Figured I would keep my thread alive:
Wanted to do a quick writeup of our Charlotte Motor Speedway Chumpcar race. I've decided to make notes of the races we do, I figure when I'm old and grey(er) I'll need a refresher for my memory...
Last event was Watkins Glen where BOTH of our cars had head gasket failures. Odd. Simon got a new OEM Honda head gasket, and on comparison with the old Cometic, we decided only OEM from now on out. Only other significant change to the car was power steering delete, and new integrated HID headlamps, no more aero-crappy light bar. Now, our last 3 races had been with a huge MOV (margin of victory) penalty from winning the VIR 24 last year, and CMS would be our first penalty-free event. We had gotten a little lax in prep and planning, so we were determined to run a near-perfect race.
Charlotte race was to be a 10hr enduro from 8am-6pm, followed later with four 45-minute enduros with classes based on displacement. Rob, Dustin, and I have never driven an oval before (Jason has done NASA SE30 there) so we were stoked. Headed out to Charlotte on Thu with a 3-truck caravan. Rob towing Simon in Gus (our 24' enclosed trailer), Jason towing Max (our old dev car and now sister-rental-car), and me pulling my brandy new 26' camper for accomodations for the weekend. Found a Walmart near the track (becoming a Simon Says tradition), set up (wow is the new camper easy) and boondocked next to a handful of truckers for the night. Next morning we hit the track just in time for the gates to open and navigated all of the where-should-we-put-our-stuff calamity that always happens on Fri.
This was the first time we had rented a garage. We now know that renting a garage is the perfect weay to ensure good weather. No garage? 105F. No garage? Monsoon. No garage? Snow. Garage? 82F and sunny. We managed to dump one of the 2 garages to save some dough, and stacked Simon and Max nose to tail. Headed to tech and WOW is it going slow. Hung out in line next to Dirt Track Junkies (?) who told us they had a "stock" 1.6l motor in their CRX. Once in tech we found it was a "stock" B16 VTEC. Hmmm, stock indeed (more on them later). In Tech, we got a level of scrutiny I have never seen before. Despite us having fantastic safety gear, they found a few nits to pick. Also, we had to go through a bunch of hoops and begging for us to sign off on our TCV. In the end, we escaped with our original proposed TCV, which gives us even more headroom for improvements
Later in the afternoon and after some tweaking on the car -- improvements to the power steering delete (removed some valves and put some stuff back in) and some lexan nut and bolting (how did those get loose?) -- and then we hear the rumors. Eventually there's a mandatory meeting and we learn the bad news ... the track was triple booked. Chump doesn't have the oval on Sat! Condren, Chisek, and the crew did a great job negotiating with the track, IMO, and we're presented with the new plan: Four 40 minute sprints at 10AM-5pm on the infield only 0.8mi course, then a 6 hour enduro from 8pm-2am. Plus, $200 off, PLUS a FREE 10 hour enduro and test day at CMS in November. We decide we are not disappointed. Pleased, in fact!
Headed into town for dinner at Twin Peaks and spent some time interviewing potential umbrella girls at the restaurant. None of them met our requirements, so we opted to do without. Got a ton of fuel, headed back to the track (hey Jason, shotgun!) drank a few brewskies, and roamed the paddock for a while talking with the other crazies. Messed with Booksmart's car, wrote "Simon Says you're slow" on their dash bar, hahaha. Last I heard they are formulating a plan for a comeback. I look forward to it. Knowing these guys, it will probably be heavy on technology and not work very well.
Saturday, race day. Only surprise in the driver's meeting is NO CHICANES on the full roval for the enduro. We're all worried ... we thought the chicane would be an advantage for our slow 4-cylinder car (wrong). Headed out for the sprints. Rob ran the first one on the short course, which was more fun to watch and drive than you might expect, with the field of C2 (small engine, us) and C1 (smaller engine) cars. About 20 on grid. Unfortunately, Rob had made a new helmet vent system that caused a LOT of exhaust gas to enter his helmet and he had to bail out of the race at the point of near-unconsciousness. We figured we were out of contention (and we had NO idea how the sprints were being scored) so the other 3 races were gonna be just for fun. Swapped rotors (oops! forgot to bed in the new ones, they warped instantly) and dumped the hatch since speeds were slow and had no aero concerns. Jason was next and was somehow bested by a Miata (Jason, wtf?) for 2nd. I took the green on the next race and led in 1st flag-to-flag, woohoo! Dustin was on Comm encouraging me to sandbag and let 2nd place pass me, since if we took 1st, we would be relegated to the back of the field for the next (his!) race. That was the first time I realized I am lacking the sandbag gene. I just couldn't do it. Sorry, Dustin, when presented with the chance to win, I'm gonna take it! Exited the car with a bruised left butt cheek and sore left arm ... that was a pretty intense track to race for 40 minutes, the turns just keep coming. Lots of hard driving in the first race, some attrition, but in general the racing was clean and incident free. I was impressed overall. Car was running flawlessly too, which made us all happy.
Time for Dustin to start his sprint at the back of the pack. I was on Comm and I told him "Dustin I am going to tell you every lap what your position is. I am expecting you to pass the entire field and win the race". Low and behold ... that's just what he did. Took him 15 minutes to get to P3, then another 20 minutes to get in front of the field. VERY fun race to watch and my hat's off. Now my flag-to-flag 1st place win doesn't feel quite so impressive
Jason was out in the race as well, he had an open spot in his rental, Max, so he actually started with Dustin and followed him through the field up to P4. THEN he took an in-error black flag and lost the spot. He was PISSED! Jason later told Dustin he planned to pass him on the last lap for P1, lol.
I have to say it was nice to have the 3 hour break between sprints and enduros. Got to plan out hot pits, make some improvements to the car, put the hatch on, bed some new rotors, have dinner, and do some planning. Eventually got all our gear to pit lane, got Rob in the car for the start, and ... waited. CMS decided to further piss off probably 250 people by running another two nascar ride-alongs from 8pm until 8:45pm. There was some tension in the air about that. Finally we're off at 8:50. CMS turned on ALL the lights, so the oval was like daytime. The infield? Not so much. Despite getting some DOT style infield track lighting, parts of it were DARK. Boy were we glad we decided to aim our new headlights on Fri night. The teams who brought no lights (the enduro was supposed to be during the day) were kind of screwed. Rob had a good stint and by the end I think we were already in P1 or P2. Pulled him in fairly early (1.5 hr min stint means we had some flexibility) during a yellow, and by the time Jason got out and the other teams pitted, we were in P1. The car was just running FLAWLESSLY and a true delight to drive on this track... we were all amazed at how well we were doing on a "horsepower" track. That damn car just keeps impressing us.
Jason had a good stint too, and we pulled him in also at a yellow, I think. I took the wheel in P1 (no pressure!) and went to get my feet wet on a banked oval. Holy crap! What a different and crazy neat and scary experience! The G's pulling you into the seat and the un-natural feeling high lateral G's were initially disconcerting and eventually very, very cool. The most unsettling thing about it (with no PS) was the high steering wheel effort needed to keep the car pointed where you want to go. I started hooking my thumbs over and under the spokes to be sure that the wheel couldn't slip. I'll be ordering more-grippy gloves for the next event.
It took a LONG time to find my groove in such a new experience. Within 3 laps I was under 1:32 but it took until the end of my session to get to a 1:29. Want to go back for sure. Eventually got to no-lift entering nascar 3... Probably entering the turn at 125 MPH and exiting at about 130 MPH approaching start-finish. The exit from 4 going downhill under the lights with the concrete flashing by was SUCH a FRICKING COOL feeling. Passing could be sketchy ... we had a really high closing rate on many cars, and I get the impression that people aren't using their mirrors much on the oval. Usually, passing on the high side works fine, but I got pinched plenty of times at the wall passing a car exiting nascar 4 (please check your mirrors before tracking out to the wall!!!!) Still, highly recommended. Start/finish comes up REALLY fast. T1 into the infield is a holy crap fast turn and very rewarding but dangerous. Couple of cars had wall hits there. Transision into the infield is DARK and takes the eyes a few moments to adjust. T6 and 7 were dark but wide open and a fun place to pass. Then up the hill, around a carousel, and plan a careful line out through the hole into the fence back onto the banking. Don't track wide, there's another wall coming out of the infield! Don't hit the bank too early, it's a rough transision! Turns out you can take all of turn 1 and 2 on the 6 degree apron without ever going up on the 34 degree bank. Did that a couple of times.
Worked up my times and confidence, took one pass on the apron before T3 (not recommended!) and eventually got in the groove. Still in P1 by 4 laps, I could tell the guys were strategizing to reduce the lead ("stop telling me what you're doing on comm, it's distracting!"), they eventually pulled me in after about 1hr20min. One stint to go, Dustin will take it. By the time he headed out after a slightly long (oops) stop, we found we were actually 2 laps down on 1st place ?!?! Dustin eventually got his pace up, but the damage was done. Turns out the leader had done a short stop (no fuel? we never figured out how that was possible), and with the combination of our long stop, maybe some race monitor funniness, and maybe with a yellow stop penalty applied, we finished the race a lap down on P1, Sri Racing in a E36 328i. At 2:15am.
Headed to impound and inspection. Barely anyone looked at our car. It's an integra with a CRV block. Pretty Chumpy. Winner's car was protested for an illegal diff ratio (which also has a limited slip, which I didn't think was possible in a 96+ non-M E36). Nothing was upheld at impound. I looked it over and otherwise it looked pretty stockish but with tons of new parts and every limit of the rules for E36 followed. We decided we were happy with 2nd place (no MOV penalties!!!). 3rd place was the VTEC-swapped CRX. If they had beaten us (and it was close at one point) we would have had a hard decision to make about a protest. No way to legally get that one to work in paperwork. Maybe next time
$900 for the race - $200 sprint win - $400 enduro 2nd - $200 oops discount - $150 redline certificates = negative $50 for 4 sprint races, one 6 hour enduro, one test day in Nov, and one 10 hr enduro in Nov. Sign me up! Went to bed waaay too late and was kicked out of the track at 11am the next morning. Simon's sleeping soundly in the trailer with nary a scratch from the races. Can't say the same for myself, my back is bruised from the G's an my arm is still sore! Next stop, VIR 24 in August, can't wait. Hat's off to Chumpcar and all our fellow racers, we had a blast.
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