Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Day 2... Rain? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

We awoke Sunday morning to a dense cloud of fog over the entire track. I'm pretty convinced it didn't actually rain overnight, but the track was SOAKED! Dennis pitched a fit the night before because he didn't get any track time.. so he MADE SURE he was first out on Sunday. I think he was kicking himself when he woke up.... wet track = slow laps!

Dennis out. With Dennis' track record, I was expecting the car to blow up in the first 10 minutes.. but much to my amazement... it was running great! Dennis was going toe to toe with a local Portland tuning celebrity... and winning! Team Produnk and their Miata were putting the pressure on our little MR2, but in the end... Dennis held him off and Produnk spun at the entrance to T11!

We had been trying to call Dennis in for the last 10 minutes, but there was an issue with the radios... so we had to just sit and wait for Dennis to come in on his own. 15 minutes or so later, the MR2 heads to the pits.

Well just as Dennis rolls to a stop, I notice something was wrong. REALLY wrong. The next 10 minutes or so is a blur.. even now.

"Dude, I don't feel so good"
"WTF?"
"Yeah, I puked all over"
"WTF!?!?!"
"Sorry man, I tried to hold it"
"OMGWTF?!?!?!?! Get the f*** out of my car!"

I spent the next 10 minutes with a roll of paper towels and a wet shop rag... cleaning bits and pieces of breakfast from the harness and the seat.

Dennis IN, Dad Out... in dirty harnesses. ugh. Dad stays out for an hour or so since we had 5 stints to get through on the second day. The was possibly the most entertaining 45 minutes of racing I've seen. Dad and John's Miata were head to head for at LEAST 20 laps. From our vantage point, we could see about 1/4 of the track.. and the lead was exchanged at least 7 or 8 times. Way to go Dad!

Dad in, Matt Out. You know those people that talk about those moments in your life where things just "click"? For about 45 minutes of my life, everything made sense... True, I drive a POS car in a race for amateurs.... but in these 45 minutes, I felt like I could take on Tom Kristensen at Le Mans. I managed to set the fastest time of the day across the entire field, and had the time of my life!

Matt in, Dennis back out. This time Dennis lasted about 30 minutes before coming back in the pits. "WTF are you doing?" "I have no brakes!" "ugh". While I was out having the time of my life, apparently I managed to cook our brake pads. You know those people who feed their baby, shake em up real good and hand them off to an unsuspecting grand parent? yeah, that was me. Into the garage for a quick pad change. 30 minutes later and a full tank of gas we were back on the track.

Dennis out, Leo in. Leo had family in the bay area, so they made the trek up to Infineon to watch him race. As they showed up, we were franticly trying to replace the pads that DENNIS cooked. Leo did great and managed some great tight quarters passes in the final minutes. Checkered flag drops, and we finished!
Congrats to team #112 A+ Trailer Trash Racing for a ChumpCar victory! Can't wait for Streets of Willows!

3 comments:

Sarah said...

Best post yet, hands down.

Mark Hiker said...

Great blog Matt. So did you successfully capture some race video at infineon? sounds like four cameras would make for some awesome editable footage.

Matthew said...

Yeah Mark, we have some... it's just hard to sort through some of the BS :)