Thunder Chicken Racing

First thing Sunday morning we check the brake fluid level and a small amount had leaked out overnight but we thought it should be if we just kept the level topped up.  So Ted got into the car to pull out to grid and the clutch just popped to the floor.  We had a brief team discussion concerning the fact that we 4th gear for 98% of the track and sent Ted out to start the race with no clutch.  Turns out that he averaged about 2 seconds faster per lap by not shifting to 5th gear on the straight…  everything was going fine until Ted went in to turn 4 too fast and beached the car in a sand trap.  He ended up timing this spin at the worst possible time because the tow truck was already involved in untangling an accident elsewhere on the track.  He ended up sitting for about 20 minutes before getting pulled out.  Luckily there was no damage and we were back in the race.

Shortly after that we opened the hood on a pit stop and noticed some droplets of liquid sprayed around the engine compartment and realized that one of our coolant lines had shifted up against the alternator pulley and caused a small leak.  A quick splice later and we were back to racing.

During my stint in the afternoon, I was attempting to lap the Flying Tigers Mazda Miata and I got a little over eager to make my move.  I came in to turn 4 a little hot and right on the bumper of the miata.  He tapped his brakes and I wasn’t ready for it so I had to brake and ended up going off into the sand.  I managed to rock the car in reverse out of the trenches i had dug and then put it back in first cranked it up and bombed my way out of the sand trap and back on to the track. I even managed to catch the miata again before the end of my stint.

The rest of the race went pretty smoothly with some great lap times and some great wheel to wheel battles. Ted brought the car home in one piece even though a large american v8 powered car dumped all of its significant load of oil on the track at turn 6 all the way to pit lane, which caused the race to end under a full course caution.  Thanks to John Condren and all of the Chump Car folks we had a great time and tons of clean but very close racing.  We Can’t wait for the next event.  Keep checking back for more updates

AJ