Mine All Mine
March & April 2003
196,000 Miles of
Badass NA 2+2 fury
"Alright...even
if it rains, I want you to go out there and draft, pass under braking and be
aggressive!”
Buttonwillow Raceway configuration #14
counterclockwise with the SWEEPER.
http://www.buttonwillowraceway.com/
I decided to apply to attend the Driving Concepts race school. My
open practice test days taught me that there were unique skills needed for
wheel-to-wheel racing versus my normal time trial mentality. While I was having
lots of fun hot lapping, the “Pyramid of Speed” says Sprint racing is the
ultimate...
...I would soon find out for myself.
Prep
Sufferin’ shazzbot! THE CAR IS JUST GREAT!
For the first time ever, I could just fill the car up with gas,
tools and luggage and take off. In light of the previous 10 hour harness
install, the 12 hour brake system/line/bleeding adventure and 6 hour injector
diagnosis & swap, this was almost unreal.
I packed the old brake pads from before the brake system swap, my
jack, tools and helmet.
Saturday
(Note: There are extensive classroom sessions before and after
each track session which aren’t covered in the text below)
After a warmup session, the first race school
specific adventure is called "3 abreast". Its just what it sounds
like; we drove three wide (NASCAR style) around the entire track at about 50
mph, switching positions every turn like a musical chairs episode.
Think of driving down a two-lane hilly, curvy
country road at 50mph in the woods with two cars right next to you! I had an
E46 M3 and an E36 M3 for partners. Their bumper costs more than AccZDent!
Then we practiced passing under braking in groups
of three. Basically, we would do laps in a bunch of three car groups. The last
car in each group would divebomb the other two into the corner. Repeat with new
last car in line at every corner. We aren’t dawdling around at 50mph this time
though and soon are blazing along (my group had an E30 M3 and a twin turbo RX7)
fast enough to catch up to others. Well, then we started passing them too. It
got a bit "unraveled", but no crashing.
HERE’S WHERE IT GOT INTERESTING. Just before we
could begin doing our first sprint races, it started RAINING BUCKETS. Torrenial
downpour would be an appropriate description.
Did we cancel? Heck NO! Out we went. We lined up
behind a pace car, headed around the track to the final turn, waited for the
green flag and...and...and...punched it! We’d blaze around for half a lap
divebombing and passing in the wet, only to line up again behind another pace
car and start over.
I had never gotten even mildly aggressive in
AccZDent in the rain, since Falken Azenis are the opposite of all weather
tires, but here’s goes nuthin'!
Every time the green drops all 30 of us blast down
the front straight weaving and passing and setting up for position! We are out
there with a kit car Cobra, turbo sports cars, an AWD EVO 8 and the instructors
M3s are all out there divebombing and sliding around into Turn 1. There is a
sea of brake lights and water as we all jockey for position. Then we blast to
the esses, as the people who got a good line through Turn 1 battle the HP kings
to see whos going to take the position.
The sweeper is magic in AccZDent, as the car goes
from mild mannered understeer to a D1 drift champion tailslider in the rain.
Highly controllable, but tailout nonetheless. More fun than Vegas on the
expense account!
I did get a chance to go wheel to wheel with Matt
in Colleen’s SE-R for a coupla laps. I was dismayed to see that the SE-R is
faster down the front straight! HOWEVER, it was not fast enough to overcome
AccZDent’s four-piston factory brakes and, more importantly, ready for rain ABS
system into Turn 1. Divebomb and boom, back in behind. I'm gonna have to get a
set of her Toyos for sure!
No crashes, but I said plenty of "oh
craps" and "whoas" and "he’s gonna spin!" at full
volume. Then, as things got settled, I was yelling out "Get back
there’s", "No you don’ts" and "There’s the gap"!
It was like watching the World Challenge in-car
camera on Speedvision, but...I'm driving!
Sunday
Well, well, well. After surviving for 201,600
miles, the teeth on the starter or the solenoid that activated the engagement
of the starter have gone to the Cloud 9 junkyard. After a rather grumpy 7:30AM
push start that took three people to make happen (Brakes dragging? Is the
parking brake on? Sheesh!) I gassed up and headed to the track.
I decide that the only way to do this is going to
be to let the car idle...ALL DAY. Yep. AccZDent would idle from about 7:30am to
9:30pm today. Oh, the joys of having a 200k+ mile beater car! I left a note on
the window telling of the starter and to leave it running. I figured that no
one would want to steal a car they couldn’t restart anyway.
After another warmup session, we go out and qualify
for the two sprint races later in the day. In light of a classrom lesson on
tire conservation for enduros, take it at 9/10ths and find a MUCH better line
over Magic Mountain and into Riverside. No scrubbing and an extra 4mph. Not too
shabby.
The next sessions are five lap sprint races. The
instructors set us up in pregrid in an order that guarantees that we will be
all over each other. Slow people in front, fast people in behind and a Spec
Racer (looks like 3/4 scale Formula Atlantic) in the back that will make it
almost to the front in five laps.
We then head out, scrubbing our tires and putting
heat into them. Lining up behind the pace car, two by two, we are led around
the track. Then pace car pulls off and we (supposedly) hold our speed around
the front straight turn and wait for the green...
...and wait...and wait...and
waaaait...
...GREEN!!! Throttle down, the roar
of 25+ cars all floored 100% erupts in Surround Sound. I pass a Factory Five
Cobra on the right with half a tire in the dirt. I sweep back in and setup to
take the inside line through the right hand Turn 1.
DUST DUST DUST! Someone in front goes WAY off at
about 70mph, likely because they were trying to go four wide through Turn 1 and
only had room for three. I ignore the rooster tail of dirt and plan my next
pass.
As I begin to pass a Spec Miata that got a bad run
out of Turn 1, I hear an angry buzz and move over just in time to see a BRIGHT
RED EVO 8 streak by. He zips into the Esseses, an E36 M3 zips behind him and
then I zip in behind the BMW, just in front of the Spec Miata!
At each and every corner there were usually three
to five things going on that you had to pay attention to (in addition to your
driving, shifting, turning etc) along with three more that you had to choose to
ignore at the moment! If a lap took 2min 20secs, I had about 10 of those
seconds to look at my gages or relax. The rest of the time is absolute
organized mayhem like something out of a Matrix movie.
I LOVED IT.
The second race was a little better than the first,
as people better figured out how to let a fast car pass without holding them
up, without slowing themselves down much AND without losing a position to cars
they were competitive with. They could even use the "draft" to help
them pull away.
However, the instructors began to black flag the
super fast people so that they would have to work themselves back through the
field AGAIN (i.e. I got passed by the same EVO 8 twice).
OverRev
SO, I cruised home with a different perspective.
Wheel to wheel is an entirely different type of thrill with the same result.
There’s the same push for low laptimes, but you are dealing with a myriad of
concurrent things to deal with.
With 30 cars on the track, can you even SEE your
turn in point?
Is the S2000 in front of you driven by someone who
is going to hop the wet berm and spinout?
Is that M3 in front of you going to turn into you
if you divebomb him into the Bus Stop?
Does he even know you are there or is he trying to
setup the Miata in front of him?
The excitement level is LOTS higher than HPDE hot
lapping. So is the cost. I guess I will have to see if my funding pans out, but
at least I will have the race license to enter the competition.
I think I am tracked out for about two months...
Then again, I think you can run Laguna Seca non-exclusive if
you have a race license...same with Willow Springs...Hmmm.
- Davis
Lone Pine...WAY,
WAY, WAY out past Mohave!
The car had been spun off the road in a rainstorm here in Santa Barbara. It was in need of a front bumper, 1 rear toe link, 2 aluminum rims, rear shocks, four new tires, two new mufflers and an engine harness!
2nd Place – Don’t
Let The Mileage Fool You
Unfortunately, the cost of all of that would prove to be too much for the $800 budget. Instead, I fixed as little as possible. I replaced 1 rim, bought junkyard rear shocks and mounted some bald but donated tires (thatnks Matt!).
The result? I drove to a 2nd place trophy on with a gaping hole in the front bumper! The bent suspension arm made the car squirrelly, but I managed zero spins.
Of course, the thrill of the event soon wore off. I wanted more high speed thrills. I needed (uh-oh) more high speed thrills. I wanted to run on a real racetrack!
I put on Metal Master brake pads, bought a new set of Falken Azenis Sports and signed up for a Willow Springs trackday with NASAProRacing.com!