banta@sco.com (Beast) (02/23/90)
Sorry if this has already been seen. Our connection to the world has been flaky the past couple days and I haven't received this yet at my site. ----------------- The second time is always better, right? Well, almost. Sam and I just finished our second weekend of SCCA driver's school. For those of you unfamiliar with this story, we're both going for SCCA road racing licenses. I'm running an E Production MGB-GT. Sam is running an Improved Touring B MGB. Once again, packing and whatnot started late Friday morning. Friday in the bay area was miserable. Heavy rains and wind. At times visibility was down to the taillights of the car in front of you. Larry, one of our crew members finagled a motorhome for use this weekend. I headed over to his place Friday morning, helped him pack up stuff and caravan back over to my place with it. Don Wilson, another crew member met us and came along. On the way to my place, we stopped to pick up a Uhaul truck I had reserved for the weekend. Anyway, we got to my place and loaded the truck with tools, spares, a generator, compressors, welding tanks, a bicycle, patio furniture, and whatever else we thought could possibly be of any use on the paddock. The camper got loaded with food and living supplies. Get my car on the trailer, hitch up the trailer, kick back and wait for Sam. Sam shows up and we have a reasonably uneventful trip to Sears Point, arriving around 10:30. We start setting up the paddock, fire up Jeffie's new generator and charge up our air tanks. I get in my car and fire it up to get it off the trailer. Oops. The supplemental regulations are reasonably clear on when you may and may not run a race motor. 11:30 pm is definitely out. A scrutineer comes running out of one of the tech trailers and gives us a sound chewing out. As it turns out, he was actually a little more upset about the generator than the car, but either way, he's not happy. We apologize, and try to quietly get the car off the trailer (with no engine running). Scrutineers are not the people to piss off, since they hand out okey-dokeys to get your car on the track. The night is spent in a nice warm camper, much nicer than the tents of two weeks ago. Morning comes early, cold, and wet. It has rained considerably, and the prospect of getting out of the motorhome is not a nice one. We manage to get out, pick up suits, register, and get in line for tech. Sam has to put numbers on his car, and various other minor preparation things, but this goes fairly smoothly. I get a tech inspector who has not yet heard of the previous night's incident, and tech is painless. My first session is at 10:15. Suited up, I head out on track. It's not raining, but there are definite puddles on the track. The car feels a little squirrelly, but good overall. I try to remember the puddles during the warm up lap. The green falls on practice, and I accelerate away. I very cleanly and confidently dispose of a Corvette in turn 4 (sorry, I just LOVE saying things like that). Clear track! The car seems to be doing fine up until turn 8. At that point the back end breaks lose. I get to see, as I pass backwards past it, that I missed the apex of 8 by a sizable margin. The car proceeds off the track and scales a hill of mud with its back end. Enter the weekend's first tow truck. I get pulled out of the mud and limp back to the pits. The car gets impounded. By this time, most of the scrutineers have heard the story from the previous night and say "Oh, the one with the generator!" A friendly scrutineer looks it over, tells me it looks pretty muddy, and sends me on my way. No damage. During Sam's first session, his car had a problem of losing some coolant. On the paddock, during lunch time, the engine is a little grimy and he decides he wants to "hose it off", Jeffie, who has shown up to crew for the day volunteers. Sam accepts his offer. Jeffie proceeds to drop trow and, after several seconds of performance anxiety, "hose it off". Sam's car was running number 6, so for the remainder of the weekend a restroom break was refered to as a "Number 6". The smell following the incident wasn't terribly pleasant, so Sam found a proper, garden variety hose, and completed the job. My second session of the day is done in granny mode, and I have no problems. The third session was exceptionally nice. Drying track conditions, slightly lower tire pressures, and a cocky attitude. (Talk to anyone who's raced. This is not a good combination.) We get to do a practice start, and race for half a lap, at which point the course went back under yellow and practice started the next time around. I end up in about the middle of the pack in unarguably the slowest car in the field. It's pretty ok, since the track is wet. Nobody can get much more HPs down than I can anyway. I pass a few cars. A few cars pass me at the start. I take a defenisve/passing line into turn 4 (The defensive and passing lines are roughly the same in that corner). For the second time that day, the back end comes around. I'm staring at 5 cars racing at my car. My car continues to go around, and I get it back under control upon completion of a 360. No body contact, but by far my scariest spin to date. The rest of the session, wet track conditions and worrying about previous mistakes results in me spinning on the exit of 5, the exit of 6, and the entrance of 3a. Very frustrating, but no damage to the car. Saturday night is boring details at this point. Sunday morning dawns beautifully clear and cold. I hose the mud off my car and get ready for another day. Hopefully this one on dry track. The morning practice has another practice start, and dry pavement shows the true difference between GT1-4's, S2000's, and my EP MBG. Again, I'm in middle of the pack. After the yellows come out at the end of the half lap, three cars are still behind me. I have passed nobody. This is a long practice session, but I manage to stay on track, although being cautious ends up costing me lap time. Meanwhile, Sam's car has developed a loss of power. Over lunch, we do a compression check, which shows cylinder #3 producing 30 psi. Did we bring a head gasket? Shit! Nope. Huffaker racing can't help either. One of the other competitors running an MGB does, though, and Sam buys it from him. Sam and Larry pull the head and discover that a leaking head gasket isn't the problem. The exhaust valve seat is loose and has managed to bang up the head in the process. None of the machine shops at the track could handle it immediately, so we retire Sam's MGB for the rest of the racing day. Since he and I are in different run groups, he borrows my car for the afternoon. My first practice race, a 4 lapper starts. I'm near of the back of the pack, so I get to see lots of carnage ahead of me. In the opening lap, I manage to squeeze by a couple people in turn 2. By the end of the first lap, there are three people behind me. The second lap, I make the mistake of taking a qualifying line through turn seven and the three cars duck underneath me and go by. Oh well, back to practicing my line. I do keep up with one of them and eventually end up with a better best-lap time than him. On the final straight of the third lap, the leader laps me. I guess it's only three laps for me. Sam takes the car out for his 8 lap race and does fairly well. The car isn't terribly competitve against GT cars, but holds it's own with IT and smaller production cars. He does a lap in 2:22. In my 8 lap race the instructors decide, through some twisted sense of humor or logic, to grid the cars in reverse qualifying time. This puts me on the pole. The pace car leads us around the pace lap, and exits into the pits at turn 11. I'm charged with pacing the field until the green flag drops. No problem there. I maintain the same speed as the pace car did until the starters stand comes into view. He waves the green, I stand on the throttle, and am immediately engulfed in a sea of cars buzzing past. By turn two, about half the field has gone by. Turn 3, I turn into what looks like an open space for a reasonable line through the corner. I hear a clunk and turn to see a Spec 2000 going through the grass on the inside of the corner. He pulls back onto the track ahead of me and neither one of us is any worse for wear. For those unfamiliar with these cars, they are open cockpit, purpose built cars. From a sedan, these cars are invisible unless they are a distance behind you or in front of your doors. On with the story: By the esses (the back portion of the track) all but four cars have gotten by. In the straight between 10 and 11, one of these, a Mustang, goes screaming by. I pull to the inside of the track, and set up a fairly nice passing line for turn eleven. Under braking, I get side by side with him and through the corner, I end up with my nose probably 2 or 3 feet in front of his. We both get on gas at that point for the start/finish straight, and I watch as the back of his car heads for the vanishing point. The other three cars get past me during the second lap. About half way through that lap, I start getting standing yellow flags. The start/finish flagger is displaying the pace car sign. Someone has dumped his radiator in 1a, and his and another's cars are mating next to the tire wall on the outside of the corner. While cleaning this up, with the pace car on course, my instructors are standing in the pit lane waving for me to speed up, presumabely to catch up to the pack. The corner workers, on the other hand, give me a slow down sign. Sorry, instructors, I'll take the corner worker's signals over yours. After 3 laps of yellow, we go back to racing. Sort of. The car that caught me up under the yellow whizzes past and I stroll around open track for another 2 laps. The checker falls. I find out later my best lap was just under 2:27. Oh well. I pull in after the cool down lap. All cars get impounded, and we are congratulated on completing school. After getting a little scrutineer talk about impound, we're sent on our way. I head back to my paddock area. The idea at this point is to pull the head off my car and slap it on Sam's so he can drive home. This is a fairly painless operation, and after all the connections are made, his car fires up second try. We're close to packed and about ready to go. Except the UHaul truck has decided it wants no part of this. The truck is dead. Turning the key gives no click or whir. The dome light inside does absolutely nothing. Attaching jumper cables does nothing. After poking around under the hood, we find a very fried wire. Nothing we try makes any difference, so Uhaul is called and a tow truck is sent. My second experience of the weekend with a tow truck gets the Uhaul, with my car on a trailer behind it towed from Sears Point to San Jose. We get in late and tired. Very excited, novice permit in hand, capable of going racing, and tired. I'd do it again in a second. My thanks to Larry, Craig, Don, Jeffie, Jill, John, Diney, Akkana, Soctt Fisher, and Sam for a fantastic job of crewing this weekend. andy uunet!sco!banta