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Day Five -
Thunderhill Raceway - Clockwise (Willows, CA)
"The Slow and
the Furious"
Even if you get a
good nights sleep, 7:00am comes far to early. Once again, we
sacrificed sleep to make it to the track with plenty of time to
setup and make the driver's meeting. We checked all the
settings on the car and tightened all the bolts first thing and
everything seems to be in order. It seems the OTC dinner last
night turned into quite an adventure with some people out until
2:00am Ouch!
I'll be going out
first again today and since we've reversed directions, it'll be like
starting over. We decided to try car to pit communications so
I leave one ear plug out and put in the FRS radio ear bud instead.
It seems to work okay in the paddock but as we find out later, not
on the racetrack. Since we have such a huge drive to Willow
Springs, we're just going to run the first two sessions and then hit
the road.
After the driver's
meeting I head out of my session. For some reason, I seem to
be doing better running in this direction. I'm still off the
pace, but not nearly as bad as yesterday. The car feels good
but continues to have a bit of a vibration. The brakes are
much better, not that you need them all that much at this track.
Leaving one of my earplugs out for the radio link turns out to be a
bad idea. By the time the session is over, I can't hear
anything in my right ear and I have a splitting headache. All
that and the radio never worked anyway! I end up posting a
2:35.814 which is pretty bad.
Since we're going to
be leaving early, I get started on the trailer while Dave gets ready
for his run. I put on the newly patched tire and replace the
broken side marker light. A little later, Dave works him magic
on the fender and it's almost good as new. Dave is heading out
to the track and I stop loading to take pictures and video.
Dave seems to get up
to speed pretty quickly ends up running a best of 2:17.708.
Unfortunately, that leaves us as one of the slowest cars of the day
but we don't want to hang around and try to improve it.
We finish packing,
pickup our second starter from the office and hit the road. We
missed Mark Allen on the way out but we meet up again for dinner a
few hours into the drive (coincidently, at the same exit where we
discovered our flat tire). It's a long, long, long run to
Mojave and we get in after midnight and we're bushed.
Video:
Looking good at Thunderhill
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