Sixth Gear

Car arrived race ready as prepared by Eric Purcell’s shop, Earthbound Flying Machines but ominously, the track was shutdown due to fog until 11:00 am.  We were also scheduled for a photo shoot with Google Street View for laps around the track at noon.  That turned out to be a bit of a bust as the plan was to run the cars at 40 mph around the track but it turned out they wanted to run about 5 mph and our car just won’t cooperate at that speed.

Fuel (Cellulosic Ethanol) arrived from Ottawa, Canada at 12:30 pm, right on time!  Great work by Iogen and JSI to supply and transport the fuel.

Testing (Nic and Dennis) to sort the car out for the track went well and we trimmed the wing to get 145 mph at the end of the straight with the car overall neutral in the turns.  The new pavement did  not seem to have as much grip as last year and we only got low 44’s but everyone was saying the track was 2+ sec. slower that day as we fully expected to be in the 41’s.

Steve and Michael arrived and we did a photo shoot for Iogen first thing in the morning.  Got out for some driver orientation laps and to scrub tires for the event plus bed in brake pads.  Everyone on the Team was within about 1 sec on lap times as we approached qualifying scheduled to start at 5:15 pm.  It was decided that Michael and Nic would qualify the car.

Nic posted a night qualifying lap of 1:45.8 and we parked the car.  I went down to timing and scoring to monitor the Daytona Prototype’s times and by the end of Qualifying, they were posted at a best time of 1:47.6 but listed in 1st place(?).  Everyone watching the results was asking why our car was in P2 but no one knew.  Later, mysteriously, a new time was posted of 1:45.4 for them, putting them on the pole.  Frankly speaking, this is not without precedent as NASA has posted questionable results in the past to promote certain teams, so we were not too happy.

(Fog rolled in around 10 pm)

Day dawned at the track with the sun shining but there was fog within a mile of the course.

Teams lined up on the starting grid (more photos) and the Daytona Prototype failed to make the grid for the start (some sort of fuel problem), so we ended up starting the race on the Pole (karma!) getting a great photo of the car leading the pack (68 cars) into turn 1. (the Daytona started from the pits in last place but quickly made its way through the field.  500+ hp is good!)

Nic immediately radioed in that the fire extinguisher bottle had come loose and was bouncing around in the right side footwell but he was able to continue.  Then a camera fell into the cabin from the roll bar mount point and ultimately got tangled up in the pedals forcing him to come in for a 10 min. stop while we secured the bottle and removed the camera.  Meanwhile the DP (Daytona Prototype) was making hay.

I got in next and on the first lap of my stint the radio came loose and was getting into my legs.  Along with that we got a 5 min. penalty stop for fuel spillage as the vent bottle was spilled after I pulled out.  More time for the DP to increase its lead.

Lost another 5 minutes at the next driver change (Michael, as we re-secured the radio)  DP was now 10 laps ahead.  Michael had a good stint but had some minor contact with a Miata but no significant damage.

Dennis got in and started his stint but we noticed that the car took about 25 gal of fuel when it should have only taken less than 20 (holds 28).  Dennis had a near miss collision and spun the car but no damage.

Uh oh, started getting foggy at around 4:30 pm.

At 6:15 pm it was getting very, very foggy and Dennis radioed in that he was out of gas(??) and coasted to a stop just at the end of the pits.  Luckily we were pitted very close and pushed him in, only to find a broken fuel line.  Just then the course went full yellow and we spent 15 minute replacing the line (more laps for the DP) and got Nick in the car seconds before a red flag was put out and the whole field brought to a halt in the main straight.  Nick said that on that lap to come around he could not even see the course! (we have great lights, BTW)

Race was halted for 10.5 hrs and not re-started until 5 a.m. (teams were given 25 min. to perform maintenance to the cars on course.  Again we were lucky to have the car accessible, changing brake pads and doing other repairs).

I started the stint as Nic had gone to a hotel to get some rest.  Visibility was still pretty bad but manageable.  About 10 laps in, I was passing a car who had position on a slower car entering turn 10, when the slower car turned down on the other guy, who slammed on his brakes (my first indication of a problem) and then I had the slower car driving right across my nose.  Good news, bad news, I spun the car right between the two guys avoiding a collision, but went off course and tore up the right rear suspension as the car spun in the dirt (no body damage).  I was able to limp back to the pits but there was clearly a big problem.  A lower A arm pickup point (clevis) had broken and this allowed both upper and lower A arms to get bent which needed replacement, a 30 min. job. 10 minutes later, the DP got brought in on the hook, having collided with a slower car on a very fast part of the course and was out of the race.

I got back in and went out and about 45 min. later, we lost the right side rear axle CV joint.  (the yellow flag laps, combined with a low speed throttle ECU problem put a lot of strain on the CV and eventually broke it).  We fixed this in about 20 min. but now found ourselves 32 laps behind the leader with 8 hrs to go and the ability to make up about 3.5 laps per hour at race speed (not enough time!)

For the last 8 hours, the car ran flawlessly.  First one leader dropped out of the race and then a second. 

Unfortunately, we got a 1 min. penalty for passing under the yellow (me! Passing a slower car just as the flag came out) plus another long yellow flag period (around 15 min).

Nic (4 time British Sports Racing Champion) could not perform a miracle but drove brilliantly and finished out the race 1 lap short of the win.

We finished 4th overall, 1st in class, set fast lap for the race at 1:43.7 (faster than the DP) and 2 min. 10 seconds out of 1st overall!  After all of the events listed above, all we needed was another 2 min. 10 sec of less problems and we would of (maybe) won. 

Oh, well, that’s racing.