ChumpCar aftermath

Man, what a great time! Overall, our team did very well with all things considered. We finished in 13th out of 39 cars and managed to keep our lap times very consistent. We had a couple snafoos

I will detail our failures, and what I attribute them to. Erik and I have invited a couple of the drivers from the PIR race over this weekend to get the car back together for the Thill race... while they may not be too excited about it, they have graciously offered to help.

1) Sometime throughout the night, we lost the C-clip that held the shift linkage in place. We lost 2nd and 4th midway through Erik's stint and attempted to fix it with zipties. When the first ziptie broke about 20 minutes later, we quadrupled the number of zipties and it seemed to be holding. As a precaution, we started wondering the pits for someone with an MR2. We found a donor car (someone's daily driver) to borrow the c-clip out of, and changed it out at the next driver change. We have a spare, so this shouldnt be an issue

2) We developed a pretty nasty oil leak with about 2 hours left in the race... we were losing about a qt an hour through a small hole in the oil pan. It's on the back of the pan and I'm pretty sure its right where I welded the baffle back together. I'm a welding nub, so im sure I weakened the metal enough that it finally gave way 23.5 hours into the race. We have 2 oil pans, so we will either have Dave fix this one.. or put a stock one back on.

3) Our tires were awesome! Not as grippy as the RT615's, but lasted the entire race! I'm pretty sure we could get 48 hours out of a set. They are predictable like the TOYO's, but half the cost. We had 4 mounted and balanced for about $225. We ran Dunlop DZ101's. For the money, I was very happy with them.

4) Dave, your race pads in the front are GONE... we went through the pad, went to metal and metal and finally threw the pad across the track at turn 10. This caused us to lose the piston out the back as well.. causing fluid to leak all over the inner wheel. Dennis pulled in the pits with the wheel literally on fire with 45 minutes to go. We put out the fire, got Dennis out of the car and made sure everything else was looking alright. We then pushed the car all the way back to pit-out and shoved Dennis back in the car... On the final lap, Dennis went out for one more lap with no brakes.. just to get the checkered flag. We finished!

Upon reflection, I still woudlnt have changed the pads during the break... i thought we had plenty of pad to finish the race, i was wrong.. but only by 30 minutes :)

At least we won a trophy, although it's not the best award to be known for. We pulled off the "ugliest car on the trailer BEFORE the race"