If you’ve been a frequent reader of this blog you’ll know that we’ve been pretty heavy on tearing things apart lately and pretty light on racing. This is due to the fact that neither Craig nor I are lotto winners, so the sacrifice for building the Grand-Am car meant that this year’s schedule would be infrequent track time, however that didn’t mean it had to be non-existent. Our DTOM brethren Jason Mascow had been promised a ride in one of our Spec E30’s for close to two years (mostly by Craig) and due to a variety of reasons (excuses by Craig) had never got a chance to actually race one. Another of our key helpers Ted McMahan still hadn’t done a formal driving school, Digel would be his instructor. All of this coincided nicely with NASA-SE’s return to Roebling Road Raceway one of DTOM’s favorite race venues.

Early on we dubbed this DTOM family day, since Craig’s wife, baby, and mother-in-law decided to go to Savannah while he did his pre-sale shakedown of the #82 car. For the #36 we’d be doing triple stints with Jason in the Spec E30 race trying to beat up on Craig, Ted would be in the HPDE group, and I signed up for the Thunder race just to have something to do. During a Robinson family meeting my wife also expressed a desire to go to Savannah, I corrected her with “Pooler”, and she again said Savannah. Over the course of the weekend she would come to fully understand the big difference between Pooler and Savannah. Since it was the DTOM extended family the dogs got to come along as well. The dogs aren’t the best at traveling since Indy gets car sick and they both like to stop frequently to smell the sights (so to speak) as a result I was fully expecting this trip to be the stuff DTOM legends were made of (ie. a huge pain in my a$$).

The week before the race we met at Jason’s shop to make the necessary ‘enhancements’ to the silver car so that it would pass its annual tech inspection. In my mind that meant – changing the oil and replacing a severely cracked windshield, maybe checking the brake pads. I confidently told Jason,and Brendan as Ted drove it onto the lift. “We’ll be out of here by noon, just needs an oil change really.” Jason immediately asked, “What is that clunking noise? When was the last time you looked at this thing?” My response of “I don’t know it always sounds like that, and December after our 9 hour enduro” didn’t inspire much confidence but earned me some sad looks and shaking heads. Needless to say we found the horrible clunking sound, and many other things, enough to take 3 1/3 mechanics until 4pm. I confined myself to the usual getting lunch, watching, and fetching things (hence the 1/3).

As we made our preparations for the weekend we found the local hotels in Pooler to be surprisingly snooty about pets, which meant we ended up in a Jameson Inn. That would be Christine’s first clue that we weren’t in Savannah. The second came as we drove through the ‘neighborhoods’ outside of Roebling, or as Jason calls them the ‘meth shacks’. We had left around 10 am in order to have enough time to drive leisurely, and arrive at the track in plenty of time to unpack and get the aforementioned technical inspection and registration. The third clue that this wasn’t a vacation or as glamorous as the races on TV came as the always logical and friendly track staff precluded anyone from entering the track until 5pm. We arrived a little before 3pm. Nothing says fun like sitting in a crowded sandy lot with two hot dogs (or baby for Craig) and no water for 2+ hours. Eventually we did get in, inspected, and unpacked. As we finished up and I got in the car soaked with sweat Christine observed, “I’m surprised you find this fun.” I think that was a jab at my love of hard manual labor, or maybe my conditioning, either way I don’t think it was a compliment.

We arrived at the Jameson Inn before the various transient vagabonds hogged all the good rooms and were able to request a penthouse away from doors and elevators that we knew from experience would upset the dogs. Unfortunately they only had a queen sized bed. Over the course of the evening we found that 2 large dogs, 1 large-ish man, and 1 regular sized wife don’t fit neatly in that configuration. So much so that the entire room possibly got 2 hours sleep.

Thankfully the demands at the track were relatively light (for me) since I didn’t especially care how much I drove over the weekend. My practice session was first up so I strapped in to make sure the car wouldn’t fall apart on someone other than the responsible party. During my shakedown I discovered a gremlin that our mechanical barn raising missed. The clutch was slipping and not going to improve with use. This put myself and Ted into car conservation mode so that Jason could use what was left to make a run at his race. I practiced doing the fastest laps I could using only 4th gear, which actually was kind of fun, but not very impressive from a time or results perspective. Jason’s race came up and he did pretty well coming in a respectable 6th place out of maybe 15 or so. Not too shabby for a car he hadn’t driven before against some fairly stiff competition. Craig managed an also respectable 3rd after the actual 1st place finisher was DQ’d on a tech issue. Jason was disappointed the famous 6th place trophy had been retired.

What a difference a few months makes, there is a new crop of Spec E30 guys and we didn’t know most of them. A lot of the old crew has moved onto greener pastures, but Brian Jones showed up. Last time I saw Jones (maybe a few months ago) he was single, had a red pickup truck, and beat up steel trailer. Now he is married, with a baby on the way, a new ‘free?” aluminum trailer and a suburban. Oh yeah and a pit bull. Jones sells wine for a living so I think the pit bull, and wife were to address some un-asked questions… In congratulating him I managed to strike a deal where I would get the rights to name the baby for a set of used (good) race tires. I immediately dubbed his unborn child “Gumball” Jones – “Lil Gumball” until he is of age, and “Gumballa” if it’s a girl. I could tell that Brian was a newlywed since a) his wife Clarissa was sleeping in a tent on the RRR grounds, b) looked to be enjoying herself. She even took the news about Lil Gumball in stride. If anyone has better suggestions please put in the comments. I’ll make sure to pass them along.

Ted continued to solidify his “Hardest working man at the track” reputation by not only doing his first driver’s school, which can be stressful enough, but also serving as crew for another racer / customer from his shop. The guy (John) he was working for benefitted? from the DTOM curse, I will say I’m enjoying being able to offload the bad luck on nearby pedestrians like Craig or this 944 guy. Unfortunately Ted also got caught up in the swirling bad mojo.

John had asked Ted to drive his nearly brand new Dodge 3500 diesel pickup down with his nice 28 or 32 ft trailer down for him. This worked out perfectly since it allowed plenty of vehicles for everyone to have access to, and a sweet enclosed trailer for us to sponge off of minimizing truck loading / unloading time. Well except for the guy that actually owned it, it didn’t really work out perfectly for him. He had modified his original plan of flying into Savannah and replaced it with driving down in one of his other Porsche 944’s. 20 year old cars being 20 year old cars it broke down on his way to the track. After getting it towed, the problem proved un-fixable without the types of parts you won’t find in Pooler on a Saturday or Sunday. His exit plan didn’t prove to be much better, since he mounted up his still running race car for the trip home and then called us 3 hours in saying he had run out of gas and was on the side of the road. At the same time the check engine light in his truck went on as the turbo on the diesel wasn’t making boost.

Poor Ted in an effort to check the truck picked the wrong exit to pull off of, and drove into the gas station parking lot of doom. This is the place where I got my trailer stuck and Craig, TJ, and I had to do some quick thinking to avoid disaster. Just as I was telling Christine (and the dogs) this, and about to pick up my phone to give advice, Ted got the nice trailer stuck. Those concrete pillars by gas pumps are the bane of 32 foot trailers. Somewhat thankfully my experience in the same predicament meant that we had a solid game plan for getting it ‘unstuck’ with minimal damage, but the local audience complete with 6000 kagigawatt bass stereos didn’t help defuse the tense mood. We managed to get gas to the racecar guy before he died of heat exposure, and then limped the truck home. It only made a 4 hour trip about 7, but what would you expect from DTOM family day? It certainly lived up to my expectations. No word from Christine on how she enjoyed her trip to Savannah yet.