Don't Tread On Me Racing: Good Racing = Poor Blogging

Warning this is pretty lame, I'd like to think it is my first 'lame' one but you guys probably know better. Stories about people that are warm, well fed, and rested rarely make interesting tales unfortunately (for you, but not for me!). I've tried to combat the lameness with cool pictures and some video.

Where to start? Usually these things write themselves since I just have to plan on a race and then try to remember all the goofy things [I do / that happen around me] I’m not naïve enough to think that this is a sign of things to come, but I’ll try to be optimistic. For once everything went pretty smoothly. Of course the secret to happiness is low expectations. I didn’t get to drive my own car since as you can see from the picture there is still daylight coming from places that should be filled with mechanical stuff like an engine.

My car has become the victim of ‘scope creep’, otherwise known as the ‘while we’re in there’ effect. When you take out a car's engine and transmission, it is easy to get side tracked on other projects like - replace every other part in the car. That is effectively what we’re doing. It will be pretty much brand new and rebuilt except that the outside will still look like warmed up cr@p. Of course that has dawned on me slowly so ordering stuff, and only working one weekend day isn’t speeding up progress but it has kept everyone involved out of divorce court (so far).

The fact that my car won’t even roll in its current condition meant that I was going to miss our February opener. This sucked pretty bad, since technically I started this engine rebuild project back in June of 2008 (long time fans will remember the pool hall). Craig stepped up like the true gentleman he is and offered his car to myself and new enduro partner Dave White. Dave had his previous enduro ride sold out from under him by newly castrated JP Coates (formerly of Beertech Racing). Pro ringer James Clay’s and DTOM Racing's 2009 contract negiotiations broke down over his World Challenge commitments and lack of providing a team coat to me. That meant I was looking around for another hot shoe. Dave was only too happy to oblige. And thus the BW JV All Star team was born. Dave is a single dude, who has I think several nursing home fraud scams going on in the North Carolina area, and with Obama beefy up govt. entitlement programs I expect to parlay this enduro deal into big things!

So we had a car, we had a team name, and I’d only miss the two sprint races (which under the new points rules I can drop as my 2 lowest scoring races I just need to win the rest of the season!). This worked out well since I was under significant spousal pressure to attend a charity event with my lovely wife on Saturday. The downside was that I’d have to leave Atlanta early morning drive the 4-5 hours to CMP, help Craig get the car ready, race for an 1 ½, help Craig get the car ready for the next day, and then drive the 4-5 hours back. That makes for a long day. To lend a helping hand our frequent DTOM chief mechanic Brendan Digel volunteered to make the ride up and back to keep me from falling asleep and also to watch the race.

The race itself was a lot more exciting than it should have been. Dave was set to start, and the grid was assigned by random draw, unfortunately we got the short straw and ended up at the very back. Our enduro class is once again the biggest in the field with 10 of the 16 total cars in E2. Steve Foushee taking a page out of my playbook decided to get into the enduro game and enlisted Mike Skeen.com to help hot shoe his ride. Dave took the green flag and within 3 laps was on Mike’s bumper. The sideline quarterbacks among us, figured Dave would hang around until it was time to pitstop and then I would hopefully get around Steve easy peasy. No one told Dave that plan, and he passed mikeskeen.com 5 or so laps later and kept him behind until it was time to pit.

The pitstop went smooth except for Craig and Brendan almost getting killed by a Mustang Challenge car that thought the pit speed was 110mph. I hop in and take off. Back stretch and they’re waving a black flag at me. I ignore it and keep going around another lap. They continue to wave, the car feels fine so it isn’t mechanical. I pull in and stop by the official. I crossed over the ‘blend’ line entering the track. Whatever. Of course that little conversation isn’t helping as people continue to drive past. Our comfortable lead is gone. I crank out my laps until the fuel light comes on and it is time to pit. Dave asks what my lap times are and I’m consistently a second behind his. I jump out and let him pull anchor duty. Still p!ssed about getting black flagged I tell the officials again what I think of them since roughly 3 other cars ignored any semblance of pit lane safety and my ‘crossing’ the blend line was questionable at best. I’ve given up on the retards running this show we’ll just have to do our best to work around it. Our 2 pitstop, and 1 black flag strategy doesn’t appear to be the fastest. Dave has to catch the Foushee #4 car and we’re running out of laps. White shows he is ready for anchor duty by pulling off a last lap pass and they race to the checker. Dave stays in front and 3 cars finish on the same lap roughly a second or so between them. Much more exciting than we wanted it to be. Team BW JV All Stars FOR THE WIN!

I reward the team with some cheap Mexican food, and myself with a big plate of fajitas. Winning a race and eating Mexican food is probably as close to heaven as I’ll get in this lifetime. Craig is nice enough to collect our trophy (see pic). Sometime NASA embraces their southern redneck roots a little too enthusiastically. Brendan and I drive back to Atlanta, I get to bed around 1:30am.

It was a great weekend for Craig, he put his car on pole twice and won the feature sprint for his first podium and first race win! He finished second the next day. Unfortunately there was plenty of car to car contact as the links and pictures below will attest to.