. We headed back to the paddock and plugged it in. We set it on the "low" setting and put it on top of the splitter in between the sway bar and the bottom front edge of the oil pan. It glowed orange but wasn't near anything obviously flammable. Without a whole lot of confidence, we covered the car back up and headed to the hotel. It was a long night just waiting on the phone to ring to tell me I had burnt up my own car. Thankfully, that call never came.

Our all-hands meeting was at 7:30 Friday morning. This was my second NASA event ever and my first in 6 years, so this was really my chance to start getting the feel of the crowd that I'm going to be a part of now. A good bit of that meeting was spent giving us a little rookie hazing so I could immediately tell it was going to be my kind of crowd.

Our schedule for the school was simple and grueling...track/class/track/class/track/lunch/class/track/graduation. Literally as soon as class ended we had to run jump in the cars and get on track. Then, as soon as we pulled off track we had to jump out of the cars and hustle to class. Hence the extreme importance of having someone there to help out. My buddy agreed to check over the car (tires, oil, lug nuts, etc) every time I came off track to make sure it was staying together. Without him there to do that, I would not have been able to devote my full attention to the classes and track exercises.

The first thing we did was to get on track to warm up the cars and our minds in hopes to knock the winter rust off of both. I realized as I left the pits behind a slower car that I had passed another car without permission from its driver. That was all about to change. Drastically. The first lap was under full course yellow, but by the exit of turn 3 on the first hot lap it was time to let the passing begin. I fired by several cars during that practice session and got my first tastes of how much fun this was going to be.

The classroom sessions were open and informative with 5 veteran racers as our instructors. We covered lots of procedural things like grid, starts, flags and so on. We also discussed bits of race strategy and how to mentally approach what we were doing out there. These classroom sessions were then expanded upon with on-track exercises such as side-by-side drills and off-line driving drills. All of the driving sessions were fairly tepid, except for the fact that we were also out there with several cars driving in the "test and tune". This meant they weren't in our school and were instead out there working on making their cars faster. This also meant they were ready and willing mess with us students when they had the chance, something a few of them did quite well. Once all the drills were done and we all passed the "written exam", it was time for our mock race.

The mock race is made up of all the students in comp school as well as 6 or so instructors who are out there just to give you a hard time. My goal for the mock race was to drive hard but to be extremely conservative and to keep my nose clean as I had no plans to risk passing comp school for a race that doesn't count. I drew a 3rd place starting position and headed out for our formation lap. That was the first time I had the "wow...this is actually happening" emotions. We rounded turn 14 and pulled onto the front straight. The green flag finally flew and we were off for turn 1. After 6 or 7 laps (which felt like no more than 3 minutes since I was so fired up), we got the white and then the checkered flag. As I pulled into the pits I knew a Rookie Provisional License was in my near future.

12 other rookies successfully graduated as well. I was now eligible to race, for real, on Saturday and Sunday. This is why I came. A couple celebratory beers, some delicious Mexican food (San Jose Restaurant in Lugoff, SC), and a good nights sleep later, I'd be back at the track ready to become a "racer".

Sometimes things just work out

Looking back over these blog posts reminds about about what has had to happen over the last few months to get everything together. So much of it had to be accomplished over the last month and a half. I had to have a lot of things go right the first time and a lot of help from others. Fortunately, I got plenty of both and it all worked out.

A week and a half before my first race I handed the car over to a couple of guys in the paint department at the Haddock's body shop next door. They cleaned it up a little, scuffed it down, and gave it a new coat of black paint. It came out looking better than it ever has during my ownership. It wasn't perfect, but this ain't no show queen.

Before:

After:

After reassembling everything that had to come off during paint (bumpers, wing, trim), I turned my attention to finishing up the safety stuff. The mocked up window net and center net were finalized and tightened down. The driver's side harnesses were replaced with brand new versions. The seat was adjusted to a better position. The fire extinguisher and mount were installed. The kill switch and remaining wiring were finished. With all that done and time continuing to run out, vinyl was next.

Extreme Vinyl came through with all my required stickers and a few more. Here's the entire order before application:

Thank goodness I have a very detail oriented wife. She was willing to help me install the vinyl and ended up doing most of it herself. She took so much extra time making sure it was perfect. I know I would have likely just slapped it on and been unhappy with the result. Instead, it turned out looking better than I had hoped.

Next up was going through the dyno testing. This part terrified me. Since the car isn't street legal, I can't go out and drive it around to find out how the rebuild worked and how the car is running. All I could do was run in around the parking lot. Going to the dyno meant finding out, with numbers, exactly how healthy the engine was. It could also mean blowing the thing up again and destroying my hopes for starting the race season anytime soon.

I decided to go to Mayhem Motorsports in Raleigh for the dyno testing. I had dyno'd the car with them before, so I knew they were good folks and that they would also have my previous data for comparison. I could not have been happier with the experience. In all, I made 12 runs on the dyno over an hour and a half. After diagnosing and fixing a dragging left rear brake, the engine topped out at 226/217; gains of 7 hp and 17 lb-ft over my last runs in 2009!

I then focused on getting the power down to where it needed to be for my class. I went through several different sizes of restrictor plates and eventually settled on this plate at 204/205:

This puts me at at 14.58 hp/wt ratio with no gas in the car. With my max class ratio set at 14.5, I'd call that perfect. I may find the desire to increase weight and increase power down the road, but for now, this is exactly what I was hoping for.

With the dyno runs complete and some satisfaction that the engine was going to detonate when it hit the track, it was time to go through NASA's annual safety inspection process. A local guy who does inspection and issues log books was recommended to me by a racing buddy. He met me at the shop on Wednesday night to go over the car. Thankfully, all my efforts at preparing the car had paid off and he issued me a log book with no hassle.

With everything done and all my paperwork in hand, I loaded up the car and my trusty rental van from Triangle Rentacar the next afternoon and set off for Carolina Motorsports Park. My Comp School and first two races were now close at hand. I couldn't wait to hit the track Friday morning.