Well as promised here are few additional things that just didn't 'fit' into the overall O'fest writeup but were still amusing enough as stand alones but first a message from our sponsor. Not really but I am going to grouse on the govt. for a bit. I can hear the collective groan of the audience. I feel like the teacher that promised movie day and gave a quiz instead.
Speaking of teachers, here is evidence that the govt. shouldn't run anything. I mean that literally, short of the military and maybe the police, I honestly think anything else would be better off in private hands. Eliminate all but the very minimum amount of taxes and let us pay ala carte. I'll call out the non-funny stuff with tags so you can skip ahead if you'd like.
[not very funny] Why do I say this? We take our dogs on a nightly walk / park trip and my wife announced she was tired of being a teacher yesterday and wanted to look for a new job. I can't emphasize how shocking this was. My wife was named teacher of the year at her highschool for 2008. Now I don't particularly like her job, but I will be the first to admit that I think she does it very, even exceptionally well. She is one of those lucky people that has known since they were a kid what they wanted to do and has always enjoyed her work and looked forward to it. As a further testament to her teaching skill she managed to teach me enough calculus that I got a C in my one last gasp at math in college.
So why the change of heart? Well here in GA since the schools do so well, they figured kids weren't learning math due to the curriculum and really the 'order' of how concepts were presented. So they completely changed everything mixing alegbra and geometry together (among other things), they've also added extra fun stuff on teachers like reading/writing in math class. Makes perfect sense to me. Now the math that you learn in highschool hasn't changed in literally hundreds of years, most of these concepts are old timey Greek civilization things. In my business mind to be efficient and good you assign one teacher a 'type' of math let them learn it up and down and that is what they teach, maybe 4-5 classes of it in a day. Pretty much learning by assembly line. What does the school system do? They give their teachers a bunch of different classes so they can't get in any type of routine and are teaching something new each period. This just creates confusion, busy work, added overhead in terms of preparation and grading, and you have some teachers that are more qualified than others in terms of the high level math classes so this 'equal distribution' means some students don't get the right people instructing them. So this is what has brought on her career crisis, right now she comes home from work around 4-5pm and spends an additional 3 or so hours grading papers and planning. All for the amazing salary that you could make managing a gas station, and minus the college and advanced degrees. Way to go govt.! Also all kids must now take college prep. math regardless if they want to, if there parents want them to, if they're not going to college they'll just sit there and fail it which will certainly help bring those test scores up! As with most govt. programs I'm sure this was based on good intentions, and like most of them no one will pay attention to the actual results. [/end not very funny stuff]
Okay on with the show.
Clay takes great pleasure in his jokes and for O'fest he had planned two that he (and I'll admit to an extent - I) both thought would be pretty hysterical. The first was a rigged raffle where Dave White would win a prize. I coordinated with Chuck and Patty to have this raffle done during the final awards ceremony where they're giving out trophies, prizes, etc. So there are roughly 50 or so people standing around. Dave's racing number is called to win a "Special prize from BimmerWorld" and he immediately knows something is up. Chuck hands him a plain brown box which he unwraps and quickly sees his 'gift'. No one else can see what it is and Dave isn't too pleased with our humor. So he walks off and no one in the crowd gets the joke. Clay has to awkwardly take the microphone and explain the punchline to an uncomfortable smattering of laughter and tense silence. Joke Fail 1.
The 2nd involves the crew and a horrible experience they had with an E30 3 series, very similar to mine. For a long time I had tried to get Clay to do some work on my car and he was very reluctant. It all stemmed from an E30 that had come to the shop with some 'electrical' issues. The geniuses that built the car had spray painted the interior white, but had neglected to cover up any of the wiring bundles. When trying to trace problems with wires, it helps to be able to tell them apart - which is difficult if they're all white. To further exacerbate the problem, they had removed all the car's fuses and simply jumped them together. Apparently Marks and the guys spent weeks trying to fix this thing. So what does James do when he sees this beauty for sale? He buys it and secretly arranges to have it delivered during the BW BBQ so that Marks can be horrified as he sees this nightmare coming back into his life. Unfortunately for Clay his clever plan fell apart when Marks informed him the trailer this car was to ride back to Virginia in had left about 4 hours eariler... Joke Fail 2.
On a more positive note, Steve Bassen who wrecked his car in the Friday race won the "Spirit of Club Racing" award. This is a very cool thing that the BMW Club Race guys do for each event. Every racer signs a flag and it is presented to the guy that has the best attitude and most closely embodies the 'spirit' of Club Racing, meaning he spent the most money on his car -- NO -- meaning an all around good guy, that is helpful and generally liked and respected by all. Anyone that knows Steve knows that description fits him to a T.
Next up at DTOM - our 3rd annual IFU race at CMP along with the enduro. Should have that out early to mid November. Some pics to entertain in the meantime -
Steve with his well deserved award.
My car parked 'uncomfortably' close to Dave White's fancy ride. Note Joke Fail 2 / finding nemo car in the background...
The amazing Mark's family grill. Smoker, gas grill, and 2 mini-keg fridge capacity. John in the blue shirt is ironically a vegetarian.
My awesome plan of taking down BW property values with the car on jackstands. I at least made sure the amateur body work wasn't facing the 'street'.
Today - a very special 3 part episode of DTOM
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Sorry this is a little late I’ve been ‘swamped’ (flood joke, cymbal crash). I had a lady flip me off in traffic today. This happens about once a week. Somehow she took exception with the fact that since she was blocking the left hand turn lane, paying no attention since it was ‘make up’ time, and had about 3 feet to pull forward I took the liberty of driving my truck about 2 feet onto the median and simply going around her.
No point to that story just felt like sharing. I’m going to separate today’s DTOM entry into little vignettes in hopes of making this less than the normal rambling mess. 3 parts to this little entry covering about 2 weeks. This will cover the Petit LeMans WC race up to the BMWCCA Oktoberfest Road Atlanta fun. I actually had several people "recognize" me not as Jim Robinson, but as the dude who writes DTOM. Surreal and a new low for internet celebrity.
I asked Clay if he saved money by putting this vinyl wrap on himself. It wasn't appreciated.
Part I – BimmerWorld World Challenge Race The BimmerWorld guys were up at Road Atlanta for the Petit Le Mans support race. I rolled up on Thursday to see qualifying. The chronology on this is a bit blurry since it happened awhile ago so I’ll just hit the highlights. I got there early and invited myself to the WC driver’s meeting. I was curious as to the difference between a ‘pro’ drivers meeting and the bush league versions I try to skip out on. I’ll point out the key differences. Amateur / Pro: Standing in the open or under a tent / Sitting in comfy chairs with AC “Officials” that are like repressed stand up comedians / Ditto - except with real microphone “Mandatory” / Attendance sign-up sheet 15 min. / 1 hour 90% of the meeting spent reviewing flags / 20% of meeting spent reviewing flags No Boris Said / Boris Said No opening prayer / opening prayer
[Randy Pobst was there too, he is a vegan? I think. Drinking what appeared to be a seaweed milkshake out of a quicktrip cup. It looked disgusting.]
That’s about it. I make the flag joke since inevitably in every meeting I’ve ever been in some yahoo has to ask about flags. If you have a race license and you’re not sure about flags someone didn’t do their job. In the WC’s defense the flag scenario had to do with pitting during severe rain and tire changes, etc. vs. our normal “What does the yellow mean again?” type question.
Clay managed to put his car on pole with a great lap. But due to some goofy marketing ploy the World Challenge guys do a coin toss in order to introduce some ‘drama’. The guy in pole position flips a coin and calls it. If he is right, the qualifying order stands, if he is wrong it is inverted from 1st to 5th place. The BW gang was in 1st, 3rd, and 5th. Before the toss I was liberal with my opinions on this hokey ploy. I honestly think that whoever came up with this wasn’t a racer. It is so hard to achieve something like that in a competitive field, which despite issues with World Challenge, the one thing you can say is almost all of those guys can drive, to then take it away on a coin toss is complete BS. Leave aside the competitive angle; there are also business implications as well. Clay had a huge sponsor of his in town, and had a special design on the car for them. The coin toss meant that he effectively went from almost certainly finishing on the podium to now being lucky to stay in the top 5. In terms of impressing sponsors and getting TV time this has pretty large ramifications. Jokingly I told Clay that if the WC guys wanted drama if he lost the toss he should proclaim this is “B_ll Sh!t” and punch the announcer dude. He toned it down and said he’d go after Nick (who was in 5th place and would benefit by moving up to 1st). Unfortunately? he didn’t share this with Nick. So when the toss went bad, he ran to tackle / grab / choke Nick who didn’t really know what the h3ll was going on. Pretty funny.
Clay shows off his cat like agility attacking Nick.
Ironically the coin toss turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the race. Nick started in P1, his first time ever, with Seth and Clay right behind them. The race itself was awesome, and the guys finished all on the podium and took every award they handed out (fast lap, hard charger, etc). Its cliché to say what a big team effort this is but I’m not sure how much people realize it, deep down everyone assumes the driver is the big hero. I can tell you having spent a fair amount of time with these guys that the crew plays a huge part and deserves an equal share in the success. Being the driver is easy, you get the fun / excitement of the race, you get the attention of people coming up and telling you how awesome you are. The crew guy gets to torque the diff bolts again, he gets to pack up the floor mats, and put away the awning. Playing both parts at DTOM of crew / driver I can’t emphasize enough how much having guys that want and can do those sh!tty things helps. The BW crew guys are all very cool and funny, and some of the hardest working dudes I’m around. For me it was cool to see the big payoff and hopefully they know what an important role they play in it. It was also very cool to see Nick do well. He had a rough time last year and is a talented guy, so it was good to see him up front and performing at a high level. He also has the coolest custom helmet ever, I'm working on a pic.
You're a big winner. I'm gonna ask you a simple question and I want you to listen to me: who's the big winner here tonight at the casino? Huh? Mikey, that's who. Mikey's the big winner. Mikey wins.
Stay Tuned tomorrow Part II - Enough of the BimmerWorld love letters what about DTOM?
Hellooo - is this thing on? check check?
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
I said "DTOMRacing is on Twitter". I actually got up to 5 followers before 4 of them figured out I wasn't what or who they thought I was.
Oh well. I still have my number 1 follower James Clay. Good Luck at Road America and Happy Birthday to the man that managed to drink an entire gallon of milk and keep it down.
The world said it couldn't be done!
The look of a champion - at milk drinking and not throwing up.
Ryan Kuhn... not so lucky!
Here is the 2nd place finisher. Jean shorts? Photo credits Wayne Yawn.
Tell them what they've won Bob...
Tuesday, June 16, 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
Good Racing = Poor Blogging
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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.
Personality Faults - Road Atlanta Recap
Thursday, December 11, 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 4x9 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.
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.
Petit LeMans – Road Racers go “NASCAR”
Monday, October 13, 2008
I’ve put this off for a week or so, mainly because I’m lazy. But I’ve had a few people pestering me to give my account of Petit LeMans so here we go.
I’m running out of vacation. That is a pretty big statement from a guy that gets like 5 weeks or something crazy, which is a lot for anyone that doesn't live in France. Most of it has been spent racing (as my wife will tell you). This simple fact meant I couldn’t make it out to Road Atlanta (the site of Petit Lemans) until Thursday.
Petit LeMans is a pretty big deal. It is a 12 hour race for the American LeMans series which is probably the most successful road racing series still around. It is major league ball. The guys that race at this level don’t have ‘other jobs’. Car manufacturers spend a few million a year to field teams and race. It makes it onto NBC and ABC once or twice a season. Pretty cool. The race is 10 hours or 1000 miles whichever comes first. When I first went a few years ago the fastest class had qualifying times of 1.11 for a 2 mile and change track. Now they’re down into the high 1.06’s. The LMP cars are ‘almost’ as fast as Formula 1. That is pretty d@mn fast. To put it into perspective my best time at Road Atlanta I think is in the 1.46’s? That is per lap. 40 some odd seconds each lap of which they’ll do around 500. Of course my car is also an order of magnitude cheaper. My entire race ‘team’ (car included) and season budget wouldn’t buy tires for one of the GT2 (slowest class) efforts in this ONE race.
These race weekends usually have several supporting races beforehand to keep fans entertained while the big boys take their practice laps, qualifying, etc. One of these supporting races was the Speed World Challenge series that my buddies Seth Thomas and James Clay race in. James was super cool enough to score Craig and me some free tickets. So we headed up Thursday to watch them qualify and hang out.
Usually going to the race track puts a spring in my step a) I won’t be working and b) I like race tracks and race cars. Win / Win – right. Thursday and Friday were a lot of fun, but it wasn’t exactly an ‘uplifting’ experience. I’d gone to Petit LeMans 3 or so years running but it was usually as a ‘fan’. This year I was going slightly more educated to what it takes to run a team and try to make a living at doing this. It was eye opening to say the least. I’ve always felt that I’ve done pretty well for myself. You don’t get a racecar without having some level of disposable income, however after sitting around the ‘minor league’ paddock for a day it certainly made me much more humble (read depressed). 17 year old punk kids driving golf carts around with their 17 year old model girlfriends after driving $100-200k open wheel cars that they didn’t pay for. In the little corner of the paddock that we were in probably 3 million dollars worth of cars in a space that represented maybe 1/100th of the total available area. That is just the cars. Not the semi’s or trailers, or support vehicles, or the 7-8 crew guys that need to eat and have shirts, …. How many internet millionaires did the 90’s spit out and why wasn’t I one of them.
Anyway we watched qualifying and the BimmerWorld guys did roughly average. This was also pretty depressing considering how much work they put into the cars and that this track is Seth’s home and Clay’s home away from home. I immediately declare all of the other teams “cheaters”. That is a pretty basic rule in racing. If someone is in front of you they’re cheating in some vague way. More than likely though, it is simple economics. All of BimmerWorld’s competition enjoy financial support from their mother ship factories, in racing as in life money talks, bullsh!t walks.
Thursday night brings us an invitation from the Thomas family to join in a team “cookout”. We started the evening by shooting skeet, pistols, and an AR15 (think SWAT team). Seth’s dad was smart enough to have his entire property zoned as a ‘gun range’ so complaints from the neighbors don’t carry much weight! I think it helps that Seth’s family also pretty much invented Cumming, Georgia. We try to talk Clay into over eating (he has a second career as a competitive eater if he ever chooses to go in that direction), but his girlfriend is in town so he is on best behavior. We're provided some other lame excuse about ‘not healthy’, but we know the truth (cue whipping sound effects). The rest of the evening is spent lying about what awesome racers we all are, and trying to talk one of the BW pit crew into jumping in the pool fully clothed for money (it was maybe 50 degrees out).
Friday comes early and with the Touring Car race scheduled for 10am there isn’t much time for goofing off. Brendan Digel joins Craig and me for the fun, and we’re riding the shuttle bus into the paddock from the parking lot when the driver hits a building! Around Road Atlanta there are several, what I would call ‘pole barn’ out buildings. Our driver cut a corner too close and managed to scrape the entire side of his shuttle bus and pushes the corner of the building in a couple of inches. He doesn’t seem too concerned but around 20 people in the bus, most of them probably amateur racers like us are struggling not to giggle. It takes several minutes and multiple steering corrections to get us off the building, but no one else outside the bus seems too dismayed either. I wonder if anyone in charge will ever try and figure out how the building got hit?
I weasel a pit pass so that when the cars line up I’m right down in the action. Everyone is in ‘serious business’ mode so there isn’t a lot of joking around or smiling. I hang around until the cars line up for the standing start down on the track. Then it is off to turn 10 in a truck packed with 10 people. Road Racing requires more thought than other types of spectator sports from its fans. You can’t see the entire track so you have to be smart about where you set up. There are several good viewing locations for Road Atlanta but a classic spot is turn 10, at the end of the back straight away. Typically this is a good spot for passing action, even more so now since the main BW advantage is going to be their straight-line speed and braking. The nice folks at Speed TV have installed a super big jumbotron across the track so we can even try to keep up with the action at other parts of the track.
We’re green flag racing and Seth is in 5th spot and Clay is in 7th or so after the start. He is fighting with one of the Tri-Point Mazdas. For about 4 laps they come into 10a practically side by side with the Mazda on the inside protecting and Clay on the outside. The fifth or so time down, the Mazda tries to squeeze Clay over as they move into the braking zone and it appears that he locks a tire up under braking. Clay turns in and they get tangled up. Clay loses two positions but the Mazda is off the track and loses more. One of the cars directly ahead of him is another Tri-point Mazda piloted by Jason Saini. Its déjà vu as they come into 10a side by side for another few laps. Jason looks to squeeze Clay over even more aggressively to the point where from our vantage point it looks like he is in the grass with two wheels (coming down from 150+mph). They get tangled up and Saini ends up in the gravel trap and his race is over. Clay makes is around another lap or so before his car starts to overheat from busted radiator. #36 DNF.
You can see the first incident here Craig was taking some video from where we watched:
Seth is doing slight better and has managed to get into 4th place. The gravel trapped car brings out a double yellow hopefully giving Seth a shot at catching the lead cars and making a move for the podium. With the unfortunate BW luck that these guys still can’t shake he goes slightly off track in the famous ‘esses’ portion of Road Atlanta and somehow a tire starts rubbing and he ends up with the car overheating as well. He comes in early and it’s another DNF.
Nick Esayian the third car and a guy we met for the first time ends with a career high 6th place. Nick is a total hoot. He manages the Debt Cures book, infomercial, whatever. Look it up. He can really tell a story. He was telling us about some of his accidents and how in one you could see from his in-car camera when he hit the wall doing like 120mph or something crazy he got knocked out. You could see his arms go limp and his head slump over as the car kept going. He then came around (think guy waking up in bed but is really in a speeding car with no pilot) and grabs the steering wheel to get the car stopped. You’ll have to trust me when I say he made this all very funny. He had a good race and stayed out of trouble to end the season on a high note.
We’re back at the trailer going over the play by play of the race with the guys when Jason Saini comes up looking p!ssed off. Apparently during the awards presentation he had made some comments to one of the crew guys saying that the wreck was Clay’s fault. He then came up to James who respectfully disagreed with him. He is back and still wants to beat this dead horse. Keep in mind a) the season is over with this race b) we’re talking about 8th place or something stupid . They retreat into the trailer to watch the in-car footage. Nothing can be determined from that (at least to Jason’s satisfaction). Clay maintains that Jason squeezed him over, Clay held his position until they made contact, Clay then went to turn in. Jason ended up in a gravel trap. This is pretty much what we (the 6 or so people that watched from 10a) saw too. Jason leaves, but comes back 20 minutes later to keep the discussion alive. It ends up going to the SCCA officials that side with Clay. The rules of the series state that ‘racing’ room must be left for a car. You can’t drive into someone to move them out of the way. If they do, that car has no responsibility to move out of their established position.
Due to the broadcasting schedule with Speed nothing can be posted online (from the teams) until the race broadcasts on Wed. the 15th. I have the TIVO set so I can see the different angles but I’m pretty sure I know how it ends.
Saini – who from now on will be called “IN” Saini still wouldn’t let it go and came onto the main BMW forum to tell his side of the story. Unfortunately for him he didn’t convince anyone there either.
All it really did was make a lot of guys that probably would have been Saini fans see what an a$$hole he is. First you don’t yell at crew guys. They’re usually not well paid, and it isn’t anything they have control over anyway – they weren’t in the car. That is just chicken sh!t. When he finally screwed up the courage to talk to Clay face to face he lost a lot of his fire. Saini is a big enough guy, but Clay is probably 6’3 or 4 and anywhere from 230 – 250 depending on his relationship status (haha)… The bad part is Saini is a good story. Mazda is crazy about racing at the grassroots level. The Spec Miata series (which Spec E30) is based on, is probably the biggest amateur racing series today. They also give huge discounts on parts, contingencies, etc. You name it they support it. So why don’t I race Mazdas? Good question. It would probably make more sense. I hate miatas though. I really hate them. Who has ever looked cool driving a miata? No one. Anyway. One other super cool thing Mazda does is called their “ladder system”. In racing the only way you can get ahead at the top levels is to have $$$$$$$$$. Unlike other sports the best guy may be stuck driving around in a parking lot or beater series like ours. Mazda provides a system for guys with talent to move up the food chain. You win spec miata, you go to their semi-pro series MX-5 Cup, you win that, you go to World Challenge. And so on. IN Saini won the MX-5 Cup so they paid for his WC ride. That is a pretty cool story until you find out he is a total douche bag.
Here is my sometimes enduro partner doing his 'real' job as a pro-driver in the Speed WC series. The BimmerWorld team has had its share of ups and downs this year, but James got his first win at Road America this past weekend. Pretty cool stuff!
