Well, we did it again!
For the second consecutive race, we finished without any major mechanical failures.
Sunday morning started with the team replacing the rear brakes. The passenger side rear was still dragging so we replaced the brakes. The rear caliper on the drivers side was showing a damaged rubber seal so we replaced that too. We finished bleeding the system just after the drivers meeting was over. The drivers meeting was interesting because Jay talked about the roll-over that had happened on Saturday afternoon. The driver ended up having a cracked vertebra and will be out for some time to come. Our prayers and hopes for a speedy recovery go out to him.
The links to the accident videos are here:
in-car and car following
The race started with Judy in the car. As usual, she was the only driver on our team that went on the track, drove 45 minutes and came off without getting black flagged. We continued our quest to finish the race with Bruce up next in the drivers seat. We decided to go to a longer seat time and it seemed to work in theory until he was flagged and had to come off the track. 15 minutes later, he went back onto the track and drove another 5-6 laps before ending his stint. Stevo jumped into the car and drove for 45 minutes clean and then he got into trouble, black flagged. Judge Jonny was nice and let him go back on the track - he lasted another 15 minutes and received a second black flag, this time we had to do a drivers change. I was up, I got into the car, drove less than one lap and spun out in turn 11, black flagged and the penalty this time was a 1 hour time-out.
During that time, we had a little time to talk about the car. Stevo was feeling that the car was still not braking to its full potential so after our penalty was over we brought the car into the pit and did a front brake overhaul. Nobody timed us but I think we did the front brakes in less than 15 minutes, not too bad for novice racers. I took the car back out and ran clean for an hour, the brakes were still not up to 100%, they had a little chatter going into the corners. Pat jumped into the car and drove the "hell" out of it, he did really well until he came in for his black flag. The car was missing a mirror and the whole side of the car was scraped up. I asked him what happened, he started to tell me how he got his flag and I stopped him and said wait a minute, you're not flagged for impact with another car? His comment was nope that damage was done in an earlier incident where a car slammed into the side of him and no flag was called. Well "hell" we have no mirror and the car needs a new paint job but Pat was flagged for going 4 wheels off in turn 9A! The Judges were nice to us again but told us if we come back we are done. Pat takes the car back out does one lap and Santa Claus throws a hissy fit and Pat gets flagged again. This time Pat is not a happy camper! The judges don't know why he is back in so they let him out with another warning. Time for Bill to finish up the race, we are all so happy that our car is running so well and we will get the checkered flag - until Bill gets the final black flag with 6 laps to go.
Dammit! Bill pulls into the penalty box where the judges proceed to take our manliness away from us. They stripped us of our window sticker and pulled our wrist bands off! We were sooooooo .... close. We finished 89th out of 146 cars that made it onto the track and had one hell of a fun time doing it.
Next race Thunderhill May 8-9th, hope to see you all there.
6 years ago
