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Tell them what they’ve won Bob…

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

Hey look at me!

I’d love to start this out by gloating and in general taunting everyone with my numerous victories from our Road Atlanta race, but due to sheer cowardice (my assumption) a lot of people didn’t show up. Steve DeVinney (which I think is French for dirty cheater, and he used to drive a miata – might as well wear a dress) and Robert Patton did their best to spoil my party, but after two years of racing the fates had finally run out of creative ways to cut the legs out from under me (foreshadowing). The worst thing that happened this weekend was stepping on my sunglasses.

Dog Update – thanks to everyone for their well wishing and asking about Indy. It will be awhile before we know for sure, but his leg seems to be much improved, and he had another minor surgery on his ear to remove stitches, and to drain another portion of the ear that had fluid but we’re hopeful he is now on the road to recovery. He was quite depressed for a few weeks, but got to go to the park last night so that and his short memory restored his optimistic view on life.

The racing administrators reviewed the timing and scoring records from our Barber “enduro” and ended up giving us the victory so despite the start mix up we managed to win. This was surprising and awesome since we’ve now won 3 out of the 4 races, however one of our JV team members got the call to attend the Varsity team match at Summit Point. It was a 12 hour event and my normal partner Dave White had committed to it before realizing he was double booked. Thankfully BimmerWorld World Challenge driver Seth Thomas has a flexible work schedule on Friday’s and was more than happy to lend a hand so losing Dave ended up being addition by subtraction. Since this was a double points race it was important to make a strong showing.

We were in our racer’s meeting around lunch when Seth made his grand entrance. Short of arriving in a helicopter I can safely say – if you want people to notice you, drive up in a bright red Ferrari.

One of these things is not like the other….

Seth determined that buying a Ferrari 430 was a good way to reward his recent World Challenge Sebring victory. Seth is one of 3 absolutely nice and polite people that I know (and that will associate with me), if you look up “Southern Gentleman” in the dictionary there is probably a picture of Seth next to Colonel Sanders.

[Interesting aside – During the VIR club race the BMW Club shares the track with a Vintage Group. Vintage racing is part racing, part renaissance fair / star trek convention. So you see some people ‘dressed up’ in weird costumes. This April we saw a man in a full tuxedo, with top hat and cane (alas no spats) and his wife was wearing a flapper-esque dress with some type of fox / rodent shawl. We also saw a crew chief wearing what appeared to be a doctor’s lab coat with some fancy embroidery. That night after several beers I suggested to Clay that in an attempt to make things at BW more professional he might want to get a lab coat for Jason Marks to help portray that level of cool efficiency and knowledge. We explored the idea further coming up with some compelling additions like piping and fringe tassels for the sleeves. Clay, however, remained unconvinced something about the tassels getting caught in a fan belt and workman’s comp. Knowing that he isn’t the man of vision that I am, I figured he just needed to see a prototype.

Craig was a child model for the JCPenny's catalog.

Paging Dr. Marks (BW Crew Chief) - notice the attention to details and quality!

Thanks to the power of the internet I was able to easily procure a bright yellow lab coat, and after interesting trips to a fabric store and an alteration shop this masterpiece was created. The Asian woman that spoke very broken English (and the entire shop) looked at Craig and me as if we had 3 heads as I explained the piping and fringe, but did stellar work. As you can see the coat is certainly reminiscent of Colonel Sanders with the piping. The deal was made that Clay would present this to Mark’s if they managed to win the 12 hour race at Summit. They did, I informed Jason it was dry clean only and to be brought out only for formal occassions.]

So I had Seth as my ringer, the usual suspects showed up and we adjusted our strategy to take advantage of Seth’s additional speed and ability. Using a tried and true Koni Challenge approach of one pro (Thomas) and one slow (Robinson) we decided to keep me out of the car as long as possible. Brendan and I also tried a new approach by thinking kind thoughts and not being angry to hopefully build up good karma. Thanks to my new 16 gallon fuel cell and two Full Course Cautions; Seth was able to stay out for 2 hours and 10 min. of a 3 hour race. Thus limiting the damage I could do to our position and allowing us to take a minimum amount of gas to get across the line. Our short pit stop and my workmanlike speed enabled us to cruise to victory and to a 3rd place overall finish. This kept us solidly in the E2 class lead, and leading the Series Overall Championship points as well.

Since victory, however satisfying and welcome, is somewhat boring, I’ll just hit the highlights. I was able to qualify on pole Saturday, and despite poor traffic management that led to Steve D. and Laura Patton getting closer to me than I would have liked I managed to not cr@p the bed and went onto my first sprint race win. I informed Steve D of our Spec E30 custom of not looking the champion in the eye and addressing him (or her oddly enough) as “Sir”. Laura managed to sneak by Steve after aforementioned traffic balked us both and she kept him behind for her best finish (I think?) ever. She was quite excited and since everyone likes Laura it was a good result and finish for her to celebrate!

How much did those trophies cost? Really?

NASA decided to try a format shift out on our Sunday race and instead of normal qualifying actually hold a qualifying race vs. just going off fast lap. We were to go out at 9:30am and the race finishing order would determine the grid for the afternoon race. This sounded awesome in theory and Christine and her mom (who is in town for a visit) came up to watch the day’s activities. I’m super paranoid since Barber about getting to grid extra early so I was parked in my spot and ready to go around 9:05. Then, what I call the ‘snowsuit effect’ kicked in. Roughly translated as, having to pee when bundled up in a bunch of stuff that will take you 10 minutes to get in and out of. Figuring that once we rolled on track I’d be able to focus on other things I bravely ignored my bladder’s cry for help. At 9:28am I notice yellow flags and our Medical flag waving from the turn 1 corner workers. I think immediately “well there goes our 9:30am start”, and despite my need to relieve myself I’m content since in this case a shorter race gives me the advantage – being on pole already. The starters say 5 min., then 3 min., then 5 min., then something about a car on fire. I am looking at our watch and it is 9:40am. I start to contemplate wetting my pants. With the luck that never deserted me this weekend at 9:45am they call our race due to extended clean up efforts and we drive back to our parking spots.

I call Christine to see where they are, “We’re at turn 10a we saw a ‘vette catch on fire and burn to the ground.” Probably not what you want to expose loved one’s to on one of their infrequent visits to the track. Apparently when a newer corvette senses an electrical issue it defaults to locking the doors. This made getting out of the car a bit trickier for the driver than usual, but he got out of the window fine. It did mean that the hood remained latched tight and the fire guys had their hands full trying to pry it open to put the fire out. Class Action lawyers should save that little nugget for the future now that Obama is running GM its deep pockets are backed with sweet sweet tax dollars.

Since we lost our first race NASA decides to add 10 minutes onto our afternoon race, thanks? Its 90 degrees and my little cool shirt thing isn’t working. Clay and ‘pros’ mock these things but I hate being hot and since I’d gone to the trouble of hooking it up I would have liked it to work. Oh well what is 40 minutes of hard racing in the blistering heat. I started on pole, Robert Patton came from 4th(?) and eventually got around me as I waited for the tires to come up to temp. He thankfully had used up his brakes getting past me the first time so I was able to sneak by under braking into 10a and then put my head down and started to crank out fast laps. Traffic mgmt is always important and we saw plenty of it, I ‘think’ I was able to stick Robert behind a few slower cars at optimal times that helped my get away. Taking the checkered flag for the 3rd time (and win) of the weekend.

Obligatory thanks / commercials. I’m not really sponsored by anyone but myself, but I’m lucky to have some really good friends that do their best to help me out and while I’m a jerk it would be churlish beyond belief to not mention a few people that have helped me and to whom I owe (in no small part) these victories (and really any victories).

Special DTOMRacing thanks to:

Brendan Digel – German Car Mechanic, crew chief, and race fan extraordinaire

Ted McMahan – retired Mechanic, good sport, and awesome helper

Craig Geiger – car storage, on site trailer repair / cat nanny, and soon to be ex-racer

James Clay – BimmerWorld owner, parts supplier, advice giver

Seth Thomas – awesome driver, Ferrari owner

Dave White – enduro co-driver, eater of massive amounts of cheese

Posted in BimmerWorld, Craig, Road Atlanta, Trophy Pic | No Comments »

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Monday, March 16th, 2009

CAUTION – Lots of Words ahead. 40 degrees and rain is bare minimum weather (no photos or videos). Let my scintillating prose craft the images in your mind.

In Spec E30 terms I’m like the New York Yankees you either love me or you can’t wait to see me fall on my sword. Either way is entertaining I guess. (ed – for the record this is just my perception, in fact most people may be and probably are indifferent).

I meant to type something up after we got the engine installed since a lot of people put forth a ton of effort to help me out but I got lazy and in the end there wasn’t much to talk about just a lot of hours. For the install we had over 100 years of pro mechanic experience so that left little opportunity for me to screw something up and/or hurt myself. So before I go into the Road Atlanta race weekend, let me give my sincere thanks to the following folks:

Craig – for the nearly unlimited use of his awesome garage
Brendan – DTOM crew chief
Jason Mascow – the cobra
Chris Thurman – who handled most of the ‘heavy lifting’ for the install
Ted McMahan – retired mechanic and insurance specialist
My friends at RWL German Imports and BimmerWorld for parts and moral support.

***Just a quick note. Being a mechanic is a hard job, people that don’t understand cars always assume that they’re being cheated, people that do understand cars are always thinking they can do it quicker and cheaper (but won’t). Mechanics are paid on ‘book’ time meaning when you come in and say “I hear a clunk in the trunk”, the mechanic gets paid only for the time the factory thinks it should take to fix the problem, not for deciphering what that means and the actual time they take to fix it. So not only do they have to know and be able to pinpoint the problem, they then have to work against the clock and ‘beat’ whatever time it ‘should’ take them in order to do more work and make a decent wage. It would be very difficult for a mechanic (or service technician) to make a living on 40 hours a week of pay. Some of the best can get paid for 100 hours per week and maybe only in fact put in 50-60. It is still hard physical work and anyone that thinks mechanics are dumb manual laborers should try it for a day and see how quickly they change their mind. And oh by the way, they own all their own tools, in fact most techs that have done this for any length of time may have up to $50k in tools, which they have to pay for on their own. Now for an example, during this endeavor Craig’s starter went bad. We decided to change it out in our spare time. This is a hard job on our cars but one that we’re completely familiar with. The factory (or ‘book’) says it’s a 2 hour job. It took us 4 hours, we pointed that out to Brendan and he said “Not bad, but there were two of you, so that is really like 8 hours”. In other words Craig and I would be poor and hungry if we had to pay our bills this way.***

So after 3-4 months of weekends and making the project much larger than it needed to be, in the end all that went wrong is the junk yard transmission I had bought turned out to be from an early 5-series car meaning it was the right ‘type’ of transmission but the shift linkage wasn’t correct so it wouldn’t work without extensive inventing of parts. Of course somehow no one realized that until it was installed. That cost us probably an hour or so and we got to lift heavy transmissions into place twice, which is good for the pecs.

The goal, ironically (foreshadowing) of all this hard labor was twofold – One, to build a car with a bunch of new parts so that nothing could break without a freakish coincidence and Two, combine my amazing driving talent with amazing horsepower to unleash an unstoppable Spec E30 force on the SouthEast NASA Region. I would dominate all of the remaining races and then look to retire undefeated at the end of the year. I kindly kept the car out of the first CMP race as payment to Craig so that he could win the first two races in return for his garage.

To ensure that this would be the end result I cajoled my loving wife into letting me instruct at a DE the previous weekend so that I could test and tune the car in order to make sure that all systems were go. The motor felt good, everything was in place, I had a minor electrical glitch in the tach and with some of the gauges that we traced back to a loose ground wire, but overall nothing serious.

So I went into the Friday enduro with new tires, new brakes, a mostly new car and feeling pretty good about our chances. My illustrious teammate BMWCCR 2008 JP Champion Dave White was scheduled to take the start, I’d come in during the middle and depending on circumstances we’d see who would finish. At least that was the plan. Dave took off well and was comfortably in the lead after about 40 min. he radioed in to say the coolant temp was rising and he smelled coolant. He came into the pits and a hose had blown off the front of the motor spilling water. We refilled and fixed and sent him back out with a full tank of gas. After an hour he came back in to swap drivers and get a full tank of gas. I went to start the car and noticed the oil pressure light had come on, it flickered a bit and then went out, I shut the motor off. Brendan poked around a bit, I restarted and everything looked / sounded fine. I got on the radio and confidently stated that it was the old electrical gauge gremlin showing back up and that I’d do a lap or two and watch it.

I went out and ran two easy laps, the car felt fine, no lights or anything out of the ordinary. After about 20 minutes the temp started climbing up again on the back straight. I brought it back to the pits. The bleeder screw on the thermostat (another part of the cooling system) had come off and disappeared. We replaced with one from Craig’s car, but at this point with all the pit stops we were out of the race. I figured I’d go out and finish for points and to make sure the car was okay. It was and we finished in maybe 8th place.

Steve Foushee – spec E30 competitor – assuming he had the victory in the enduro stayed out after the checker for some celebratory donuts and burnouts on the front straight. Unlike TV and NASCAR no one at NASA thought that was cool. He was promptly DQ’d for his enthusiasm and forever earned the moniker “Donut King of Augusta” in the SE30 paddock.

Saturday came and it was cold and rainy. Standing in a parking lot with limited shelter and amenities while trying to work on your car in the cold and rain is about as fun as you would think. Like a dumba$$ I wore tennis shoes that were quickly soaked, I spent most of the day worrying about legionnaire’s disease or trench foot. By the time we went to qualify it was a full scale downpour and the track was like roller-skating on an ice rink with a blindfold on. You know how a semi-truck throws off mist on the highway multiply that by 5 and then do 120 mph with a stop sign somewhere up ahead. With 60 cars and 15 minutes you have to be quick and aggressive to get a clean lap, I was neither and earned an awesome 7th spot for my efforts. The race conditions didn’t improve and for some reason the NASA officials thought that combining all the different classes together would be a great idea. So typically I would have been 7 out of 20 because of this I was 20 out of 60. I would usually be racing people I know for points and cars that are about as exactly the same as rules and man can make them. Instead I got to race a bunch of dip sh!ts in 944 cup cars. Specifically Scott Campbell #82. I went to offer him some advice after the race but couldn’t find him unfortunately all racing people out of your class does is slow both of you down for no apparent purpose. (ed – as I pointed this out in my general b!tching and moaning that I’m famous for, an anonymous bystander pointed out WWSCD. To which I replied – Huh? He said, “You know What Would Scott Campbell Do?” To which I replied – Huh? The anonymous bystander explained “The sticker on the back of your car WWSCD, that is the dude, you didn’t know that?” To which I replied – Uh, no?. The anonymous bystander went on, “Yeah the 944 dudes printed those stickers up for him but I think it is an inside joke.”) Well Scott the secret is out of the bag, apparently a bunch of people think you’re a tool – I agree with them OSB – other sports beckon. Someone had put that sticker on my car (like most of my stickers) without my knowledge or understanding what it meant. I was too lazy to remove it, and now I’m glad I didn’t!! Hopefully he saw it when I finally got around him 2 or 3 laps from the end. (ed – A further editorial comment, I’ve had the most problems with stunts like this with the 944’s. Spec Miatas, despite being hairdressers of questionable sexual orientation, are generally good and considerate drivers. It could also be it is really easy just to stay close and overwhelm them with our awesome 150 hp down the straightaway. I don’t think the 944 guys have the car counts so they are always looking for a ‘friend’ to race with instead of realizing that we view them as rolling obstacles vs. a good time. In this specific example I was, generally speaking, 2 seconds a lap faster and when I went to make a pass through turn 12 (in the rain not cool) he came in on me and did even worse and more aggressive things to one of the Lasko / Walsh cars.)

We were scheduled to qualify Sunday morning early. I spent the entire night stewing over the race and my own p!ss poor performance. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well and even more than usual since a lot of people had put a lot of time into giving me my best shot. I fully intended to be one of the first people on the qualifying grid, and any out of class cars that got in the way were getting the chrome horn. I went to start the car and get it warmed up while I changed into my monkey suit. When it turned over I heard a strange ‘clunking’ noise that I recognized all too well. I went and solicited several independent opinions on what that noise may signify and they all came back terminal – rod knock. I’ll have to save the suspenseful conclusion to this adventure for the future since at this time I don’t really know what happened. Our particular motor is notorious for having this problem with the number 6 cylinder. A piston is connected to a crankshaft by a rod, that rod is ‘suspended’ in oil. So when the car is running this oil provides a cushion that keeps actual metal to metal contact from happening (at least limits it). The number 6 rod may have been deprived of that cushion and then bad stuff happens. Of course I’m not an expert and I have thought things were “A” when they turned out to be “B”. So I have my fingers crossed that I didn’t screw things up too badly and I’ll wait for experts to weigh in with their opinions and judgment.

Of course stuff like this makes you sick to your stomach when it happens, more for the effort and help of friends that is seemingly ‘wasted’, unfortunately disappointment and general suckiness is a large part of racing. I think that is what makes this so addictive when you actually can succeed and triumph. You have to make your peace with these things or you’re in the wrong sport, but it is days like this that make it sometimes feel like a full time job (and not a good one) vs. a fun hobby. Of course it can always be worse, there were several cars that wrecked in the rain and one driver that was rumored to have broken an ankle when a wheel broke through the cage and got into the pedal box. I also thought a lot about when Clay and the BW team wrecked all three of their cars. They managed to put things back together and ended up winning the next race, so while this is a pretty big bump in the road and drastically alters how I envisioned this season working, DTOM will be back and better than ever.

Posted in Bad Attitude, Craig, Race Recap, Road Atlanta | No Comments »

Personality Faults – Road Atlanta Recap

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

Can you believe this crew won a championship that wasn’t part of the special Olympics? I can’t.

One of my many personality faults is being super competitive. I dislike losing at anything like a fat kid dislikes eating vegetables. That is partially to blame for the tardiness of this race recap. Only after a few days and prospect of another race this weekend allow me to put aside some of the anger and disappointment from not accomplishing, literally, any goal I had for our last NASA race weekend. Ideally I stood the chance of winning the 8 hour enduro race (at least in class), perhaps the enduro class championship, and remotely maybe taking 3rd in our season points for Spec E30. In fact none of those things happened for a variety of reasons.

Endurance racing is a strange discipline. After doing our 3 hour races all season I wouldn’t have described myself as a big fan, so much so that I didn’t really plan on continuing my enduro participation after the finale 8 hour. I’ve had to revisit that perspective after the 8 hour race. I can see why Porsche puts such a high emphasis on endurance racing. Unfortunately it is even less exciting for spectators than the normal boring sprint road race. At least with our short races you have the excitement of everyone bolting into Turn 1 trying to make a move on the start. In endurance racing it is difficult to know who is winning, most of the time we only had a vague idea of where we were and if you’re driving you have to alter your driving style from “fast, but don’t hurt the car” to “even faster, and don’t hurt the car – at least too bad”. Some times the instructions are even more specific like – ‘don’t use the brakes’ or ‘go easy on the left front tire’. Yeah right, you’re assuming a lot of trick shots I don’t have in my bag. I got “sorta fast” and “balls slow” at my disposal.

Some of the demands are more on the crew, not necessarily always on the driver, and it is much more of a team sport. Planning and being prepared are essential. The race being at Road Atlanta meant I could bring even more ‘stuff’ than I usually do. This meant nearly two full truckloads of cr@p for any potential situation. Towards the end it became a bit maniacal as Thursday night I lay awake at 2am trying to think of anything I could do to improve our chances. This could be called “taking things too seriously”. At one point I considered buying a junk car and towing it to Road Atlanta just to ensure that no weird switch, relay or wire would defeat our victory march.

Brendan and I spent two solid days over Thanksgiving crawling over the car and fixing little things that had come apart over the season, double checking anything we could think of. Then on Thursday as I pulled the car on the trailer it would barely idle and kept stalling out. I attributed this to having almost no fuel, but without a working fuel gauge it was more of a ‘best guess’. Unpacking a truckload of sh!t is about as much fun as it sounds. If you want to play along at home dig your spare tire out of your trunk, now move it from one part of your garage to another for like an hour. Want it to be more realistic? Pick a cold day when it is raining, and then do it at night since the gates opened at 5pm and it gets dark at 5:20.

Car comes off the trailer sounding just like when I put it on – rough. I fill it up with gas and stand back waiting to see my fine mechanical diagnostic ability at work. It stalls out again. I desperately try to convince myself it is the cold weather and that the idle will even out when the car is warmed up since the prospect of trying to diagnose ‘rough idle’ in the dark wet parking lot isn’t too appealing I focus on snagging our pit space and getting things setup as best I can in the dark. (Who says winner’s never quit!). I go to park the trailer and in my rush to not stand in the rain drive off and forget to disconnect the trailer brake light, electric trailer brake doo hickey connector. No problem it ‘detaches’ itself for me. I drive home and load up another truck’s worth of goodies to bring (and unload) in the morning.

Part of my master plan to win involved recruiting a ‘team’ that was much better at this than myself. Gleefully chuckling at how little I’d have to do to win, I begged two pro drivers Seth Thomas and James Clay of BimmerWorld, and Dave White (who is no slouch with a few BMW Club Racing championships under his belt), and then asked Brendan to be our crew chief and handle the mechanical aspects. Unfortunately I had forgotten a few things about the driving side of the ‘team’. 1. They are all notoriously late. 2. Unnamed members are notoriously lazy, and 3. They all complain. As usual life is a series of compromises. I had made a deal with the devil for awesome drivers. Friday morning I setup a little table, placed our portable heater, and unpacked the cookies and snacks I had thoughtfully provided for the ‘team’. Only to hear “I really prefer a hot breakfast”. Well, people in h3ll want ice water.

** Side note, some of you will remember the argument on the forums about the quick dump gas cans. I had been lobbying behind the scenes and gotten them ‘secretly’ approved. During the drivers meeting I asked a clarifying question where the approval was given to use. I then proceeded (in typical fashion) to taunt and gloat over my ill prepped competitors and the dude I was bickering with online. BAM! Being right never gets old!!** Craig would argue that everything you read from this point on is determined by Karma, he is probably right.

I mention that the car is running rough and get some dirty looks for my sloth, another half a$$ diagnosis of spraying brake cleaner in the engine bay to identify any vacuum leaks proves inconclusive. Magically as the car heats up the idle evens out and it starts to sound somewhat normal. We give Clay the first stint and since it is cold out, there are some spots of ice on the track. We wish him good luck and I go back to eating snacks. I’m slightly nervous wondering if the car will run or if we’ll have problems. Clay finishes his first stint while we encourage him with obscene messages on our snazzy pit board (kids at home, if you want a cheap whiteboard go to Lowe’s it is like shower board or something? I got a 4×9 section for like $10).

Dave White is up next, he comments that the car fits ‘tight’ (not the seat the car). Dave White is banned from further snack eating. We get a 1 minute penalty for pitting outside our spot, even though from where the car is leaking oil (normal oil leak not bad oil leak) you can clearly see where we stopped. I start to get heated with the officials and how stupid they are. But hey they’re volunteers and really how much can they actually care so in hindsight I’ll forgive them. Clay sees this and with his pro racing diplomacy takes over the discussions while I contemplate kicking a gas can.

Seth and I discuss who should go next. I can’t remember the logic but we determined he should go 3rd and I’d bat cleanup. At this point our nearest competitor is a few laps behind. The Malt Liquor Tech #800 car (who I maintain they ‘meant’ to call the penalty on we were #008) is having issues probably related to all the dirty cheating they routinely do. So Seth takes off and the guys complain that there isn’t any lunch. It is about 1pm now and I’m up to bat. Our pit stops are going pretty smoothly and we’re able to stay out about an hour or 1 ½ every stint. Unfortunately the Beertech Car #467 spins coming out of turn 12 and slams into the front straight wall pretty hard. It comes in on the hook and Craig and rest of the gang start working to put it back together. One of the front frame rails is bent which makes getting a new (junkyard) radiator in place difficult. Seth comes in and I’m off for my first stint.

It is fairly uneventful. We have our first extended double yellow of the day as 3-4 cars are in various states of disrepair. I try to conserve gas, brakes, and tires as much as I can while I’m lapped every 1.25 seconds by a Ford GT-R American LeMans car. Apparently this is a cheap way to test the car for their team and since it is a new build they took advantage of the opportunity. Driving a $500k plus race car around a high speed track with a bunch of amateur yahoos doesn’t seem like a smart move to me, but whatever, it sure was cool. It was so loud I couldn’t hear my car over theirs and it hurt my ears when it blew by on the back straight probably doing close to 200mph (I do 120-ish). Towards the end of my shift I see the #800 car smoking and heading for the pits. I figure again this is due to their cheating and general shifty nature. Apparently MikeSkeen.com (who they recruited in an attempt to counteract my stacked driver lineup) literally escaped from the car and with their plan to have him drive at least 7 hours foiled, Travis had to take over. He launched the car democross style somewhere on the course and cracked the oil pan among other things.

Back to the pits and we alter the rotation, Clay can’t do another stint since he has to leave for the airport and another endurance race in California – the 25 hours of Thunderhill. That’s right; he drove in our 8 hour then flew to California to drive in another race. Needless to say James is single. Dave White squeezes back in the car. We get on the radio and tell him to go extra extra easy on the brakes and tires, since another competitor has told us they’ve already gone through brake pads and corded their left front tire. We’re still in the lead for our class and just want to make sure the car stays in decent shape.

Getting increasingly concerned about the brakes we make tentative preparations to change pads on the next stop. This is the deal breaker since if it takes too long it will allow the competition to catch up. In real endurance racing there is specialized equipment for this not only the change, but modifications to the car itself. We’re allowed none of this. Next time you take your stock car in for a brake pad change. See if they can do the fronts in 10 min. That is how quick Brendan did it, and includes taking the tires off and jacking up the car. And since I bought the wrong types of gloves he is doing it holding a 600 degree brake caliper with less protection than your oven mitts. He gets blisters on his hands and the team MVP award.

I get in the car and take off, thinking the stop has gone pretty well. We put new front tires on and brakes but there is over an hour left and whether we’ll have enough fuel to finish is in my head. Seth comes on the radio – “DON”T LET THE WHITE CAR PASS YOU”. Around the same time I see a white Mazda Miata in my mirrors. I think – this ain’t my first rodeo, good luck hair dresser I eat Spec Pinatas for lunch. This dude catches up to me like I’m dragging an anchor as we go through the twisty stuff. We get to my specialty the back straight and I mash the gas and pull a quarter of a mile away. Whew that was close. Seth comes on again “DON”T LET THE WHITE CAR PASS YOU”. I go into turn 1 and like magic this dude is back again. #@#$!!@$ This goes on for what seems like 45 minutes. The little white miata manages to get past me 3 or 4 times but each time I re-pass him on the back straight. I’ve had this happen and it is the most frustrating experience in the world since it requires absolutely no talent to mash the gas pedal in a straight line. He finally hit me going through the esses at about 80+ mph, startling but no real damage and I don’t blame him. I would have hit me too. Oh well no replacement for displacement. I see him pull into the pits and start to breathe again thinking that was for the race and that we maintained the lead. The car starves out around 4:40 and we have to come in for a splash and dash. 2 laps later and its over. I’m pumped thinking we won.

Whoops. Brake change took too long and the pesky white miata team won in E2. We came in second or first loser. Ironically we still managed to be 5th or so overall out of 30 cars, two of which were legitimate pro teams – one ALMs and another Koni Grand-Am car? And had we been in E1 or E0 (the two faster classes ahead of us) we would have won. Instead we were in E2 which had 14 cars. That is the problem with racing, if you want to win it is easy to find classes and races where you can collect all the trophies you want to pay for, but in the end you haven’t really beaten anyone. In Spec E30 and E2 since they are some of the most popular you have to earn every yard of ground by being good. Unfortunately this means you lose more than you win. Also in racing you play against the field every time. There are no easy matchups, you’re playing in the playoffs and championships every time and it takes some getting used to. Especially since the guys that race tend to be egotistical over achiever types that don’t take losing too well. Since the MLT #800 guys managed to somehow finish the race this meant they won the E2 enduro championship and we were relegated to 2nd place there as well.

The sprint race(s) weren’t as exciting. I made a mistake during qualifying and while I was in the cherry spot of first on grid, I went too fast on the out lap and caught the tail of the field (think dog chasing its tail). As a result I had to deal with all the slow cars in the back as traffic and ended up 12th on grid. I had a great start and jumped up 4 or so spots by turn 1. Then with Craig in front of me, he got jammed up by a slow spec miata and I passed him coming out of turn 12 like he was coasting. For 20 some minutes I put my head down and cranked out as many fast laps as I could and started catching the front 5 or so guys. They were in my sights when a Super Cup 944 turbo #72 decided he absolutely HAD to pass me coming into turn 3 at the top of the hill. I looked for this dude in the paddock and didn’t see him, so if he somehow reads this THANKS JACK A$$. If you had waited a tenth of a second you could have gone around the outside into the esses with your extra 50 hp. Instead you jammed me up and I had to run off the track to avoid hitting you. Next time when you track out into me, you’re getting hit – COUNT ON IT! That bonehead move allowed Craig to catch back up to me and we had a good race onto the back straight, he popped out of the draft into 10A braking zone and I moved him over as close to the inside wall as I could. Giving him the inside line, but lining myself up for a faster run around 10A and hopefully the inside line into 10B and turn 12. Instead as I went to downshift into 3rd gear it wouldn’t catch and when I used ‘more force’ it got stuck but still wouldn’t engage. I coasted to the side and watched the final two laps waiting for the tow truck. You can watch the start and final action (at the 21min mark) on Craig’s video.

NASA SpecE30 – December 2008 – Road Atlanta – Craig Geiger #82 from Craig Geiger on Vimeo.

Sunday I spent watching from the sidelines waiting for Craig since getting a car with no forward gears up the two story hill my house sits on to its garage spot wasn’t a problem I cared to solve. Even getting it into Craig’s somewhat flat garage proved interesting, ultimately Craig got in his car and since the bumpers line up perfectly he bump drafted me into the garage spot. Our guess is that all of the tranny fluid leaked out as it got hot during the enduro through the breather vent and the gears may have just melted together. The starter won’t even engage the flywheel, so whatever ultimately ends up being the problem it is going to be pretty interesting. I’m expecting metal and nuts and bolts to come pouring out like an overstuffed closet.

The good news is that there was a pro photographer on site and he got some AMAZING pictures of the car. When he sends I’ll post up the highlights. In the meantime I’m off tomorrow to Savannah (ie Pooler, GA) and Roebling Road Raceway to co-drive Brendan’s fire breathing vintage 5 series in a BMW Club Race. Going to try my hand at something with more than 150 hp and see how it goes. After this we’re off until Feb. so I’ll probably just put up random posts about how trashed the car is and how we’re injuring ourselves fixing it. Stay tuned and Happy Holidays! If you want to buy your loved ones cool gifts go to BimmerWorld.com and donate some money to my buddy James Clay.

Here is what 2nd place looks like.

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Count Down begins!

Monday, December 1st, 2008

Thanksgiving was spent, at least two days of it crawling around the car trying to guess what might break and fix stuff that was officially broken.

If you want to pretend you’re preparing for an 8 hour enduro at home, go buy a 20 year old car (or older) and plan to drive it 4 or so states away as fast and as hard as you can. Then try and guess what might break in advance and what you could repair quickly using hand tools in a parking lot.

Sound like fun? Do it in December which since we’re in Atlanta isn’t really fair to complain, but still 40 degrees is plenty cold to make your hands hurt extra special when you knock it against cold metal or drop something on your foot.

I have solid page of stuff left to do, buy, organize and we’re 3 days away!

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