Thunder Chicken Racing

So we had the first 7 hour race today.  It went amazingly well. I had the privilege of driving the first and last stint of the race.

During my first stint I quickly realized that the car was setup absolutely perfectly.  The temperature was just right and I got to jump about 3 or 5 cars on the drop of the green flag.  The only complaint I had was the virgin racers passing on full course yellow and tow truck flags.  I set the fast lap for the team with a 1:29.540, which was 4 seconds faster than any of our laps during the test and tune.  Had some great passes and even had a driver from another team come to our pit to compliment my dive bomb attack on a 5 car cluster at turn 1. Also i borrowed some of the rubber from a miata’s right rear tire to cover up a small ugly spot on my left front fender… I thought he saw taking the inside line through turn 2 but i was wrong… no big spin for either of us… just a little love tap between friends…

The day was going unbelievably smoothly (like they usually do until a believable problem crops up) until RJ said the parking brake light was flickering over the radio.  After a brief period of thought concerning the fact that we had removed any and every piece of the parking brake system, I realized that we might have a real problem.  Turns out I was right for once… Never right when I want to be…  The clutch slave cylinder had decided to start leaking. We figured that since there was not a whole lot of time left in the race that if we refilled it,  it would be ok until the end. More on that later…

Now on to Teds stint.  Ted continued our running theme of being fast in the corners and dog slow on the straight.  The big problem with this is that we get stuck behind other cars in the corners and then get so low in the power band that we cant get enough speed on the straight to make a pass stick.  Ted’s solution to this problem was to just pass them on the outside… on the grass! Yes, he did this more than once! And at least one of them was on purpose. lol.  But all in all he did gain us at least 2 positions and was consistently fast.

Like I mentioned earlier I had the privilege of taking the last hour and a half stint all the way to the checkered flag. No real dramatic mentionables in my stint other than being pushed off the inside of turn 3 by a large yellow camaro… (passed in the next turn)  Everything was going fine until the needle on the fuel gauge slid down to needle-over-empty with about 20 minutes left in the race. There was a discussion over the radio between me and the crew chief (Ted)  and by the time i decided to come in for a splash and go I had ten minutes to go and that made it not worth it to pit in.  So I putted around for the last 7 minutes short shifting and 3/4 throttle. Couldn’t stand it any longer so I went back to full race pace and brought us in for a 7th place finish.

By the way when I pulled into the paddock and Ted opened the hood,  the brake fluid reservoir was bone dry… WHEW! that could have been bad…

More to follow… Must sleep.