Event Review: I am doing this write-up more for my own "memory preservation" than for any need of "racing glory", so if you get bored reading about a crap can Camaro, don't read this race report. At best maybe a dozen people I know will ever read this, or care, but anyway - here's the write-up on the latest LeMons race I drove in, once again at ECR. If you learn anything useful by reading this... I am truly sorry, heh.
Pictures! http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ns-ECR-121711/
I was asked in November if I wanted to co-drive in Costas' "WitchDoctorMotorSports (WDMS) + Bikini Racer + Team 4Max" Camaro at the final LeMons event of 2011, held at Eagles Canyon Raceway last weekend (Dec 17-18, 2011). Apparently they couldn't find anyone better to drive with them, so I got tagged. This 1982-ish Camaro has been run in several LeMons/ChumpCar events previously, with its stock radiator and stock exhaust manifolded 305 V8 it doesn't get a second look from the BS judges. It definitely "looks the part" of a $500 car, and with recent addition of some Dunlop tires mounted on large but cheap C4 Corvette wheels (neither of which ding the "$500 LeMons budget", same goes for safety gear + cage + brakes) it would hopefully raise the performance level over the previous 235mm tires on 16x8" wheels. And it did - this car had lots of grip.
Here the car is (I think its called "Bic"?), in all its glory!
This car really is a $500 LeMons car, unlike some of the cars at the top of the time sheets which had curiously well running engines, good looking bodywork, smooth suspensions, EFI, ABS and all sorts of other performance enhancing goodies.
This Camaro had none of those things.
No front bumper cover (crash damage), beat-to-crap fenders (crash damage), mis-matched doors, lots of purely random colors, some mesh screen in front of the radiator, and a roof covering for the missing T-tops made from galvanized sheet metal, salvaged from an old A/C duct. Very believable as a $500 investment (minus safety gear).
Its a junk yard dawg, and proud of it! If it were parked in my front lawn and I was told "its free!", I would call the cops. That's sort of a good litmus test - if you cannot give a car away, its a true LeMons car.
The CrapCan racing philosophy for Costas and his car are: keep it at a very believable $500 budget, always make laps, drive long stints (2-3 hours), preserve the car, and always finish. And that philosophy took a car with the 19th fastest lap last weekend to a 6th overall finish out of 57 cars. I will expound on that a bit more here, of course.
Went over to Costas' house to help with some last minute prep on Wednesday night before the event and a lot happened. Cody also stopped by and together we swapped the doors from another Camaro he has (the old ones were "the wrong color"), hammered out the worst of the previous damage on both front fenders (even though CertiFit $26 fenders are available 5 minutes form his house - just sayin'!), and they swapped on the CraigsList'd 17x9.5" C4 Corvette "saw blade" wheels, fixed some of the wheel rubbing (the rest sorted itself out during the race), and pulled off the 80 pound rear hatch glass (the fuel cell enclosure is under there). The rest of the necessary repairs were fiddled with and fixed on Friday out at the track, with Mike, Ron and Costas wrenching and making laps in it off and on all day.
So at the ECR "LeMons test day" on Friday before the event these three guys fixed the exhaust (it only fell off 3 times that day, but stayed on for the 15 hours of a race), made some laps, tested the new wheels/tires (they make some grip), and worked on the carburetor a bit. With a hammer. They said it had a stumble past 90% throttle, but it was still plenty quick if you kept it out of the end of the throttle travel, and it was much improved after hammering the metering rods back straight.
So Saturday I get to the track at 7 am and they are prepping the car. Costas got a primo spot to park his big 28' enclosed trailer right by the tech shed, on the "top level" of paved paddock. We were 75 feet from the track! Nice. Of the many times I've raced at ECR I've never pitted that close to the track and clubhouse. I immediately went on a fuel run with all 5 of his fuel jugs tossed into my truck. Bombed over the Valero in Sanger, TX (25 mile round trip) and filled all five jugs. That got the fuel cell filled with a little left over, so I made another run later that day, and we filled up 4 cans with 93 octane from the on-site fueling station (@ $4.40/gallon - ouch!) when we were short on time. Lesson was learned - don't ever buy fuel at the track!
On Sunday I brought four of my own fuel jugs and filled up all 9 jugs (45 gallons for you bad at math) in Denton, on my way to the track, and with 89 octane @ $3.06/gallon. Lots of $ saved if you avoid using the on-site fuel pumps at ECR (and they ran out of 93 octane anyway, like they always do on LeMons weekends; 100 octane was $9/gallon and they sold plenty of that when the 93 ran out). In case you wondered, making fuel runs is one of the more time consuming duties during a LeMons race, if the on sight fuel situation is as poor as it is at ECR. 15 hours of running anything will gobble up some fuel, then factor in a messed up carb and you're going to have a hefty fuel bill (fuel costs this time nearly matched the $500 entry fee).
First driver out (I think?) was Cody Case, who was struggling with the carburetor issues. It was doing the dreaded "QuadraBog!" with more than 20% throttle, so he drove it by barely using the gas and staying out of the secondaries, and short-sifting super early (well before the 4200 rpm shift light). That made for better fuel mileage, even with a fubar carb. Lap times were a bit slower driving this way, but he moved around the track well, drove 100% clean and made a 2+ hour stint without issue. The top 5 cars were all running 2:15s or quicker by then, so with 2:20-2:30 laps we were losing time on track and I think we were down by about 7 or 8 laps after his stint. I hopped in next and we were in 11th, and after a handful of laps of getting passed on the straights driving with the 20% throttle trick, I got passed by one too many Hondas and Miatas under power. Some of these same cars I was re-passing in the corners on the next lap. GRRR...
I was not happy with the few lap times they were calling out to me (2:22 and worse?!), having just made tons of laps at ECR the weekend before in my wife's street car in the 2:03 range - a car she drove to the track in her daily driving set-up, putting two tanks of fuel through it on track that day with 2 drivers beating on it, and drove it home. How could a lighter, V8 powered Camaro on almost identical sized and compound tires be almost 20 seconds a lap slower??? I was getting stuck behind the slowest of the slow LeMons cars, and losing crazy time in the corners because I couldn't get ahead of anything on the straights.
I admit it - I got more than a little pissed. I had no way to communicate my frustration to the team (we had 1-way radios only all weekend) so I tried some different throttle methods, and managed to get the back two barrels on the carb to finally open by flat footing the gas pedal SUPER EARLY in the turns. As soon as I got off the brakes I would MAT the throttle, way earlier than normal for ECR. The carb would stumble, the engine would almost die, but it was in the slowest part of the turn so it didn't matter. Then right when I'd normally be applying the throttle, driving any normal car at ECR, the carb would light up and all 150 horses would kick in! WEE!
Driving like that let the old V8 engine rev up to the lofty 4200 rpm redline (sarcasm), where I'd shift to 4th on the straights, and keep the pedal on the flooorboard. I started pushing the braking zones and kept my cornering speeds as high as before. Still drove the whole course in 3rd-4th gear, as I was told to stay out of 2nd to preserve the trans. I'd just use as much throttle as the car could take without stalling (about 80% once it got past the initial HEAVY stumble at 20%). It worked, and my lap times dropped to a best of 2:17, with a string of 2:18 and 2:19 laps. I started re-passing a lot of cars that got around me early in my stint, and even hung with the top 5 cars for several laps, and unlapped us from a couple of them. When i pulled in our team was now in 7th place, from catching up a bit + the longer stints we made + bad luck for other cars dropping back.
The brakes felt great for stock 10" front 3rd gen Camaro discs (good pads only), if it wasn't axle hopping out back (it was on bumpy corners, so I braked earlier in those). The struts and shocks were all completely blown out, so you felt every bump on track, and the front end bottomed out several times in each corner. The whole front of the car porpoised up and down about a foot traveling down the faster parts of the straights - I guess the brick-like aero front end coupled with the bumpy track, higher speeds, and blown struts all set-up perfectly for boing! boing! boing! I was told, "Hey - its a LeMons thing".
After I finished my stint I came into the pits and the crew was there to help with the fuel stop and driver change (thanks Mike and Ryan!), I got out and went over the wall for a second, to lift my visor because it was fogging up. I was getting warm in that car, despite the cool ambient temps. After the first fuel jug was in the tank I hopped back over the wall, handed them another jug, set-up the drip pan under the car (fuel spills are a big no-no!), and helped with the refuelling, then getting WDMS/Camaro LeMons veteran Ron Miller belted into the car and his earbuds connected to the on-board radio harness. Fishing the latch-style 5-point belts together is trickier than cam-locks and nearly impossible to do by the driver, blindly. With either the HANS or a neck donut brace on (either is acceptable for LeMons - I hate the neck turning limitations of a HANS) the driver cannot move his head down enough to see the latch part of the belts (that's the point of these head and neck restraints - to limit over-travel of the neck in a crash, and prevent tearing your spinal cord out from your brain), so it takes an outside helper to get the driver belted in once he's in the seat. With two helpers, one on each side of the car, it goes even faster and you can get the lower belts TIGHT first, then the shoulder belts last. Our stops were about 5 minutes on average - there were teams making both faster and slower pit stops out there.
Me driving with the super early/heavy throttle use apparently burned up a bit more fuel than the tip-toe gas pedal technique. By using fuel mileage calcs from the first stint, and the lack of communication back to the team when I was driving Flat Out ("because that's how I always drive... FLAT OUT!"), we mis-calculated the refueling after my stint. I got on the radio to work "spotting" up on the hill and was coaching Cody to "MASH THAT THROTTLE!", early and often, and his lap times dropped, too. Well so Ron ran his 2:15 hour stint, and with he and I driving lead-footted the car run a tick short of fuel towards the end... ran out of fuel with about 5 or so laps to go for Day 1. Like "bring it in on the hook" out of gas. Doh! We scrambled, threw 5 gallons in it, and he went back out for more laps. We finished the first day (7 hours on track) in an amazing 8th place, so not too bad considering the carb issues and running out of fuel on track. No black flag penalties, yay!
That night at 5 pm, after the race was stopped for the night (first 7 hours), Ron brought the car into the pits and the team attacked it. After Mike played with the carb some more, he was re-tightening the exhaust and noticed the trans crossmember hanging down a few inches on one side. Oops! Two bolts were gone, and the drivetrain was dangling at a funny angle. No wonder the shifter moved around a foot when it axle-hopped under braking. Somebody said "Its just LeMons!" and they all laughed. Costas found some bolts and put it back together. I'm gonna buy him a stick of Red Loctite for Christmas...
Ty and I hammered the crap out of the front fenders where the bottomed out suspension let the bigger tires smash into an already beat-up RF fender. We "pit-flared it", and after 10 minutes of us swinging a 5 pound sledgehammer and block of 2x4 lumbar acting as a dolly, it actually looked better than when we started. "LeMons repair!"
Tires were checked and wear was pretty damned good, with the RF tire taking a little more abuse (CCW track layout), so each tire was swapped front-to-rear. Ryan from Vorshlag along with Ty, Mike, Ron, Costas and Cody pulled the wheels and tires, then checked and re-torqued everything they could get to on the suspension. I had to scoot out a little early to head to a Christmas Party (mother-in-laws) and left at 5:50 pm, while the rest of the crew bugged out about 6:30. Surprisingly little else was broken after 7 hours of racing, and after a relatively easy post-race check-up the car was put inside the trailer.
So Day 2 we again wanted to make only 2 stops, to preserve down time (pit stops were taking about 5 minutes). It was scheduled to be 7.5 of driving on Day 2, and since Costas had sacrificed driving on Day 1 to make it a 3 driver day, Ron decided to take off early and go see his family, so Costas started us off driving a long-ish 2:45 hour stint. He stuck with the 20% throttle trick and got the car really moving, cutting consistent 2:20 laps and even a few 2:19s, being thrifty on fuel usage. He was using every inch of track and letting the added grip and good brakes get as much out of a lap as possible, and short-shifting and using 4th gear a LOT. He had some fuel starvation issues 10 minutes before he brought it into the pits. Our team was shown in 5th place (?!), almost one minute ahead of the 6th place "Miagra" Miata. The Miata could run 2:15-2:18 laps with some of their drivers, and they had won with it before, but with fewer stops and 2:20 average laps we could possibly pull off a 5th place for the weekend. We'd need some luck, and no mistakes.
During the pit stop the team dumped 4 cans of fuel into the fuel cell, then Cody hopped on track in 6th place and did much of the same driving on his stint. He also managed good , quick laps and a few 2:19s, never using much throttle and short shifting. We knew with a hurt carburetor it would be tough to eek out 2:30 hour stints, even driving so tame, but he did it. We had 5-6 laps on 7th place by this time, and about 13 laps down on the leaders. Excellent work, and I was ready to stop spotting up on the hill after about 3 hours - I was freezing up there in all of that wind. Ty took over spotting for me, thanks!
My wife Amy came to the track while Cody was driving, so she and I went for one last fuel jug filling run into town, I grabbed some food, and got back in plenty of time for my driving stint at the end of the day. We refueled after Cody came in, I hopped in and went out with Amy spotting on the radio. I could hear her and signal back with manual talk clicks only - we never had 2 way comms all weekend other than these crude 1/2/3 click responses from the driver. She was letting me know about flags, was reading me times from the Race Keeper app (MyLaps real time data), which I find hugely helpful. I ran mostly 2:20 laps, after being told to stay off the throttle to extend our driving stints and fuel windows. I had one more 2:17 in there, and a few other teens, but mostly 2:20-2:22 laps, short shifting a lot. About 10 laps into this stint there was an "incident...
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Pictures! http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ns-ECR-121711/
I was asked in November if I wanted to co-drive in Costas' "WitchDoctorMotorSports (WDMS) + Bikini Racer + Team 4Max" Camaro at the final LeMons event of 2011, held at Eagles Canyon Raceway last weekend (Dec 17-18, 2011). Apparently they couldn't find anyone better to drive with them, so I got tagged. This 1982-ish Camaro has been run in several LeMons/ChumpCar events previously, with its stock radiator and stock exhaust manifolded 305 V8 it doesn't get a second look from the BS judges. It definitely "looks the part" of a $500 car, and with recent addition of some Dunlop tires mounted on large but cheap C4 Corvette wheels (neither of which ding the "$500 LeMons budget", same goes for safety gear + cage + brakes) it would hopefully raise the performance level over the previous 235mm tires on 16x8" wheels. And it did - this car had lots of grip.
Here the car is (I think its called "Bic"?), in all its glory!
This car really is a $500 LeMons car, unlike some of the cars at the top of the time sheets which had curiously well running engines, good looking bodywork, smooth suspensions, EFI, ABS and all sorts of other performance enhancing goodies.
This Camaro had none of those things.
No front bumper cover (crash damage), beat-to-crap fenders (crash damage), mis-matched doors, lots of purely random colors, some mesh screen in front of the radiator, and a roof covering for the missing T-tops made from galvanized sheet metal, salvaged from an old A/C duct. Very believable as a $500 investment (minus safety gear).
Its a junk yard dawg, and proud of it! If it were parked in my front lawn and I was told "its free!", I would call the cops. That's sort of a good litmus test - if you cannot give a car away, its a true LeMons car.
The CrapCan racing philosophy for Costas and his car are: keep it at a very believable $500 budget, always make laps, drive long stints (2-3 hours), preserve the car, and always finish. And that philosophy took a car with the 19th fastest lap last weekend to a 6th overall finish out of 57 cars. I will expound on that a bit more here, of course.
Went over to Costas' house to help with some last minute prep on Wednesday night before the event and a lot happened. Cody also stopped by and together we swapped the doors from another Camaro he has (the old ones were "the wrong color"), hammered out the worst of the previous damage on both front fenders (even though CertiFit $26 fenders are available 5 minutes form his house - just sayin'!), and they swapped on the CraigsList'd 17x9.5" C4 Corvette "saw blade" wheels, fixed some of the wheel rubbing (the rest sorted itself out during the race), and pulled off the 80 pound rear hatch glass (the fuel cell enclosure is under there). The rest of the necessary repairs were fiddled with and fixed on Friday out at the track, with Mike, Ron and Costas wrenching and making laps in it off and on all day.
So at the ECR "LeMons test day" on Friday before the event these three guys fixed the exhaust (it only fell off 3 times that day, but stayed on for the 15 hours of a race), made some laps, tested the new wheels/tires (they make some grip), and worked on the carburetor a bit. With a hammer. They said it had a stumble past 90% throttle, but it was still plenty quick if you kept it out of the end of the throttle travel, and it was much improved after hammering the metering rods back straight.
So Saturday I get to the track at 7 am and they are prepping the car. Costas got a primo spot to park his big 28' enclosed trailer right by the tech shed, on the "top level" of paved paddock. We were 75 feet from the track! Nice. Of the many times I've raced at ECR I've never pitted that close to the track and clubhouse. I immediately went on a fuel run with all 5 of his fuel jugs tossed into my truck. Bombed over the Valero in Sanger, TX (25 mile round trip) and filled all five jugs. That got the fuel cell filled with a little left over, so I made another run later that day, and we filled up 4 cans with 93 octane from the on-site fueling station (@ $4.40/gallon - ouch!) when we were short on time. Lesson was learned - don't ever buy fuel at the track!
On Sunday I brought four of my own fuel jugs and filled up all 9 jugs (45 gallons for you bad at math) in Denton, on my way to the track, and with 89 octane @ $3.06/gallon. Lots of $ saved if you avoid using the on-site fuel pumps at ECR (and they ran out of 93 octane anyway, like they always do on LeMons weekends; 100 octane was $9/gallon and they sold plenty of that when the 93 ran out). In case you wondered, making fuel runs is one of the more time consuming duties during a LeMons race, if the on sight fuel situation is as poor as it is at ECR. 15 hours of running anything will gobble up some fuel, then factor in a messed up carb and you're going to have a hefty fuel bill (fuel costs this time nearly matched the $500 entry fee).
First driver out (I think?) was Cody Case, who was struggling with the carburetor issues. It was doing the dreaded "QuadraBog!" with more than 20% throttle, so he drove it by barely using the gas and staying out of the secondaries, and short-sifting super early (well before the 4200 rpm shift light). That made for better fuel mileage, even with a fubar carb. Lap times were a bit slower driving this way, but he moved around the track well, drove 100% clean and made a 2+ hour stint without issue. The top 5 cars were all running 2:15s or quicker by then, so with 2:20-2:30 laps we were losing time on track and I think we were down by about 7 or 8 laps after his stint. I hopped in next and we were in 11th, and after a handful of laps of getting passed on the straights driving with the 20% throttle trick, I got passed by one too many Hondas and Miatas under power. Some of these same cars I was re-passing in the corners on the next lap. GRRR...
I was not happy with the few lap times they were calling out to me (2:22 and worse?!), having just made tons of laps at ECR the weekend before in my wife's street car in the 2:03 range - a car she drove to the track in her daily driving set-up, putting two tanks of fuel through it on track that day with 2 drivers beating on it, and drove it home. How could a lighter, V8 powered Camaro on almost identical sized and compound tires be almost 20 seconds a lap slower??? I was getting stuck behind the slowest of the slow LeMons cars, and losing crazy time in the corners because I couldn't get ahead of anything on the straights.
I admit it - I got more than a little pissed. I had no way to communicate my frustration to the team (we had 1-way radios only all weekend) so I tried some different throttle methods, and managed to get the back two barrels on the carb to finally open by flat footing the gas pedal SUPER EARLY in the turns. As soon as I got off the brakes I would MAT the throttle, way earlier than normal for ECR. The carb would stumble, the engine would almost die, but it was in the slowest part of the turn so it didn't matter. Then right when I'd normally be applying the throttle, driving any normal car at ECR, the carb would light up and all 150 horses would kick in! WEE!
Driving like that let the old V8 engine rev up to the lofty 4200 rpm redline (sarcasm), where I'd shift to 4th on the straights, and keep the pedal on the flooorboard. I started pushing the braking zones and kept my cornering speeds as high as before. Still drove the whole course in 3rd-4th gear, as I was told to stay out of 2nd to preserve the trans. I'd just use as much throttle as the car could take without stalling (about 80% once it got past the initial HEAVY stumble at 20%). It worked, and my lap times dropped to a best of 2:17, with a string of 2:18 and 2:19 laps. I started re-passing a lot of cars that got around me early in my stint, and even hung with the top 5 cars for several laps, and unlapped us from a couple of them. When i pulled in our team was now in 7th place, from catching up a bit + the longer stints we made + bad luck for other cars dropping back.
The brakes felt great for stock 10" front 3rd gen Camaro discs (good pads only), if it wasn't axle hopping out back (it was on bumpy corners, so I braked earlier in those). The struts and shocks were all completely blown out, so you felt every bump on track, and the front end bottomed out several times in each corner. The whole front of the car porpoised up and down about a foot traveling down the faster parts of the straights - I guess the brick-like aero front end coupled with the bumpy track, higher speeds, and blown struts all set-up perfectly for boing! boing! boing! I was told, "Hey - its a LeMons thing".
After I finished my stint I came into the pits and the crew was there to help with the fuel stop and driver change (thanks Mike and Ryan!), I got out and went over the wall for a second, to lift my visor because it was fogging up. I was getting warm in that car, despite the cool ambient temps. After the first fuel jug was in the tank I hopped back over the wall, handed them another jug, set-up the drip pan under the car (fuel spills are a big no-no!), and helped with the refuelling, then getting WDMS/Camaro LeMons veteran Ron Miller belted into the car and his earbuds connected to the on-board radio harness. Fishing the latch-style 5-point belts together is trickier than cam-locks and nearly impossible to do by the driver, blindly. With either the HANS or a neck donut brace on (either is acceptable for LeMons - I hate the neck turning limitations of a HANS) the driver cannot move his head down enough to see the latch part of the belts (that's the point of these head and neck restraints - to limit over-travel of the neck in a crash, and prevent tearing your spinal cord out from your brain), so it takes an outside helper to get the driver belted in once he's in the seat. With two helpers, one on each side of the car, it goes even faster and you can get the lower belts TIGHT first, then the shoulder belts last. Our stops were about 5 minutes on average - there were teams making both faster and slower pit stops out there.
Me driving with the super early/heavy throttle use apparently burned up a bit more fuel than the tip-toe gas pedal technique. By using fuel mileage calcs from the first stint, and the lack of communication back to the team when I was driving Flat Out ("because that's how I always drive... FLAT OUT!"), we mis-calculated the refueling after my stint. I got on the radio to work "spotting" up on the hill and was coaching Cody to "MASH THAT THROTTLE!", early and often, and his lap times dropped, too. Well so Ron ran his 2:15 hour stint, and with he and I driving lead-footted the car run a tick short of fuel towards the end... ran out of fuel with about 5 or so laps to go for Day 1. Like "bring it in on the hook" out of gas. Doh! We scrambled, threw 5 gallons in it, and he went back out for more laps. We finished the first day (7 hours on track) in an amazing 8th place, so not too bad considering the carb issues and running out of fuel on track. No black flag penalties, yay!
That night at 5 pm, after the race was stopped for the night (first 7 hours), Ron brought the car into the pits and the team attacked it. After Mike played with the carb some more, he was re-tightening the exhaust and noticed the trans crossmember hanging down a few inches on one side. Oops! Two bolts were gone, and the drivetrain was dangling at a funny angle. No wonder the shifter moved around a foot when it axle-hopped under braking. Somebody said "Its just LeMons!" and they all laughed. Costas found some bolts and put it back together. I'm gonna buy him a stick of Red Loctite for Christmas...
Ty and I hammered the crap out of the front fenders where the bottomed out suspension let the bigger tires smash into an already beat-up RF fender. We "pit-flared it", and after 10 minutes of us swinging a 5 pound sledgehammer and block of 2x4 lumbar acting as a dolly, it actually looked better than when we started. "LeMons repair!"
Tires were checked and wear was pretty damned good, with the RF tire taking a little more abuse (CCW track layout), so each tire was swapped front-to-rear. Ryan from Vorshlag along with Ty, Mike, Ron, Costas and Cody pulled the wheels and tires, then checked and re-torqued everything they could get to on the suspension. I had to scoot out a little early to head to a Christmas Party (mother-in-laws) and left at 5:50 pm, while the rest of the crew bugged out about 6:30. Surprisingly little else was broken after 7 hours of racing, and after a relatively easy post-race check-up the car was put inside the trailer.
So Day 2 we again wanted to make only 2 stops, to preserve down time (pit stops were taking about 5 minutes). It was scheduled to be 7.5 of driving on Day 2, and since Costas had sacrificed driving on Day 1 to make it a 3 driver day, Ron decided to take off early and go see his family, so Costas started us off driving a long-ish 2:45 hour stint. He stuck with the 20% throttle trick and got the car really moving, cutting consistent 2:20 laps and even a few 2:19s, being thrifty on fuel usage. He was using every inch of track and letting the added grip and good brakes get as much out of a lap as possible, and short-shifting and using 4th gear a LOT. He had some fuel starvation issues 10 minutes before he brought it into the pits. Our team was shown in 5th place (?!), almost one minute ahead of the 6th place "Miagra" Miata. The Miata could run 2:15-2:18 laps with some of their drivers, and they had won with it before, but with fewer stops and 2:20 average laps we could possibly pull off a 5th place for the weekend. We'd need some luck, and no mistakes.
During the pit stop the team dumped 4 cans of fuel into the fuel cell, then Cody hopped on track in 6th place and did much of the same driving on his stint. He also managed good , quick laps and a few 2:19s, never using much throttle and short shifting. We knew with a hurt carburetor it would be tough to eek out 2:30 hour stints, even driving so tame, but he did it. We had 5-6 laps on 7th place by this time, and about 13 laps down on the leaders. Excellent work, and I was ready to stop spotting up on the hill after about 3 hours - I was freezing up there in all of that wind. Ty took over spotting for me, thanks!
My wife Amy came to the track while Cody was driving, so she and I went for one last fuel jug filling run into town, I grabbed some food, and got back in plenty of time for my driving stint at the end of the day. We refueled after Cody came in, I hopped in and went out with Amy spotting on the radio. I could hear her and signal back with manual talk clicks only - we never had 2 way comms all weekend other than these crude 1/2/3 click responses from the driver. She was letting me know about flags, was reading me times from the Race Keeper app (MyLaps real time data), which I find hugely helpful. I ran mostly 2:20 laps, after being told to stay off the throttle to extend our driving stints and fuel windows. I had one more 2:17 in there, and a few other teens, but mostly 2:20-2:22 laps, short shifting a lot. About 10 laps into this stint there was an "incident...
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