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Day Five -
Buttonwillow Raceway Park
"A shocking,
slipping day"
It's here...
the last day of the 2004 OTC. So far, things have gone pretty
well. We got a decent nights sleep and we're ready to go at
Buttonwillow. We have the usual drivers meeting and John makes
the standard warning about hitting the pit wall coming onto the
straight. Same speech every time, but do people always listen?
We get the car
unloaded and ready to go. I check the rear axle and it looks
like the extra RTV stopped the leak. I double check the gear
oil level and it's good. Dave is going to take the first
session again so we get him strapped it and the radios all set.
We're running configuration thirteen counterclockwise which is my
favorite way to run. Dave heads out and I go up to the tower
to report on traffic and take pictures. On the end of the warm
up lap, Todd Southwell is setting up to pass Dave and roars onto the
straight in a nice four wheel slide. A little loose, but under
control. Just what you'd expect from Todd. A few minutes
later, Danny Nguyenphuc loses it on the same turn in his Porsche
944. He dries to save it (first mistake), and does the
inevitable, backing the car into the wall. This is the third
time I've run Buttonwillow counterclockwise, the third time we've
been warned at the drivers meeting, and the third time someone has
hit that wall in their first session of the day. Dave takes it
easy, relearns the track and finishes his run with a slow but smooth
2:25.
There is a Mazda
transporter at the garage next to our paddock location. It's
full of Star Mazda series spec open wheel race cars. They've
been doing testing and are preparing the cars for the next race
while they have them out of the trailer. We all have instant
race car envy.
We roll over to take
a look at the Porsche. Danny is lucky... he just tapped
the wall with the left rear. He's scrapped the fender and bent
his wheel, but no other damage. Hmmm... make that very lucky.
We then head over to the S2000 of Erik Peterson, Dave Kennedy and
J.P. Kleinhaus. It seems they had a little incident on the
drive down from Sonoma. A quick stopper at a yellow light
caught Erik napping. The front and left side are a bit
rearranged and a significant quantity of (grey) duct tape has been
employed to hold the front of the car together. As we swing
by, they're adding more to "increase aerodynamic efficiency".
Well, they don't call it Honda Racing tape for nothing! Word
also gets out that the Pulp guys are having problems. We see
Erik come screaming into the paddock with smoke coming from the left
front after theie first session. I figured it was just a
tire problem. That's what they thought too until they noticed
the wheel wasn't where it was supposed to be. They broke the
left front suspension and Erik did a heck of a job keeping the car
on track. Doug calls Wayne who's bringing up a replacement
part from Huntington Beach in his 360. Can you say express
delivery!
It's time for my run
so we head back and get me strapped into the car. I get out
and start relearning the track. I've spent a fair amount of
time here before in the Corvette and it all starts to come back to
me. Still, I take it easy and work on slowly coming up to
speed. After about 80% of the session, I encounter a big
problem. The car won't rev up and is losing power. I
barely make it up and over Magic Mountain and then the car dies.
I get it restarted and manage to limp back to the pits at something
like fifteen miles an hour with the smell of gas in the air.
We think it's a fuel system problem like we had last year. We
decide to let the car cool and work on it after we eat lunch.
I notice that I managed a 2:24, beating Dave for the first time.
We eat lunch and then
head back over to the car. We first take apart the fuel filter
to check for clogs. It's clean so we move on to the engine.
We disconnect the fuel line from the carbs and see plenty of flow.
Something else is going on. A quick call to Pro Chassis leads
us to the ignition system. We start running the engine and
pulling plug wires. We get to cylinder two and discover that
it's not firing. That explains the gas smell. We were
probably dumping fuel right out the exhaust in front of my feet.
We do some quick diagnosis and discover that one of our ignition
coils is bad. It's a special motorcycle electronic ignition
coil so we're pretty much done. Dave and I resign ourselves to
no more runs and start cleaning up. Steve refuses to give up
and heads out on the scooter to find a coil. Dave and I think
he's nuts... who's going to have a Dyna motorcycle coil!?
Dave starts taking Doug's belts back out and decides to wait after
removing one shoulder harness. A few minutes later, Steve rips
into the trailer asking me what model and impedance the coil is.
He's found someone who has a shop at the track and has what seems to
be the correct coils. I make another call, get the info, and
we jump on the scooter for a ride over. As we approach,
daylight dawns in the swamp of my mind. Reg Thurley has a
Radical shop with a garage at the track. He's almost never
here but today is our lucky day. He has a set of coils and two
hundred and ten dollars later, Steve is on the way back to the car
to put them in with Dave. I walk back over and start putting
back in the one shoulder belt. We miss the first session (so
much for eating lunch first before working on the car) but the car
runs great with the new coil. We put everything back together
and get Dave in the car in time for the last session. He goes
out and Steve heads to the tower while I start cleaning up the
trailer. I peek out a few times and he's looking good. A
little while later I notice a bad sound from the track. The
engine is racing a but after each up shift. Uh oh. A few
minutes later, Dave is back in the paddock. My concerns are
right on... the clutch is slipping. This isn't a huge
surprise since we'd both noticed this a few times during the week.
I thought I was dragging my foot on the clutch pedal but I guess
not. I expected the clutch to last longer (only 20 hours of
engine running time has passed so far). We'll have to figure
things out back in San Diego before the next track event. Dave
ran a 2:11, blowing my time away.
Wayne showed up with
the suspension part while we were working on the car. They've
worked like crazy and have the Flamemobile back together. The
hot dog is looking charbroiled and a little shrunken. Erik
heads out to make sure they win, but it's almost a done deal.
After the session, it's official. The Flamemobile has won U1
and the OTC overall with Doug and Erik driving. Dearing and
Haney came in second in the Viper and the Rusty Old Datsun of Coffey
and Lampe are third. Terry Rossi wins T1 and is the overall
Touring winner.
Hot Chip Racing again
won our class (of one). We finished seventh out of thirteen in
the Unlimited class and twenty first out of thirty five overall.
A much better result than last year and we probably would have done
better if we'd had some track time beforehand to practice. The
car made it every day and even though we had clutch problems at the
end, our reliability has been greatly enhanced by all the things we
fixed and upgraded between events. Steve was an incredible
help both at the track and on the road and both Dave and I owe him a
huge thanks for volunteering his time. I also owe one more
thank you to Doug Hayashi for bailing us out on day one with the
loan of his belts.
I also owe a big
thanks to Gregg from Isaac. The Isaac Head and Neck restraint
system was fortunately not needed but I learned a great deal by
using for the week. Like all systems, there are some
drawbacks. The only real one with the Isaac is range of
motion. Unlike other systems, the restrictions from the Isaac
system aren't too severe. The only time I would notice it was
when I tried to look out the side window in a turn. I got used
to it after a few days and just learned to get my eyeballs turned
more to make up the difference. By the end of the event, I
didn't even notice that I had it on. It's easy to remove and
lets you exit the car with just your helmet on. On our car, I
have serious doubts about getting out with a HANS device attached,
especially if the car was inverted (as in a rollover). Even
though these devices are expensive, I think it's a wise investment.
I wouldn't consider any of the body strap type, which leaves the
Isaac or the HANS. After a lot of research and my test during
the OTC, It looks like Isaac is the system for me. As much
money as I spend on racing, I can spare an extra $900 on a device
which just might save my life.
John Dearing was
voted Paul Mumford Top Gun Trophy winner for 2004 and I think he
deserves it. We're all looking forward to another great (and
hopefully seven day) event next year.
We decided to head
back Thursday night and miss traffic. After the track, we went
back to the hotel to shower and clean up, After a huge dinner
at Willow Ranch (I think their food has even improved), we hit the
road. There as no traffic and we made it back in about four
hours. We decided to save time and unload everything at the
shop now rather than on Friday. It's 3:30am by the time we
finish and I stumble in to my house and up to bed. For the
whole OTC, we travel about 1700 miles on the street for a total of
thirty four hours travel time (twenty eight hours moving). Wow, what a
trip!
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