We hit the road a little later than usual so we didn't get to the track until 7:45 Friday night. Our group of "track friends" were already there and they were all growing increasingly impatient for dinner, so we just parked the rig and headed back out. Several of us rode in the bed of a pickup back into the town limits of Kershaw. While I hadn't ridden in the bed of a pickup in a couple decades, I'm quite sure that we weren't the only folks who had ridden in the bed of a pickup into Kershaw that night. Dinner was at Gus's House of Pizza. There are only 4 places to eat in Kershaw and the track crowd tends to lean more toward pizza/Italian than country cooking. We joined in with a large group of Spec E30 racers. Although this made me an outsider, the SE30 group is good people and made for fine company. I had cheese ravioli with meatballs. It was better than I had expected. I had doubted it before, but GHOP is now on the list of places to eat when visting CMP.
My wife and I had made the decision to camp out at the track for this event, something we hadn't done before. We put an inflatable mattress in the back of the van, added a couple sleeping bags and a couple pillows, and had a reasonably good night's sleep. The cool evening weather made it very comfortable. I'm not sure it would be so nice in the heat of summer.
Getting ready to go on Saturday morning:
Saturday's practice began around 9:30am. I hit the track with the same suspension settings which were on the car when I rolled off the track at VIR's North Course at the last event. I had some new brake pads and rotors on the front of the car, so the most important thing about practice was getting the brakes bedded in. The car had quite a bit of push/understeer in the slower corners which is nothing new for CMP. I had no reason to push things very hard so I settled into a comfortable rhythm and knocked out some laps to knock off the rust. The good news was that without any real effort of trying to go fast, I managed to run a 1:49.2, which was just 0.1 sec slower than my personal best ever at CMP. The car felt pretty good, I got the brakes bedded in, and I was pleased about the changes to the car. Next up was qualifying.
As I've discussed earlier, it's always hard to know what to do about getting to grid to get in line for qualifying. As usual, the guys in the front of the Spec E30 crowd got to grid as early as possible and took up all the positions up front. I took my time getting to grid and got in line in the last third of the field. To my relief, the only other car in GTS-2 that weekend was in line right in front of me. This was a good thing because it meant that him and I would have to deal with the same traffic on track and he wouldn't get the opportunity to get a wide open lap and set a better time. During the out-lap, it felt like no one could make up their minds about how they were going to attack qualifying. Usually drivers either take off right away and try to get something done early, or they hang back and create gaps to the cars in front of them for the chance to have at least one lap without dealing with traffic. Instead, cars were bunching up then spreading out and then bunching up again. As a result, a long line of cars got the green flag at the same time and I was right in the middle of it. The other GTS-2 car and I immediately being firing through traffic as best we could. The problem was that there was so much traffic that we were not going to get a clean lap to put down our best times. After 5 laps, I had managed a best of 1:50.1 which was quite disappointing after my times in practice. The good news was that I qualified first in class and 7th overall. The other GTS-2 car qualified in 10th overall. The car was still a little pushy on corner exit, so I had some changes to make before the race, but I was thrilled to have a couple cars between me and my competition for the start of the race.
I made what I considered to be a couple of very small tweaks to the suspension settings of the car before the race. My goal was to balance the car out a little more and reduce the understeer in the slower corners. These changes would end up being far too much for the much warmer track conditions for the mid-afternoon race.
The race began without incident. We took the green flag about half way down the front straight and basically everyone around me stayed put all the way into turn one. Since I qualified 7th, I was on the inside of the track for the start. A Legends car (which looks like a 3/4 scale hot rod) was lined up beside me in 8th. We stayed side by side through turns 1, 2 and 3. During the exit from turn 3, I got very loose and allowed the Legends car to get by. No big loss since we were in different classes, but it did allow my competitor to close in on me by another position. Turns 4, 5, 6, and 7 came and went without drama. As we approached the braking zone for turn 8 I decided to stay on line to the left side of the track since the Honda Challenge car behind me was doing the same thing. I took one more look in the mirror while I was in the braking zone and saw the other GTS-2 car making a late pass on the Honda and approaching my right rear corner. His move surprised me and I basically gave him the corner. He took the inside through turn 8 and I took the outside. This required me to take turn 8 much slower than usual and both Hondas behind me past me as well. From 8th to 11th in about 10 seconds. I was upset that I had not been on my game enough to hold my ground going into turn 8. Oh well. I had to buckle down and get after the other in-class car. Within two laps I had worked by both Hondas. By then the other GTS-2 car had pulled away to a 5 second lead. I kept my head down told myself to stay smooth and hit my marks. I did and I reeled in the other car fairly quickly. By the time I caught him we were catching the back end of the field and had to start working through slower traffic. Trying to keep up with a fast car while working through slower traffic is quite fun and frustrating at the same time. Sometimes traffic would hold up my competitor and sometimes it would slow me. Throughout these laps I noticed that he was having to brake before going through "the kink" on the back straight. I could get through there with just a little lift, so I was quite a bit faster from the middle of the corner out. I thought this could give a chance to get by into turn 11. I finally took my shot when the other GTS-2 car slowed going into the kink and again slowed coming out because of traffic in front of him. I stayed in the gas and took the car up the extreme left edge of the track toward the inside of turn 11. The run fired me by and into first place in class. But only for a moment...
Since my move meant I was passing my competitor and a slower out of class car, I was on the inside of turn 11 going much slower than usual. I decided I was going to be going too slow for third gear so I threw in one more downshift to put the car in second gear for a powerful run out of the corner. I got around the apex and mashed the gas. Nothing happened. I realized the RPM's were very low and the car was bogging. At first I wasn't sure what the problem was. My right had quickly discovered the answer...I had shifted into 4th gear instead of 2nd. As I was trying to figure out what was happening, my competitor flew back by me with little effort. Getting passed in turn 8 at the start of the race was a rookie racer mistake. This was just stupid. I had made up all that ground, gotten the advantage, and then threw it all away in the blink of an eye. I went back to chasing the rabbit yet again.
I was able to get myself back onto the bumper of my competitor within a lap, but traffic was becoming even more of a problem. While we were still passing and lapping other cars, those cars were becoming less and less slower than us. This meant that getting by them took more work and more time, allowing the other car to keep traffic between us. With 3 laps to go the car sputtered during full throttle while coming down the front straight. It felt like the car was running out of gas. I started the race with 3/4 of a tank, so running out of gas shouldn't have been a problem. After the car sputtered, I checked the full gauge and it said I was at 1/8 of a tank. Something wasn't right and the car had obviously been dropping car onto the track during the race. My hopes of chasing my competitor down one last time had to take a back seat to just finishing. I backed off a little bit and made sure I wouldn't run out of gas before the checkered flag. I ended the race in 6th place over all and 2nd in class, scoring very valuable season championship points (and another trophy mug!). My hard fought battle with the other GTS-2 car was a blast and I learned a lot. I was disappointed that I wasn't able to hold onto first, but I felt like the experience was going to make be a better racer in upcoming races.
Back in the pits, after the usual Saturday evening BBQ, beer and Firefly Sweet Tea vodka, I turned my attention to finding and fixing my fuel leak. I started in the engine bay and found nothing. I then checked the fuel pump and fuel level sender areas. Again nothing. Under the car I went. I jacked up the left rear of the car and slid under. The first thing I found had nothing to do with the fuel leak...my brand new axle had failed. The outer clamp on the outer boot had come off during the race. This allowed the joint to dump all of its precious grease out all over the wheel and suspension. A $0.25 part ruined a new axle. Great. I knew my weekend was done at that point but I still wanted to track down the fuel leak. I checked all the lines and couldn't find anything. I was about to give up when i noticed something white on the gas tank where it humps up over the drive shaft and exhaust pipes. Upon closer inspection, these were areas where the exhaust pipes had come into contact with the plastic gas tank and melted it. In a couple places holes had formed. The car had been dumping gasoline onto the hot exhaust during the race! I later determined that nearly 8 gallons had been spilled out during the race. 8 gallons of gas dumping onto a hot exhaust during a 35 minute race and no fire. I realized how lucky I was and used a couple more beers to get over my sadness of not racing the following day.
The failed axle boot:
Tank damage:
