These are the types of cars you see at O'fest. Rare and very rare. Photo credits Gary Donaldson.



This has been a busy two weeks. I was up and back at Road Atlanta a lot for Petite Le Mans, I was juggling that with basement flood cleanup and also trying to get the car somewhat ready for the BMWCCA Oktoberfest. "O’fest" as it is typically called, is the biggest BMW Car Club event of the year. It travels nationally and each year they hold it in a different location, BMW fanatics from all over the country drive to take part in the festivities. This year it was at Road Atlanta. I contemplated getting a hotel room, but ended up going cheap and figured I’d just drive back and forth (70 miles each way about 1hr to 1 1/2 w/ traffic). I was planning to be up there from Wed. to Sunday, upon reflection the $50 hotel room would have been the smarter call. My itinerary was to instruct Wed and Thur. then co-drive the #112 Brendan Digel 5-series in the weekend Club Races.

I constantly amaze myself with how unhandy I am. I was struggling for time due to the flood, but I still needed to do routine maintenance to the race car since I planned on taking it out for a few sessions while I instructed. This meant basic fluid changes and putting on new brake pads. Stuff I’ve done 1000 times. As usual I put the car up on the four jacks stands. It immediately occurs to me that I forgot to loosen the front lug nuts - I do this EVERY TIME. Stupid things like this are equal parts my incompetence and the lack of practical working features in my garage. I have no room for an air compressor and the impact gun that would drill those lug nuts off with no problem. I do have a cordless dewalt but it is getting tired from years of use and won’t rip them off since it is 14.4v which is marginal. So I was faced with taking the car off jack stands, or rigging up some retard garage method of locking the front wheels while I break the nuts loose.

I started all this stuff at 6pm I was finished by 9. Went to start the car and put it on the trailer. Battery is dead. Wait is this a DTOM repeat, no I’m really that stupid. Of course the jumper cables are in the truck down the hill, my wife’s car isn’t in position to easily jump anyway and I’m covered in transmission fluid. My hail mary attempt is the sh!tty Sears jumper box that has LITERALLY never worked to start a car. Ever the optimist I try it anyway, and whatever higher power that delights in torturing me must have ran for coffee since it fired right up (little embellishment, more like it coughed and wheezed to life).

The devious master plan that I had was to drop my car off by the BimmerWorld circus tent and hold a coveted awning parking space hostage while I pestered Marks and the guys to help fix my fancy Stack dash / data system. They installed this back in the spring, however in the process of hooking it up we also removed the engine. This is like installing a super cool home theater system minus the TV and Speakers. So they did the best they could, but since the car didn’t run some of the details of setup couldn’t get ironed out. Jason did his best to help me troubleshoot and get things up and working over the phone and email, but the Wheel Speed sensor that is critical to all the data functions resisted my ham fisted attempts to get working. With the car parking under the big top, and Marks saying, “He’d look at it”. My plan was working to perfection.


Strategically positioned to capture an awning parking spot..


Ofest is a little goofy in how the Driver’s Education event is setup. Instead of having a 2 day weekend track event, they actually had 5 – 1 day schools. During the 2 days I had 3 students. It is always a bit interesting to me to instruct. You’re meeting these people for the first time, they don’t know you from Adam, and they can have just about any car under the sun and just about any degree of track experience. I got to ride along in a 335 automatic. Not the ideal track car, but pretty fast, the guy was an eager student and it was his absolute first time on track. I think we had fun although were a bit limited in what we could do given the car and one day.

On the second day I had two students, they only gave us 15 min. rest in between so the BW guys were amused as every session the PA system announced “Jim Robinson your student is waiting on the grid.” Followed by me running in a helmet and dropping stuff along the way. The novice student had a 2007 M5. A very very fast car, but again not the ideal track toy, it got up to 140 mph faster than anything I've been in, thankfully we stopped there. I don’t think I clicked with him, I’m not anywhere near the teacher my wife is, but I think that personality and how you explain things make a big difference. I’m perceptive enough to know that I wasn’t getting through but whatever angle I tried didn’t seem to deliver the “Aha” moment I got with the other two guys. He seemed content to rely on the numerous electronic nannies the car has, and would do one corner great and then blow the other one.

My advanced student was a different story. He had a pretty well track prepped E36 car and had done a lot of sessions at Road Atlanta. We went out and his driving was pretty solid with good lines, but he was slow. When we came in I gave him a choice. I’d sign him off and he could go have fun, or I’d go out with him again and help him pick up the pace. He seemed leery but agreed. We went out for the next session with me screaming “GAS, GAS, GAS” in his ear and making him take scary turn 12 flat out. He listened exactly and we probably dropped 3-4 seconds in just that session. It was pretty cool to have us both grinning like idiots and clapping. Truthfully I’d been going slow in the other cars so long I needed a little excitement to stay awake. I was pretty proud of him and gave him the rest of the day off to practice the few tricks he had learned. Turned out he was an ER doctor from Athens, originally from Indiana, etc. Only in America can I teach a doctor anything. Both he and Tom (my Wed. student) came out Sat. to watch the race and stopped by which was pretty nice of them.

I asked him what he thought of health reform. He agreed something needed to be done, but felt that tort reform and the end of (update poor proofreading on my part) defensive medicine would make the biggest cost impacts in his world.

Tomorrow the grand finale!! What will happen to our intrepid hero(es) in the Club Race? Find out in the blandly titled Part 3 - "The Club Race"

Labels: Road Atlanta